THE RIFF MAKER

Back when I had a paper route, I did what paperboys do between throwing papers, I trash picked. The night before trash days, the cans were brought out to the curb and that meant that the morning paper boys were the first to see what was in them. Alas, there was rarely anything worth taking home. But there was one trash can that I never skipped. There was a DJ from one of the local FM radio stations that lived in the middle of my route. Though not yet in my teens, I had the bug. I was just starting to get into music. So I knew about this DJ. I always checked his can. Unfortunately, if there was anything in there it was usually some singer songwriter type stuff that the station wouldn't play (i.e. Gordon Lightfoot, Jim Croce). It was getting to the point that even I, with my nascent musical knowledge, knew that that singer songwriter crap didn't cut it. But one day, right on top, Mountain's Climbing LP, their first. I'd never seen it before and didn't recognize the name of the band. But there were four members and they had sufficiently scraggly hair, a signifier of rock. I brought it home and the first song on the first side was "Mississippi Queen". Now, that song I knew. It was big enough that It had actually made it onto AM station playlists. And it rocked, hard.


That was the first Mountain song that I'd ever heard and it put Mountain on my list. By the time I was bussing tables when I was about fifteen, two waitresses were hired, transplants from Nantucket. Knowing nothing of Nantucket or where it was but knowing, by then, of Mountain's Nantucket Sleighride LP, I asked the women if they had ever heard of Mountain. I was flabbergasted when they told me that they knew Leslie West, Corky Laing and Felix Papalardi and actually partied with them "back home". Shit, I felt honored to bus their tables.

This all came flooding back to me three days ago when I heard that guitarist and lead singer Leslie West had passed away. West was the man with the riff. The intro to "Mississippi Queen" practically defines hard rock in the seventies. And his voice is one of those rock voices that sounds like it's seen a road or two. Man, that song has been a favorite of mine since that day after my paper route. That fucking riff.

West started out in a band called the Vagrants, and after Mountain it was West, Bruce and Laing.(Jack Bruce was formerly in Cream, Corky Laing was a holdover from Mountain.) Listen to "Why Dontcha". That intro, when the song really kicks into gear at :20 seconds, just knocks the fucking wind out of you.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Mountain - Mississippi Queen (streaming) at YouTube
Mountain - Never In My Life mp3 at Nosmo Kings
West, Bruce and Laing - Why Dontcha (streaming) at YouTube
Video:
The Vagrants - Appearance in a movie at YouTube West at far right on stage