Climbing! by Mountain (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Climbing!

Group name: Mountain

Year: 1970

Number of discs: one

Label: Windfall Records

Collection: Brenner / Gessner

Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it

Buy it on Amazon: $43.46

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no familiarity at all with Mountain (the band) or with Climbing! (the record), though I have some familiarity with mountains and with climbing, and also with mountain climbing.

What I expected

I could not easily tell what this was about at first, because the album just makes it look like “Mountain Climbing!”. But my father was able to figure it out, and he also mentioned that he really liked the song Theme for an Imaginary Western, after I read him the track list so he could remember its name.

The back of the album says, “THIS RECORD WAS MADE TO BE PLAYED LOUD” and it’s from 1970, so my guess is hard rock.

What it was actually like

This did turn out to be hard rock and was even a bit proto-metal and, coming off yesterday’s review of Idea by the Bee Gees, I really should have loved it, but it was surprisingly boring. I did think that it was definitely somewhat innovative for 1970, but by that year Led Zeppelin had already released three LPs, so this was not altogether entirely impressive.

The first side was much less interesting to me than the second. It had lots of guitar riffs and a bunch of that metal “crunch,” but not much else.

On the second side, To My Friend was an acoustic instrumental with just guitar that sounded like sitar, which was very cool.

For Yasgur’s Farm was also more fun and rhythmic, with a lot more going on, including a great bass line.

I thought that Sittin’ on a Rainbow was the record’s best song, with the most catchy guitar riff and the best balance of cowbell, gritty and slightly shouty vocals, and badass drumming.

Boys in the Band also impressed for its otherworldly guitar solos, but the rest of the song was not that good.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me