Mountain - Over The Top (1995)

This first time that I ever heard Mountain – the Mountain Climbing! album, I believe – was at an older friend's house. I was twelve or thirteen, he was eighteen, and a bunch of us would gather in his basement to pass the pipe and bottle around and sample tunes from his large record collection. Many of the bands and artists that would come to influence my plunge into rock criticism were first experienced in the DiBello basement – Mountain, Spirit, Steppenwolf, Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix....

From the 1970 release of Mountain Climbing!, the band's second album, throughout their slow disintegrated and up to the break-up of the band a half a decade later, Mountain was one of the biggest bands in the land – and, perhaps, the most obscure. They played Woodstock, but were cut out of the movie; they sold millions of copies of their first few albums, but are remembered today for a single song: Mississippi Queen. A generation of kids that today still listen to Hendrix and Ozzie are unfamiliar with the rich body of work created by the genius of Leslie West and Felix Pappalardi, the odd couple behind Mountain's success.

In the late-60s, Felix Pappalardi was known as the producer of Cream, the biggest band in the world at the time. A classically-trained musician, Pappalardi was a deft producer, a multi-instrumental talent and a skilled composer and arranger. West was a fat kid from Long Island, as raw as Pappalardi was polished. No lesser lights than Peter Townsend, Jeff Beck and Mick Jagger considered West to be the best guitarist alive at the time. This unlikely pair came together to become the yin and yang of Mountain, feeding off each other's energy and ideas. The music they created was an incredible blend of guitar-driven hard rock and jazzy improvisation layered upon a blues base. It was as complex as it was exciting, and it won the band a significant following throughout the early part of the '70s.

The recently released Over The Top covers Mountain's entire history, from their self-titled debut through hit albums like Mountain Climbing! and Nantucket Sleighride to the band's swansong, 1974's Avalanche. The familiar songs are all here, cuts like Mississippi Queen, Theme From An Imaginary Western, Flowers Of Evil and Silver Paper, as well as lesser-known material and a smattering of live tracks. The band's ill-fated 1985 reunion album is represented here by a pair of cuts, albeit without the presence of Felix Pappalardi, who had died tragically a few years earlier.

Two new cuts close out the 34 song, two CD set. Recorded last year by West, long-time Mountain drummer Corky Laing and Hendrix bassist Noel Redding, the two songs – Talking To The Angels and Solution – show but a mere fraction of the greatness that was Mountain some twenty years ago. Both feature West's ever-maturing skills; the slimmed-down '90s version of the guitarist is still one of the greatest players the world has seen. They're nothing but soulless, pedestrian hard rock, however, missing the spark and the life that the duo of West and Pappalardi brought to their creations. Over The Top is an excellent collection, nonetheless – buy it for the 30 real Mountain cuts and forget those from '85 and 1994. (Sony Legacy)

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Jimi Hendrix - Jimi Hendrix: Blues (1994)

Purists may feel that the inclusion of rock guitar god Jimi Hendrix alongside blues pioneers such as Tampa Red or Howlin' Wolf is shear blasphemy. It can be argued, however, that Hendrix did more to bring the blues to a white audience than any of the great blues artists of the era or the white British rockers who followed them. First and foremost, Hendrix was a bluesman, bringing a great deal of that style and tradition to the work he created during the late-60s.

Jimi Hendrix: Blues recognizes this debt to Hendrix's early influences and collects eleven of the legend's most soulful blues performances on one disc. Hendrix picked up the guitar as a young teen, quickly developing a style patterned after his favorites, artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins and Slim Harpo. Living in Nashville after getting out of the army, Hendrix hooked up with Billy Cox, with whom he would play across the country, both as a duo and backing other artists. Hendrix eventually built reputation playing on the road with R & B artists such as Little Richard and Jackie Wilson.

In the mid-60s, Hendrix was to turn away from his pure blues roots towards rock music. He put together a band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and, cutting hit songs like Foxey Lady and Purple Haze, used his instrumental prowess to redefine the role of guitar in contemporary rock & roll. Indeed, Hendrix perhaps sealed the six-string instrument's fate as the driving power in rock, building upon the momentum created by British artists like Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.

