Since a lot of people thought Mountain was the logical extension of Cream's psych-power trio sound, then once the band broke up, why not reach out to Cream's lead singer and keep the spirit of the thing moving? The recording industry thought the same thing, throwing gobs of money at them until finally they came to terms. But the project turned out to be a disaster, mainly because there was too much money, time, and drugs around, and quickly the drugs became the big focus - at least according to the few things I have read about this period, as Laing has been fairly outspoken about it. As far as the debut album goes, it comes off like a step brother compared to even the Mountain albums which came before it, never mind the Cream ones. They pooled their resources together, and came up with an interesting grab bag of styles, along with flashes of directions as to where this could go, but nothing more. You expect more from musicians with these kind of pedigrees and strong personalities. Part of the reason why this fell a bit flat for me is that I half-expected Jack Bruce to step into the Felix Pappalardi role which he doesn't really do here. West has the bare majority of vocals on the album, including the lighter tracks, which is a surprise, and he does a good job. The heavier tracks and blues ballads are really by-the-boards, though. They are not bad, but I feel like for such a hyped trio like this, there should more than just empty energy with these songs. Plus, they do not seem to be about anything substantive. The better works are what I like to call "Mountain gone pop" but these moments are few and far between. For example, the very last track is "Pollution Woman", a thoroughly weird track ripped from the Pappalardi playbook but also quite catchy, which proved that West had not forgotten a thing from his time in Mountain. "Out in the Fields" is a fairly nice ballad as well, in the same ballpark as described above, where Jack Bruce makes a nice contribution playing piano and harmonium, of all things. Just something to provide a nice contrast for the rest of the album. Overall, this is an interesting sidebar to the Mountain saga, and should probably be heard a few times, but certainly, these guys were not going full blast in this partnership, at least not in the studio.

This was one of those part-studio, part-live things packaged and sold as an album to conceal the reality behind the curtain - that Mountain was essentially breaking up, but it did not pay to reveal that knowledge to the general public. There is a concept in play here - that of American military personnel in Vietnam going hand-in-hand with a very specific drug issue - that's what the "Flowers of Evil" are referencing. But you get the feeling, especially from Felix's perspective, this is borne out of personal experience as well. Easily, the bittersweet groove that is the title track makes that above point very clear, along with "One Last Cold Kiss" and "Pride and Passion". It's almost as if the band has harnessed the cold, unfeeling energy of hard drugs and made that a bizarre form of self-expression. I should be saying that the live half of the record functions as the complete opposite of the studio tracks, but they really do not. "Dream Sequence" is a massive, stitched-together collection of previous tracks, covers, gargantuan West solos, and cool trade-offs between West and Felix, all of which runs for close to 25 minutes. What is lame is, they end it with a lackluster, sloppy version of "Mississippi Queen", as if to say, "all that jamming made us tired and it is time to nod off...good night!" But that is really the only minor misstep here. Otherwise, very interesting in that in many places they manage to stand the "classic" Mountain sound on its' head and still make it quite intriguing.

Leslie West may have not been the dominant personality of the debut album, but he was the more memorable one. Now Felix's dreamy, psychoactive stuff steps to the forefront, which gives the band more credibility from a progressive standpoint. The title track is an adventurous, historical-based epic with heavy psychedelic overtones, and honestly, is more of a showcase for Pappalardi's askew vocal and Knight's majestic keyboard work. It sets the tone for similar exercises like "Tired Angels", "My Lady", and "Traveling in the Dark". Meanwhile, the West-centered tunes are not as impactful second time around, with the best of the lot being the album-ending "Great Train Robbery" where West and Pappalardi share vocal passages. One other item to mention mood-wise is this is in the same dark/guitar rock-meets-keyboards ballpark as early 70's Procol Harum albums like Home and Broken Barricades, just played and executed by bigger personalities - especially in the case of West and Laing.

Out of all of the pioneers of hard rock and heavy metal, Mountain has to be the most underrated and underappreciated, due to a few factors - their rather jumbled history, comparative lack of output, and obvious links between them and psychedelic power-trio Cream, which got them unjustly pegged as copycats. The group was born from what was essentially a beneficial partnership between struggling singer-guitarist Leslie West and producer-insider Felix Pappalardi, which is where the Cream connection came in. The latter saw the talent in the former, played on West's debut solo record (confusingly titled "Mountain"), then the two together created the lineup for the band which would be known as Mountain, forevermore. Climbing! has been pooh-poohed as Big and Bluster, and no substance by many critics, but they miss the point. The collaboration between West, Pappalardi, Corky Laing and Steve Knight is on another plane altogether, because they go a long way to keep the old psychedelic flames alive, AND manage to forge a weird sort of new energy that points the way to future endeavors. And no other band in this era of heavy rock even came close to duplicating this feat. "Mississippi Queen" lays down the gauntlet from the jump - a two-and-a-half-minute barrel roll of swampy, heavy blues swagger where everyone in the group is at their best and brightest. Much the same could be said about the rest of the album. "Never in my Life" bowls through your speakers at an unmatched level of energy, for example. But the band is just as adept with softer, more mystical exercises like "Theme From an Imaginary Western" (where they really do completely reimagine an earlier Cream song) and "The Laird", where Felix's vocal hovers somewhere between angelic and the backroom of some seedy opium den. Overall, Climbing should be up there with all the other acknowledged heavy classics of 1970, if not in the Top 3 or 5.

Presented as a gritty counter to the flashy, fashion-conscious Miami Vice back in the mid-1980's. Fred Dryer and Stefanie Kramer played no-nonsense L.A. detectives not afraid to break rules and knock some heads around in order to solve crimes. Dryer's punchline: "works for me". Lots of shootouts and car wrecks. The early episodes had an especially grim edge to them.