Search - Mountain :: Over the Top

A very good best of BUT

Dr. W. Martin James | Arkadelphia, AR USA | 08/12/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is the ultimate cd for Mountain fans. It includes every song that made them such a strong live band. However, to not include the "Dream Sequence" is criminal. I actually emailed SONY Records about the exclusion and naturally got no reply. Still, it's very good, and I recommend it highly."

Excellent overview (6 stars are more proper)

J. Talsma | Amsterdam, Netherlands | 02/15/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The story of its orgin is wellknown. Felix Pappalardi, the already succesfulf producer of some Cream albums, saw a band called The Venturas and was not impressed by their efforts but the more by its guitarplayer Leslie West ("the fat kid from the Bronx"). They became friends and decided to release a solo-album by West, (given his bodyvolume aptly) titled "Mountain", after which the latterday erected band was named. The potency of Mountain, the band, is already noticeable of this offering with outstanding tracks as "Blood of the Sun" and "Long Red", which became swift livestaples. From that album appear 6 songs. West will always be seen as a great leadguitarplayer, but on this collection you can hear him play also on an acoustic guitar on serval tracks and his fingerplicking style is fluent. Taken with him from Cream the electric blues and rock Pappalardi knew as no other how to assemble a band in the same vein and with the addition of a keyboardplayer Mountain was a fact, with a small string of excellent albums: "Climbing!", from which 7 tracks are presented here, "The Road Goes Ever On", the stunning double live "Twin Peaks" (with half an hour of "Nantucket Sleighride"), the titletrack album by that name, with no less than 8 of its tracks presented here, "Flowers of Evil" and the somewhat lesser "Avalanche". Further is included a truelu awesome 20 minutes live-rendition of "Stormy Monday", which never before appeared on any of the offical Mountain albums. Finally a few songs are presented here from the eighties and nineties, long after Pappalardi was shot dead, a great loss for the world of music. West and drummer Corky Laing have resurected the band(name) several times, having played together under other names as well, among them West, Bruce and Laing with Cream singer/bassplayer Jack Bruce. So the Cream connection is not always far away. This is a must have collection for anyone who held this band in high esteem. If you don't feel for buying all the original albums (some of them are almost integral part of the deal) this is not only a great start but also a great document of where Mountain stood and they were up to.

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