Climbing!

by

Mountain

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Released in 1969, Mountain's debut album "Mountain Climbing!" is considered by many to be their finest piece of work. The album immediately produced a mega hit with "Mississippi Queen". Mountain, fronted by guitarist/vocalist Leslie West, bassist Felix Pappalardi, drummer Corky Laing and organist Steve Knight, had a sound not unlike Britain's ever so popular group Cream. Interestingly, bassist Felix Pappalardi produced Cream's albums "Disraeli Gears","Wheels Of Fire" and "Goodbye", so obviously his influence is evident in Mountain's sound. West's guitar licks do have a similarity to Cream's guitarist, Eric Clapton except that Clapton's playing was more extreme than West's. Mountain's songs ranged from power chord rocker's such as the above mentioned "Mississippi Queen", "Never In My Life", and "Boys In The Band" to beautiful slower melodic songs such as "Theme From An Imaginary Western", "For Yasguer's Farm", to acoustic based tunes like "To My Friend" and "The Laird". This newly remastered version of "Mountain Climbing!" sounds better than the older version mainly because there seems to be more bottom end and mid-range added that the other lacked. There's also a bonus track "Live" version of "Yasgur's Farm" which is a nice addition as well as an eleven page booklet that includes comments by Leslie West and Corky Laing on the making of "Mountain Climbing!" as well as the info. about the group as a whole. If you like listening to 60's or 70's groups/artists such as Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, The Who or Led Zeppelin then you'll love this excellent rock cd. Highly Recommended!

How thrilled I was to get Mountain's two classic albums -- Climbing and Nantucket Sleighride -- in what I assumed would be beautifully remastered editions! How disappointed I was to discover that these cd's sound no different now than they did when they were originally issued eleven years ago! And that sonic experience can be summed up in two words: TAPE HISS. So much tape hiss that it's almost unbelievable. They may have repackaged these cd reissues, but it certainly does not sound as though they bothered to remaster them. And that's too bad; these Mountain masterpieces desperately needed to be properly restored/remastered. Shame on Sony! This amounts to thievery.