Through his brief tenure as rock star, however, Hendrix would always return to his roots both on stage and on record, albeit in a way that would make most purists shudder. Whether it was through his personalized versions of traditional blues standards like Catfish Blues or Bleeding Heart, covers like Muddy Waters' Mannish Boy, or cranking out originals like Red House, Voodoo Chile or Hear My Train A Comin', Hendrix always had one foot planted firmly in the blues milieu. Jimi Hendrix: Blues is an important collection, introducing listeners to a different side of this great artist, one that remained important until his untimely death. (MCA Records)

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Rory Gallagher - Irish Tour (1999)

As recounted in our reverent review of his seminal BBC Sessions set, Rory Gallagher was a hell of a guitarist, a gifted artist with one foot in rock & roll and the other solidly in the blues. As a handful of legitimate live albums and dozens of bootlegs would attest to, Gallagher was at his best when on stage. This Buddha Records reissue of Irish Tour showcases the artist at the top of his game, a six-string guitarslinger without peer who could tear off blistering riffs and crunching chords with lightning fast ability, a powerful showman holding the audience in the palm of his hand.

The performances on Irish Tour were taken from shows done in Belfast, Dublin and Cork during January 1974. Gallagher was an Irish homeboy who had made good, a star of significant drawing power throughout the European continent. Because of the violence and chaos in Northern Ireland, however, most artists refused to play the region, leaving audiences starved for rock & roll. In this environment, Gallagher came home, causing everybody to forget their differences for a while. Consisting mostly of familiar songs drawn from previous Gallagher studio albums, Irish Tour nonetheless offers up a handful of inspired covers alongside the scorching originals.

Among the highlights of Irish Tour's ten tracks are a soulful cover of Muddy Water's I Wonder Who, which includes some sparse tho' well-placed guitar licks, and a simply unbelievable rendition of the crowd favorite Tattoo'd Lady that showcases Gallagher's considerable six-string skills alongside some tasty keyboards from Lou Martin. A funky, down-and-dirty cover of J.B. Hutto's Too Much Alcohol will knock you on your ass every bit as quick as a pint of Old Crow whiskey. With flaming keyboards behind him, Gallagher knocks out a firey, hard rocking version of Walk On Hot Coals that includes an extended instrumental jam while Back On My Stompin' Ground is a cajun-fried slab of Southern-styled funk that is razor sharp and sonically dense as a bayou fog.

Gallagher would go on from this performance high to play hundreds of shows and record dozens of albums during a career that stretched across a quarter-century. Although he always delivered the goods on stage, never again would he play with such feeling and fire in a series of performances that would mean so much as those captured by Irish Tour. With a talent the equal, not less than contemporaries like Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher was a true rock & roll treasure. (Buddha Records)

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Rory Gallagher - BBC Sessions (1999)

He never played with one of John Mayall's legendary bands, nor did he go through the revolving door that was the Yardbirds' lead guitar slot. He's a contemporary of folks like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck – the holy trinity of British blues guitarists – but has never enjoyed the kind of semi-legendary status conveyed upon those three artists. Much like Gary Moore, another fine axeman, guitarist Rory Gallagher has attracted a cult following; unlike Moore, who is still alive and well, Gallagher's death seemed to doom the blues guitarist to rock & roll obscurity.

Thanks to the folks at the brand new Buddha Records, however, Gallagher's fate may not be quite so bad. An ambitious reissue and rediscovery program by the ressurected label is placing Gallagher's musical legacy back on the street, where it belongs. The label reissued Gallagher's self-titled first solo album and Deuce, his second effort – both on CD for the first time domestically – about a month or so ago. Buddha seems to be buying up Gallagher's work from other labels, as well, suggesting a champion somewhere in the corporate ranks, and rumor has it that we'll be seeing reissues of Irish Tour '74 and the underrated Photo Finish on compact disc sometime soon.

Perhaps Buddha's greatest coup, however, is the recently released BBC Sessions, a two-disc collection of live performances and radio broadcasts that serves as an excellent place for the uninitiated to become familiar with Gallagher's talents. Following hot on the heels of BBC collections from Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and preceding an upcoming release from the Who, Gallagher is among heady company, as well he should be. British union rules required BBC
radio to broadcast a certain amount of live music each day, which led to a number of different programs that featured live performances from local venues around London, as well as in-studio appearances from various popular performers. The BBC has hundreds of hours of this stuff, covering almost every British artist of note and more than a few American talents, as well. Realizing the treasure trove of recordings in their hands, the BBC has begun to cash in on their
archives, much to the delight of music lovers everywhere.

