Over the Top

Artist: Mountain
Label: Sony
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 074645716725
EAN: 0074645716725
ASIN: B000002983

Release Date: 1995-04-11

Over the Top

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General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

General

| Rock | Styles | Music

General

| Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

Hard Rock

| Hard Rock & Metal | Styles | Music

Album-Oriented Rock (AOR)

| Classic Rock | Styles | Music

Tracks:

Blood Of The Sun
Long Red
Blind Man
Dreams Of Milk And Honey
Southbound Train
Because You Are My Friend
Mississippi Queen
Theme From An Imaginary Western
Never In My Life
Silver Paper
For Yasgur's Farm
To My Friend
Sittin' On A Rainbow
Stormy Monday (Live)
Waiting To Take You Away (Live) (Single Version)
Guitar Solo (Live)

Tracks:

Don't Look Around
Taunta (Sammy's Tune)
Nantucket Sleighride (To Owen Coffin)
You Can't Get Away!
The Animal Trainer And The Toad
My Lady
Travelin' In The Dark (To E.M.P.)
The Great Train Robbery
Flowers Of Evil
One Last Cold Kiss
Crossroader
Roll Over Beethoven (Live) (Edit From 'Dream Sequence')
You Better Believe It
Back Where I Belong
Bardot Damage
Shimmy On The Footlights
Talking To The Angels
Solution

Similar Items:

Flowers of Evil
Twin Peaks
Mountain Live: The Road Goes Ever On

Customer Reviews:

excellent overview (6 stars are more proper).......2007-02-16

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.

A very good best of BUT.......2006-08-13

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.

Great anthology of this classic early metal band.......2003-02-27

Leslie West, Felix Pappalardi and Corky Laing were a great early 70s hard rock band that pioneered the sound that we now call heavy metal. Along with Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, Mountain was among the first rock bands to take the blues-rock structure of Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience and make it louder and more aggressive. Mountain was a big influence upon much of the hard rock/metal of the following decade, and the classic "Mississippi Queen" was a seminal FM radio hit.

Over The Top is an anthology of Mountain's musical legacy from its beginnings in Leslie West's 1969 debut, Mountain (later taken as the name of the trio) through the successful early 70s LPs to reunions in the 80s and 90s.

It begins on CD 1 with six tracks from Leslie West's Mountain LP, which sounds much the same as the group, Mountain. It's bluesy rock with West's guitar skills on full display. Tracks 7 to 13 cover most of the Climbing album. This is some of the group's best stuff including the classic Mississippi Queen and another excellent rocker, Never In My Life. Next is some live material featuring a very long Stormy Monday, and an extended five-minute guitar solo.

Disc 2 begins with songs from the Nantucket Sleighride and Flowers of Evil albums. This is still prime material from the 1971 - '72 era. Then we have two tracks from the 1974 Avalanche album, where things started to go downhill a bit, followed by two tracks from the 1985 reunion album Go For Your Life, where the group sounds like an 80s metal band. Last there are two tracks that were recorded just for this compilation in 1994 by Leslie West, Corky Laing and former Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding. These tracks are decent, but don't rank with Mountain's classic material.

Overall, Over The Top is a good anthology collection that is far more thorough than the earlier The Best of Mountain collection. I would say that Over The Top is the best purchase for something looking to get into the group's music. It contains all of the group's essential music and is just missing a few album tracks. The best choice, obviously, would be to buy the original albums, but the albums are spotty and short, so it's a much better value to just get this 2-CD set, which has 34 tracks and contains all the best of their music. I just wish they could have sacrificed some of the lesser tracks in favor of presenting the complete Mountain, Climbing and Nantucket Sleighride albums. All three would fit easily on 2 CDs. Still, this is a great compilation and should be all the Mountain that casual fans need.

Loads of Rock and Roll.......2002-01-18

The Great Fatsby (Leslie West) and his bandmates, including the original producing genius behind Cream (Felix Pappalardi on bass)were introduced to me by a guy in my high school art class. He had a facination with the band that went way beyond their public status. With good reason. This collection shows that, while the band was in many ways derivitive of Cream, the guitar work of West, the drumming of Corkie Laing and the improvisational bass lines of Pappalardi (embelished here and there by keyboardist Steve Knight) is original and creates a tight, rocking sound that's hard to forget. From the acoustic strains of "Because you are My Friend" to the band's electric hit, "Mississippi Queen", this is a collection that anyone interested in the minor acts of the late 1960's and early 70's will want to listen to over and over again. Mountain was featured on "Woodstock II", out-takes from the original festival album, as a subordinate act but the music West and Pappalardi crafted, as highlighted by this retroscpective, is anything but minor league.

Music Album:

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Music CD

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