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.

One of many "Best of" packages - this one mainly highlights the singles and B-sides from the classic period of CH, with an added bonus - instead of cuts from the first album, you get three live cuts from their performance at Monterey Pop, and they sound clear as a bell. This is a nice addendum for the serious fan, unless you own all of these singles already in 45 format. Weird asides like "Poor Moon", "Low Down", "Human Condition", and the goofy ode to cocaine "Long Way from L.A." litter this collection, which may turn off casual interlopers.

Instinctively, the band jumped back from the crazy, spacey jams of the previous album and went back to rough-and-tumble blues-adoring basics. The end result is a workmanlike affair that is no worse than anything that came before it. Plus, there is a newfound, scarier edge to the material, whether they are engaging in fierce cop-bashing exercises ("Sic'em Pigs", a re-working of Bukka White's "Sic'em Dogs"), steamrolling through Fats Domino covers ("Big Fat"), or walking the anti-social path that the Blind Owl walked ("Get Off My Back"). And from what strange void did the inexplicable instrumental "Huautla" come from? This one grows on you the more you hear it.

"Riding High”, a smoky, somewhat ethereal groove, was a deserved Top 10 R&B hit for the group, and about the only thing which you can pin on Faze-O’s name to the present day, since it became a sampling playground for rappers. Everything else here cops the late 70’s Ohio Players sound unfailingly, alternating dance floor jams with ballads, but the heart, soul, and most of all, wacky sense of humor which was all over classic OP records is sorely missing from Faze-O’s cookie-cutter attempts. The group would release two more records to round out the 70’s then disappear from view; I have not heard them and judging from this release, I’m not sure it’s worth the attempt.