The Irish-born Gallagher grew up listening to these BBC broadcasts, and made his first appearance on those airwaves in 1968. Gallagher's first breakthrough came with Taste, a blues-oriented power trio much like Cream, and his work with that band caught the ears of European audiences. As a solo artist, Gallagher toured relentlessly, both across Europe and the United States. It was his BBC appearances, however, which helped support this touring, Gallagher's scorching six-string work reaching out across the airwaves and making converts out of listeners across the globe. Gallagher did a lot of work on the BBC – his brother's liner notes to BBC Sessions says that they had to work their way through 10 hours of tapes to compile this set – and if the material here is representative, he never disappointed.

The BBC Sessions set is divided into two parts. The first disc is a collection of performances that were broadcast on a program called In Concert and were caught live in clubs like the Hippodrome, the Paris Theatre and the Hammersmith Odeon. Most of these ten cuts are taken from 1977-79, a period that many consider to be Gallagher's golden age. A lone cut from 1973, the traditional blues number What In The World, serves mostly as a foreshadowing of Gallagher's still maturing talents. There are many great performances caught here, including the rollicking Country Mile and the fluid Calling Card, one of Gallagher's signature tunes. Got My Mojo Working is an electric boogie while Gallagher's original Used To Be showcases some red-hot playing beneath the artist's growling vocals.

The second disc here is comprised of live studio broadcasts and, with the producers casting a wider net, features performances that range in age from 1971 to 1986, with an emphasis on the mid-70s era Gallagher. If the first disc shows Gallagher's energy and skill in a live setting, the material performed in the studio on disc two showcases the deliberate and complex side of Gallagher's talents. Again mixing scattered originals with inspired covers and custom arrangements of traditional blues numbers, these studio performances provide a more complete look at Gallagher's evolution as a guitarist. A couple of more familiar tunes dominate the side: the haunting live staple Daughter Of The Everglades and Seventh Son Of 7th Son, which sounds as close to authentic Delta blues as any Irishman is every going to get, but there's plenty of solid performances to choose from.

A mesmerizing guitarist and charismatic performer, Gallagher was capable of both great subtlety and outrageous bluster in his playing. A hard-working performer who toured to the point of exhaustion, Gallagher often cranked out studio albums – especially in his later years – that balanced mediocrity with brilliance, hiding a truly magical performance or two among the musical chaff. His better tunes usually made it into his live set, and it's indeed his live albums, of which he made several, upon which his legacy is built. Gallagher deserves more respect than he's received. With twenty-five years under his belt, he literally died from too much living. He left behind a lot of great music, however, and thanks to Buddha we'll get to hear some of it again. Gallagher had a talent every bit as great as Clapton, Page or Stevie Ray and, as such, is quite worthy of rediscovering. (Buddha Records)

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John Mayall & Bluesbreakers - Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton (2001)

It's hard to believe by listening to the sort of watered-down pap that Eric Clapton has cranked out the past few years, but at one time the "King of all Guitar Gods" played with great style, passion and ingenuity. Look no further than Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton to find documentation of the artist's early six-string prowess. Clapton first made a splash on the collective rock consciousness while handling the heavy axework for the Yardbirds. Although not the first posse of British dandies to get their hands dirty in the blues, the Yardbirds were one of those who did it best, and Clapton's early contributions went a long way towards establishing that band's reputation. Clapton left the Yardbirds in 1965, beginning a lengthy artistic journey that would inevitably lead him to becoming the corporate shill that he is today.

First stop on the evolutionary express for the youthful Clapton was with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, one of England's best-known traditional blues outfits. Luring Clapton away from the Yardbirds was a major coup for bandleader Mayall. Getting the guitar wizard into the studio to record Mayall's third album resulted in what may well be the best British blues romp to find its way onto tape. Clapton is allowed to stretch out on a set of blues and R&B standards such as Ray Charles' What'd I Say, Freddie King's Hideaway, the Otis Rush hit All Your Love and the blues classic Parchman Farm. Choice Mayall originals compliment the covers on Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton, especially the Mayall/Clapton co-written Double Crossing Time, which features an incredible Clapton solo that sounds like it descended straight from Maxwell Street in Chicago. Clapton even makes his debut as a vocalist, offering a fine rendition of Robert Johnson's Ramblin' On My Mind.

Throughout Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton, the guitar star's axework is first rate, his playing fluid and innovative. Backed by a solid rhythm section that included future Fleetwood Mac namesake John McVie on bass and drummer Hughie Flint (who would go on to play on several Clapton solo elpees), Clapton had the necessary support to let his imagination fly. Mayall was a strict bandleader, demanding a lot from his players but here he lets Clapton become the superstar he had the potential to be. Clapton would leave Mayall's outfit after Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton to form Cream and achieve international stardom. Mayall would run through a thousand and one band members during the next 35 years, discovering such talents as Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac) and Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones) along the way.

Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton would reach the British top ten and became one of the biggest albums of 1966 in the U.K. The album remains a cult favorite in the United States, where Clapton is better known for his subsequent work with Cream and Derek and the Dominoes as well as a three-and-a-half-decade string of solo albums. While rock & roll fanboys continue to genuflect at the mention of the Yardbirds name, worshipping the trio of guitar gods that legendary band would produce (Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page), John Mayall's Bluesbreakers are unfairly consigned to a lesser place in history. A spin or two of Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton shows what the fuss was all about in the first place, placing the album among the greatest blues-rock efforts that the genre has produced. (Polydor Records)

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The Yardbirds - Ultimate! (2001)

One of the truly legendary bands in rock music, it's nevertheless been very difficult for the average music fan to assemble any sort of coherent Yardbirds' collection. Back in the '60s heyday of the band, the original British versions of their albums were sliced and diced, mixed and matched and then retitled for release stateside. Cut-out during the '70s, collectors paid premium prices for rare copies of the Yardbirds' vinyl. During the CD era, albums disappeared and reappeared with unpredictable reliability and "greatest hits" collections, often slapped together by unscrupulous fly-by-night labels, proliferated. A lot of great music got misplaced, until the recent release of Ultimate! by Rhino Records.

For younger music fans that want to know what all the brouhaha over the Yardbirds is about, look no further than Ultimate! The two-CD, 52-track boxed collection includes an enormous booklet filled with rare photos, song credits and comprehensive liner notes and history provided by late musician/collector/authority Cub Koda. It's the music that does the talking on Ultimate!, however, the Yardbirds kicking out an original and groundbreaking mix of blues and riff-oriented blues-rock during their five-year lifespan. The band was blessed during its brief existence with not one but three – count 'em – three superstar six-string talents. Eric Clapton contributed guitar duties for one of the earliest incarnations of the band, leaving after a year and a half to be replaced by Jeff Beck. Jimmy Page joined the band as a bass player; later moving to guitar in a twin-guitar version of the band before taking over solo duties upon Beck's departure.

Ultimate! pieces together a chronological history of the Yardbirds, beginning with early Clapton-led singles and other material recorded under the direction of original manager/producer Giorgio Gomelsky. The Gomelsky "era" stretches across the first disc and includes some of Clapton's legendary original contributions to the band. Highlights include covers of John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom and the Ernie K-Doe hit A Certain Girl as well as live tracks taken from the band's debut album Five Live Yardbirds. The classic hit single For Your Love proved to be Clapton's swansong, the guitarist leaving the band in a huff over the song's commercial sound.

When Clapton departed to pursue a purer shade of blue with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Jeff Beck was recruited and joined the Yardbirds as his replacement. It proved to be a match made in heaven – Beck's improvisational six-string wizardry found a perfect chemistry with frontman Keith Relf's passionate vocals and inspired harp playing. This would be the most successful period of the band's career, as they cranked out chart-topping hits like Heart Full Of Soul,
Shapes Of Things and Over Under Sideways Down. There were plenty of other great tunes, though, such as the rollicking B-side instrumental Jeff's Boogie or a raucous cover of The Train Kept A Rollin' recorded at Sam Phillip's Recording Service in Memphis. Beck's maniacal use of feedback, distortion, echo and fuzz created a trademark sound for the band and paved the way for a thousand-and-one late-60s garage bands to delve into psychedelica, heavy metal and endless instrumental jams.

Bassist and "musical director" Paul Samwell-Smith left the Yardbirds in 1966 to pursue a successful career as a producer, working with talents like Cat Stevens and Jethro Tull. Jimmy Page was brought in to play bass, taking over six-string duties on tour during a Beck absence. The Beck/Page line-up only recorded a couple of singles, most notably Stroll On from the movie Blow-Up and the single Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, which also featured future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul.

The Page-led Yardbirds kicked out some interesting tuneage, working with new manager Peter Grant and superstar Britpop producer Mickey Most, moving into a less bluesy and more complex psychedelic-influenced era. Page's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor was a fascinating slice of pop-rock while the acoustic-instrumental White Summer was an energetic artistic predecessor to Led Zeppelin's experimentation with British folk and Middle Eastern melodies. The Harry Nilsson composition Ten Little Indians is a chaotic delight while Drinking Muddy Water sounds like the Chicago blues as filtered through London's Marquee Club. Ultimate! also adds three solo recordings from Yardbirds' vocalist Keith Relf.

