Mountain Made

There was always so much more to Mountain's output than those 'hits', largely due to the inspired contrasting of guitarist Leslie West, with his bellowing voice, with the much more smoothly melodic vocals of bassist Felix Pappalardi. They tended to sing their own compositions in the main, and the contrast both of singing and writing styles gave them similarities to the Lennon/McCartney dynamic, and it was this juxtaposition of the two which made Mountain’s all too brief early '70s peak so exciting. Equally compelling are their live performances from this era recorded for FM broadcast. These unique recordings capture the electrifying sense of power that this band could deploy on stage. Although they never achieved their deserved wider acclaim, Mountain's criminally short career would become hugely iconic and influential for any serious rock musician. Timeline revisits this incredible, classic performance from their New Year's Eve show in 1970 with a fully restored and professionally remastered original WNEW FM broadcast. Presented with background notes and timeline photos.

The rock canon has many anti-heroes, Black Mountain being the latest. In the past, Can's Tago Mago established that the only rule in rock and roll is that there are no rules. Pink Floyd's prodigious output in the '70s showed us that architecture can be cool, while unskilled laborers Black Sabbath demonstrated you can make a lot from not that much. Now Black Mountain teach us that you don't have to be afraid of the past to move bravely into the future, defining what it is to be a classic rock band in the new millennium. IV is their Houses of the Holy, an unapologetically ambitious record made by a group of musicians who are at the peak of their powers.

The Mountain Goats are an American indie folk band formed in Claremont, California by singer-songwriter John Darnielle. "Tallahassee" is their seventh studio album. Originally released in 2002, it was produced by Tony Doogan and was the band's first album to be released on the label 4AD. It was also the first album on which the Mountain Goats' lineup as a full band became more finalized.

SO THIS TAPE STARTED while the entire band was decamped at an undisclosed location working on the next Mountain Goats album, and I had brought books with me to read, and one of them was Pierre Chuvin’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, which I was reading as research material for another thing I’m working on; and it’s been a long time since I sat around playing music and thinking about antiquity, but I used to do it all the time, and several of you know that because the old tapes are all littered with stories about Ajax and Agamemnon and the cult of Cybele, stories which, when I was learning them, got me so fired up that as soon as I got out of class I’d drive home in my yellow 1969 Superbeetle and write songs about them.

The uplifting story of two unlikely mountaineers: a man in late middle age and a fearless pint-sized pup who, together, scale Colorado's highest peaks.

If The New York Times calls you “the nation’s most important quartet,” then you must be doing something right… in the case of the JACK Quartet, they’ve established themselves as one of the leaders in new music, giving voice to countless composers, while creating a new body of works that prove classical music has a future far beyond powdered wigs and dusty scores.