CLIMBING!
Climbing!, also known as Mountain Climbing!, is the official debut studio album by American blues rock band Mountain. Released on March 7, 1970, the album featured the ‘classic’ Mountain lineup of Leslie West (guitar, vocals), Felix Pappalardi (bass, piano) and Corky Laing (drums, percussion), and followed the West solo album Mountain featuring Pappalardi and drummer Norman Smart, released in 1969 and often credited to the band. Produced by Pappalardi, the album reached number 17 on the American Billboard 200 albums chart and featured the band’s best-known song, “Mississippi Queen”. (More from Wikipedia)
Shortly after Woodstock, Canadian Corky Laing replaced N. D. Smart on drums, and this line-up of Mountain produced one of my favorite hard rock albums of all time, Climbing!. The album featured the hit song “Mississippi Queen” and also “Theme for an Imaginary Western”, but the whole album cooks. Felix Pappalardi’s wife Gail Collins Pappalardi co-wrote six songs on the album and also contributed artwork for the cover on their first three albums. The album also includes a reflection on Woodstock, called “For Yasgur’s Farm” (Max Yasgur owned the farm where the festival took place).
(May 2014)
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I certainly don’t know as much going into a monthly post as I probably let on, and despite its thousands, my record collection is not comprehensive. For instance, my post awhile back about the origins of Cream and the many bands that arose in the wake of their break-up germinated from some writings by the music columnist Ricky Flake in our local paper, the Sun Herald. At the time, I had precisely one album by Cream, Disraeli Gears (I still don’t have Goodbye) and only the first Mountain album, Climbing!.
(Year 5 Review)
