Mountain Woodstock
It was about 9 PM and dark. Country dark. Mountain appeared. I hesitated, but cautiously decided to attempt a picture knowing there wasn’t enough light. This post’s featured image is that picture. A cannabis haze covered the field. All was good.
Personnel
- Leslie West: guitar, vocals
- Felix Pappalardi: bass
- Steve Knight: keyboards
- Norman “N.D.” Smart: drums
Setlist:
- Blood of the Sun
- Stormy Monday
- Theme for an Imaginary Western
- Long Red
- Who Am I But You And The Sun
- Beside the Sea
- Waiting to Take You Away
- Dreams of Milk and Honey
- Southbound Train
They would play about 55 minutes.
Mountain Woodstock
Blood of the Sun
Talkin’ to the moon
Wadin’ in the ocean
I’m sendin’ for you soon
Achin’ in my head
Woven in the bed sheets
And then I will understand
Runnin’ from the gun
It’s the blood, it’s the blood of the sun
Leanin’ out of the window
There’s a light on the road that I ride
To leave the hard road behind me
There’s a light on the road that I ride
Talkin’ to the moon
Wadin’ in the ocean
I’m sendin’ for you soon
Mountain Woodstock
Stormy Monday
Rock and Roll Hall of fame inductee T-Bone Walker wrote the song. B.B. King once said it was Walker who ‘‘really started me to want to play the blues. I can still hear T-Bone in my mind today from that first record I heard, ‘Stormy Monday.’ He was the first electric guitar player I heard on record. He made me so that I knew I just had to go out and get an I electric guitar.”
Perhaps the Allman Brothers’ cover is the best known.
They call it stormy Monday, yes but Tuesdays just as bad.
They call it stormy Monday, yes but Tuesdays just as bad.
Wednesdays even worse; Thursdays awful sad.
The eagle flies on Friday, but Saturday I go out to play.
Sunday I go to church where I kneel down and pray.
Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy on me.
Just trying to find my baby, wont you please send her on back to me.”
The eagle flies on Friday, on Saturday I go out to play.
Sunday I go to church, where I kneel down, Lord and I pray.
Lord, oh Lord have mercy, yeah, wont you please, please have mercy on me.
Im just a-lookin for my sweet babe, so wont you please send him home,
Send him on home to me
Mountain Woodstock
Theme for an Imaginary Western
For the forest and further on
Painted wagons of the morning
Dusty roads where they have gone
Sometimes traveling through the darkness
Met the summer coming home
Fallen faces by the wayside
And the desert was dry
In the country town
Where the laughter sounds
Oh the music when they played
Oh the fires that they started
Oh the girls with no regret
Sometimes they found it, sometimes they kept it
Often lost it along the way
Fought each other to possess it
Often died in sight of day
And the desert was dry
In the country town
Where the laughter sounds
And the desert was dry
In the country town
Where the laughter sounds
Mountain Woodstock
Long Red
Written by Leslie West, Felix Pappalardi, John Ventura, and Norman Landsberg, Long Red would not appear on any album until the band’s live release: Live: The Road Goes Ever On in 1972.
Dream here, dreamin’ there
Two pieces all the time
Bits and pieces in my arms
This is always what it seems
Bright red, how am I gonna find a way?
You have changed me too
Stranger now it seems somehow
Bright red has turned to blue
Tears and shades of gray
I have [Incomprehensible] you
I’ve lost forever from today
Bright red, how am I gonna find a way?
Tears and shades of gray
I have changed you
I’ve lost forever from today
Mountain Woodstock
Who Am I But You And The Sun
Who Am I but You and the Sun would also appear on their debut album but re-titled For Yasgur’s Farm
A slight reflection in everyone
Was it me who let you walk away
Were you the one
Or is it we’re the same
The simple story of a younger life
Happy dreams and somehow through the day
Or is it we’re the same
I’m a part of you
The waking, breathing and all with you
A crystal passing reflected in our eyes
Or is it we’re the same
Without two shadows the things I’ve seen
Remember the evening I let you walk away
Were you the one
Or is it we’re the same
You’re a part of me
I’m a part of you
Mountain Woodstock
Beside the Sea
There’s no patter. No Canned Heat re-tuning. Not a segue but pretty close.
A unique and interesting fact about this performance is that Bert Sommer co-wrote the song with West and Gail Collins and is likely the only song at Woodstock that one Woodstock band covers another Woodstock performer’s song.
Ironically, Gail Collins is the wife of Mountain’s Felix Pappalardi and she would shoot and kill Pappalardi in 1983.
I am excluding “Wooden Ships” because that was written and performed by members of both C, S, & N and Jefferson Airplane.
Mountain Woodstock
Waiting to Take You Away
The song would appear on the Mountain Live album.
Yesterday went through until tomorrow
A pile of dreams appear
Better plan the hours to come
Today we shed our fear
And it’s waiting to take you away
It’s waiting to take you away
Rise you up to take my hand
Away from yesterday
I have a love within my heart
Which clearly shows the way
And it’s waiting to take you away
It’s waiting to take you away
No one can laugh but cannot cry
To begin we’ve got to end
Two together yet, in love
Within our love transcend
And it’s waiting to take you away
It’s waiting to take you away
Mountain Woodstock
Dreams of Milk and Honey
Written by West, Pappalardi, John Ventura, and Norman Landsberg, Dreams of Milk and Honey also appeared on West’s solo album.
Trying to get into anything at all
Cigarettes taste funny as I sink into my bed
Dreams of milk and honey are running through my head
Listen and see
Listen and see
Your heart for me is empty and your lips are gilded lies
And it seems I’m in a blue room, spending all my time
Trying so to catch you while you’re running through my mind
Mountain Woodstock
Southbound Train
Written by (West, Ventura, and Landsberg, Southbound Train appeared on West’s solo album. The lyrics West sings aren’t quite what the internet shows.
Twenty-one winters ago
And she grew tired of the freezing cold
And living in the blinding snow
‘Cause she had plans and dreams
And she’d seen pictures of the sunshine state
In the pages of the magazine
Saving every penny she can
For a one-way Dixie bound Amtrak ticket
Headed for the promised land
When the day she dreamed of came
And she waved goodbye sittin’ way up high
From the window of a southbound train
Ridin’ on a southbound train
And the clickity-clack of that railroad track
Only helps to fan the flames
No more worries, no more cares
She left them up in Bangor, Maine
Ridin’ on a southbound train
Whoa…
You’re sure lookin’ good to me
With your ocean breeze and your tall palm trees
And your southern hospitality’
Now she’s a knockout queenie in a string bikini
She’s drivin’ all the boys insane
And this all started with a small town dream
And a ticket on a southbound train
‘Cause she had a fire burnin’ deep inside
Ridin’ on a southbound train
And the clickity-clack of that railroad track
Only helps to fan the flames
No more worries, no more cares
She left them up in Bangor, Maine
Yeah she likes the boys with the southern drawl
Soakin’ up the sunshine, havin’ a ball
She’ll be the first to tell you that she owes it all
To ridin’ on a southbound train
Whoa…oh…
Mountain Woodstock
The next act was the Grateful Dead.