Over the course of seven albums, the Yardbirds earned a legacy as one of the true seminal bands in rock & roll history. Their musical contributions to the genre still sound alive and vibrant thirty-five years after the fact. The band also served as an important predecessor to the formation of Led Zeppelin, arguably the most important and successful rock band of the '70s.

If I had one complaint with this set, it is in the lack of material from the band's collaboration with blues giant Sonny Boy Williamson, an inspired album that predated the superstar-laden London Sessions albums by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf by a decade. Ultimate! nonetheless provides a fine history of the band, an important collection that should please both hardcore collectors and new listeners alike. (Rhino Records)

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Gary Moore - Live At The Marquee (2002)

One of British rock's greatest secret weapons, Gary Moore has never received the attention or props that he deserves as one of the Emerald Isle's wildest and most talented guitarslingers. It is certainly not his immense skills that have prevented him from gaining more than a token stateside audience, although his penchant for skipping from project to project might provide some reasons for his obscurity. After fronting the early-70s British blooze-rock outfit Skid Row, Moore banged out hard rock with Thin Lizzy, flirted with jazz/fusion as a member of Colosseum II and played on solo albums by folks like Cozy Powell and Greg Lake. Moore's own solo efforts have run the gamut from heavy metal to improvisational jazz to hardcore blues. For all of his genre hopping, Moore might be pegged as a dilettante but for the fact that no matter the style of music, he plays it so damn well....

Live At The Marquee is taken from a 1980 show captured at London's Marquee Club and is probably as good a representation of Moore's six-string skills as one might find. Although this critic personally prefers the blues bashing Moore practiced during the '90s, the metal-tinged rock and jazzy fretwork found on Live At The Marquee is nevertheless impressive. Fronting a band that includes journeyman MVP drummer Tommy Aldridge, the Irish guitar wizard runs through a set that includes the hard-driving title cut from his 1979 solo album, Back On The Streets and the wonderfully sublime Parisienne Walkway, Moore's first UK hit. Run To Your Mama rocks with a rabid ferocity, Moore's lightning-quick runs highlighting an otherwise generic "kiss-off" song while You plays like melodic new wave pop. The soaring, operatic Nuclear Attack and the thrash-and-bash instrumentation of Dallas Warhead (with Aldridge's manic drum solo) close out Live At The Marquee with a proper showing of Moore's heavy metal skills.

Although Live At The Marquee probably won't win Gary Moore any new fans, standing miles away stylistically from his latest release, the bluesy, bone-rattling Scars, the album does serve as a solid documentation of Moore's early work. Hopefully this reissue will herald a complete revamping of Moore's '80s-era hard rock catalog by Sanctuary, which very well might attract listeners searching for a new guitar hero in this age of limp, lifeless "modern rock." Gary Moore is a guitarist of unusual skill and dexterity, a six-string virtuoso capable of great subtlety, power and speed. He deserves a much wider hearing in the United States. (Sanctuary Records)

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Box Of Frogs - Box Of Frogs / Strange Land (1998)

Originally a reunion, of sorts, between former Yardbirds mainstays Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja and mate Paul Samwell-Smith, this pair of early-80s releases by the threesome's new band stand quite well on their own, thank you. Kicking out an inspired blend of blues-infused rock and British-styled pop, the former Y-Birds trio, along with vocalist/guitarist John Fiddler, crafted a couple of timeless rock releases that have withstood the cultural ravages of almost a decade and a half.

Although considered mere curiosities at the time of their release, notable for guest appearances by Yardbirds' alumni Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, the self-titled debut and the Strange Land follow-up were pretty much lost amid the hype and furor of MTV and the one-hit wonders that media forum created. 'Tis a shame, too, since both albums are full of solid musical moments. The first album's haunting, bittersweet "Into The Dark," with British jazz great Guy Barker, or the unrelenting boogie riffs of the album-opening "Back Where I Started" stand out, as does the second album's bluesy, syncopated "House On Fire" or the powerful revisiting of the Yardbirds' classic "Heart Full Of Soul."

More notable, to my mind, than either Beck's or Page's minuscule musical contributions to these discs are those of guest guitarist Rory Gallagher. Gallagher's six-string work and sitar flourishes shine brightly, fitting seamlessly with the band's approach. Truly one of the music world's great lost blues guitarists, Gallagher's underrated talents are right at home with those of McCarty, Dreja and Samwell-Smith. (Renaissance Records)

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