Dreams of milk and honey (Mountain) (LP 3298 - 3302)

Mountain  Live (The Road Goes Ever On) (Vinyl, Image Records, 1972) ***  

Mountain  Millenium Collection  (2CD, Digimode Entertainment, live 1971 - released 1999) ****

Mountain  Roll Over Beethoven (CD, Image Records, live 1974 - released 2002) ***

Mountain  Twin Peaks (Vinyl, CBS Records, 1974) *** 

Mountain  Eruption (CD, Snapper Music, live 1983/2003 released 2004) ** 

Genre: Hard rock, rock

Places I remember: Real Groovy, The Warehouse

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Long Red (Live)

Gear costume: Nantucket Sleighride (Milennium Collection)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5

Active compensatory factors: The Live (The Road Goes Ever On) album's four songs cover a wide range of time - 1969 to 1972: Long Red and Waiting to Take You Away are from the August 16, 1969, performance at Woodstock, Nantucket Sleighride is from the December 14, 1971, show at the Academy of Music in New York City, and Crossroader from the January 29, 1972, appearance at the Rainbow Theatre in London.

So, it lacks cohesion and flow. I have always liked the versions of the songs though - Long Red in particular and the side long version of Nantucket Sleighride is okay but it stretches the song out a tad too much.

Millenium Collection is a 2CD album of their gig at the Fillmore East, New Years Eve, 1971. This is probably the best of the live albums that I own (Spotify has a truckload of them). Long Red is still in the setlist, and Nantucket Sleighride weighs in at around 6 minutes. Just avoid the 10 minute guitar solo!

Roll Over Beethoven is a 1974 show broadcast on radio (The King Biscuit Flower Hour) and also marketed as Greatest Hits Live. It features some spirited performances. The band has fun on the covers like Whole Lotta Shaking Goin' On. The sound of the recording is perfect too, btw.

Twin Peaks is a double live album, also documenting a gig from 1974 in Japan (Corky Laing hadn't rejoined at this point). 

It would have made a killer single album - a bloated version of Nantucket Sleighride takes up two sides and West's tedious guitar solo also slows things down. Apart from that the band deliver on the usual songs.

Eruption is a double CD set. The first takes in some shows live in New York City from 1983 (Mark Clarke on bass) and the second from European shows in 2003 (West and Laing joined by Richie Scarlet on bass). Luckily the '85 live version is nothing like the wimpy studio one. The guys fire through a sloppy but spirited set list that includes a so so version of Joe Walsh's Rocky Mountain Way. Felix' vocals are very much missed on songs like Imaginary Western and Sleighride (terrible version of that one).

The 2003 gig kicks off with a damn good version of West Bruce & Laing's Why Dontcha, but then it gets a tad sloppy with long introductions from Leslie and less than stellar versions of old songs. 

Where do they all belong? And, apart from a Greatest Hits album on CD, that is it - my brain hurts after navigating their complicated catalogue. To a novice I'd recommend that compilation - it has everything you need.

Boys in the band (Mountain) (LP 3292 - 3297)

Mountain  Mountain (2LP Vinyl, Polydor Records, 1972) ****  

Mountain  Climbing! (Vinyl and CD, Windfall/ CBS Records, 1970) ****  

Mountain  Nantucket Sleighride (Vinyl and CD, Windfall/ CBS Records, 1971) ****  

Mountain  Flowers Of Evil (CD, Windfall Records, 1971) *** 

Mountain  Avalanche (Vinyl and CD, Windfall/ CBS Records, 1974) ****  

Mountain  Go For Your Life (Vinyl, Scotti Bros. Records, 1985) *  

Genre: Heavy rock, hard rock, rock

Places I remember: Real Groovy Records, Fopp, The Warehouse.

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin)

Gear costume: Never In My Life (Climbing!)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5

Active compensatory factors: The Mountain releases are super confusing given all the different labels involved, the different titles for the same album, different covers for the same album and similar sounding album titles. Then there are all the re-releases. For instance, the first album on the list is a double album that combines Climbing! with Leslie West Mountain (the 1969 version). Some of the latter now sounds like a demo album, but it does set out the template for Mountain. 

1970 on Bell Records.

Long Red is thin on Leslie West Mountain (1969) compared to the meaty version that appears at Woodstock. It can be found on Mountain Live (see below when we get to the equally confusing live albums).

Another case in point is that debut album. 

It could be called Climbing!, Mountain Climbing or Leslie West Mountain (on Bell Records - same cover/title but released in 1970). It's the same album, same songs, in the same order. Told you it's confusing.

To limit the confusion, I'll separate the studio albums from the live as much as I can (they also love to combine the two - one side live and one side studio on one album). So, there will be two peaks, if you will.

Whatever it's called, the 1970 Climbing! album is a brilliant debut that came out a year after they'd performed at Woodstock (their third gig). All power bass and chunky guitar from Leslie, plus Corky Laing on drums. Not quite a Cream style power trio though - Steve Knight's on keyboards.

Second album, Nantucket Sleighride is another awesome album. The title track is one of my favourites. All that seadog/ Moby Dick imagery gets me every time. Other standout songs are Don't Look Around (Corky in great form), and The Animal Trainer And The Toad (about Felix and Leslie).

Flowers of Evil is also from 1971. This is the one with a side live from 27 June 1971 at the Fillmore East in New York City/ a side in the studio. The live material was named Dream Sequence but was in reality a medley of rock'n'roll hits and Mississippi Queen. 

