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)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Over The Top from Amazon.com)

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)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Ultimate! from Amazon.com)

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)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Live At The Marquee from Amazon.com)

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)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Box Of Frogs/Strange Land from Amazon.com)