Fun:Mountain

Mountain is a rock band originally consisting of Leslie West, Felix Pappalardi and Norman Smart (later replaced as drummer by Corky Laing). Felix Pappalardi was a former producer of the band Cream, which should give one a good idea where Mountain belongs in the rock hierarchy: essentially an American answer to Cream's blues based power trio rock, but with more psychedelia going on. Mountain was one of those groups whom the short-lived term "acid rock" was coined for and a probable forerunner of heavy metal music.

"Mountain" was originally just the name of the backup band for Leslie West's debut album, which was also titled Mountain. However the band played their fourth ever live gig at the Woodstock festival, 1969, and the name stuck for the entire band.

Early Mountain albums carried the disclaimer, "THIS RECORD WAS MADE TO BE PLAYED LOUD!"

The most awesomest albums ever are:

• Leslie West, Mountain (1969), essentially the first Mountain album
• Mountain, Climbing! (1970)
• Mountain, Nantucket Sleighride (1971)
• Mountain, Flowers of Evil (1971)

Forget everything after that even though it may have the "Mountain" or "Leslie West" names on them. Stick with the classics!

Notable kick ass songs include:

• "Blood of the Sun"
• "Mississippi Queen"
• "Theme From An Imaginary Western"
• "Silver Paper"
• "Nantucket Sleighride"
• "Flowers of Evil"
• "Pride and Passion"

The last two are great anti-Vietnam War (or perhaps anti-war in general) songs. "Nantucket Sleighride" is about whaling, which should be enough to make Greenpeace squirm, and was in fact dedicated to one Owen Coffin, a whaler who was killed in a shipwreck after the ship was rammed by an angry whale and he (Owen Coffin, not the whale) was later eaten by his wrecked shipmates trying to survive. It was subsequently used as the theme music for “Weekend World”, a British TV politics programme which ran from 1972 to 1988. "Mississippi Queen" was their only hit single. "Theme From An Imaginary Western" is full of easily misheard lyrics that seem to be about LSD: "falling faces by the wayside"; "funny shadow give us acid"; "in the canyon she drowned where the light was sound". A look at the lyric sheet shows no such lyrics in the song, but dammit that is what they are singing. I dunno...maybe lay off the wacky terbacky?

Dissenting opinions

According to a few lost souls, Mountain sucked and were just to the U.S. what Uriah Heep was to the U.K. They're wrong. The American analogue to the Heep was these fools.

Other uses

Other, lesser uses for mountain are those big hills that crazy fools in West Virginia and Colorado live on. Eeeew! And even crazier fools try to climb in places like Nepal.