Crossroader stands out on the studio side, which is good on the whole, but the live side isn't essential. So, three-stars for Flowers of Evil.

The band went into hiatus after Flowers of Evil - notably Leslie and Corky joined up with Cream bassist Jack Bruce to create West Bruce and Laing. A brilliant power trio; we'll get to their three albums eventually. When that band flamed up the boys eventually reconnected with Felix Pappalardi, and Mountain was reborn.

By August 1973, West and Pappalardi had reformed Mountain with Allan Schwartzberg on drums and Bob Mann on keyboards and guitar; the new lineup toured Japan and produced a double live album, Twin Peaks from the tour (I'll get to this when I look at the live albums). 

Avalanche was the next studio album after Corky replaced touring drummer Schwartzberg, and it's a beauty! All the best components of Mountain's no-nonsense hard rock style are on display.

They kept going into the eighties and Go For Your Life (1985) was the next studio album after Avalanche. It's full of glossy eighties production ticks, questionable lyrics (I Love Young Girls is icky) and synths. Yes - synths! Felix Pappalardi is absent because, tragically, his wife - Gail Collins - the one who'd done those earlier artistic covers, had shot and killed him in 1983. Go For Your Life is best forgotten as a bridge too far after Felix was killed.

Where do they all belong? West and Laing hung in there for another three studio releases (from 1996 to 2007) - none of which I have, nor am I keen to get. After Felix left this mortal coil, his presence was sorely missed in Mountain. Next post - the live albums. 

Hear my thunder (West Bruce & Laing)

I was listening to a multi CD set of 1970s Rock's finest moment type things that you find on the supermarket shelves these days (I'm a sucker for these things) and it struck me how lucky I was to live through the early seventies and listen at first hand to things like Frankenstein (Edgar Winter Group), Radar Love (Golden Earring), Paranoid (Black Sabbath) and so on. This was great great music and a fantastic time to start being a music junkie.

Got me thinking about one of my favourites that has now probably attained secret treasure status.

West, Bruce and Laing were a blues-rock power trio super-group consisting of Leslie West (guitar and vocals), Jack Bruce (bass, harp, keyboards and vocals) and Corky Laing (drums and vocals).

The trio formed in early 1972. West and Laing's previous band was the great Mountain and Bruce, of course, came via Cream.

They toured extensively and released two studio albums, 1972's Why Dontcha and 1973's Whatever Turns You On. They disbanded shortly before the release of their live album Live 'n' Kickin' in 1974.

It's the first one that does it for me. Why Dontcha. No question mark required.

My copy is an Australian one. My family and I went on an Australian holiday in 1973 and I had a shopping list of albums to buy which included: Houses Of The Holy (Led Zeppelin); Made In Japan (Deep Purple); Why Dontcha (West, Bruce & Laing).

When I got back home I was really disappointed with the latest Led Zep opus but Why Dontcha was seldom removed from the turntable.

It's a case of delivering on expectations. Leslie West plays guitar like he's chipping away at a mountain of granite with a sledgehammer, Jack Bruce is an amazingly distinctive and innovative bassist and Corky...well he plays drums.

It really is a great album, where the individuals combine into a stunning band performance.

There are some great rock songs on the album (Why Dontcha and The Doctor are stand outs); some blues showcases for Jack (a la Cream), most notably on the harp fest that is Turn Me Over (think Rollin and Tumblin), a rolling piano lead workout Shake Ma Thing (Rollin Jack), the slowish blues of Third Degree; some wonderfully soaring vocals by Jack (Out Into The Fields), an acoustic guitar and piano driven ballad with more of those soaring vocal harmonies and some great dobro picking by West (While You Sleep) and then there is the classic heavy guitar wig out for Leslie West - Love Is Worth The Blues.

I close my eyes and remember the days of a blood red sky and a purple haze (Starship)

The final theme centres on the arty farty world of the album cover. In practice this is a bit of a mixture of comic book art, drawings, and paintings used to sell an image - Commander Cody as a Flash Gordon type character, Conan the Barbarian style warriors used on the southern boogie band Molly Hatchet and so on.

I have many favourites in this category - here are the first 10.

By the way - the Big Man's passing will be marked in the appropriate way in a post to come soon. In the meantime suffice to say the world got a little less flamboyent and a little less exciting as a result of his passing.

Starbuck's sharpening his harpoon.

40 Mountain, 'Nantucket Sleighride', 41 David Crosby, 'The Lee Shore'

I have a fascination with the sea. It doesn't extend to me wanting to muck around on boats but I love the romance of the sea and the idea of old sailing vessels like the Cutty Sark. I stood behind the wheel of that ship in London and I could image what it must have felt like to sail on it. When we lived in Leigh-on-sea we would often wander around the estuary and enjoy all of the sights and sounds and smells of the old fishing boats docked there. It seems like I've usually found myself living close to the sea.

Songs about the sea do it for me time and again whether they be allegorical (Split Enz - Six Months in a Leaky Boat), of disaster ( Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald), of the old whaling days (Nantucket Sleighride) or of carefree abandon ( CSN's Southern Cross).

I'm not going to write too much this time - instead I'll let the music do it for me. Two versions of The Lee Shore - the CSNY one with Neil playing some sublime guitar is a favourite version of Crosby's dream/song and you can almost taste the salt in Mountain's song of whaling, harpoons and Starbuck!