Drummer ND Smart

Mountain Woodstock

Mountain Woodstock

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

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

Cover of Leslie West’s debut album called “Mountain”
Leslie West had played with a well-known New York band called the Vagrants. In fact, Bert Sommer had written several songs for the band.
West released a solo album in July 1969. He called the album Mountain, and shortly afterwards, that became the band’s name.
Blood on the Sun was on that album. West, Pappalardi, and Pappalardi’s wife Gail Collins wrote the song.
Standin’ on my pillow
Talkin’ to the moon
Wadin’ in the ocean
I’m sendin’ for you soon
Reachin’ for the handle
Achin’ in my head
Woven in the bed sheets
And then I will understand
Politicians are screamin’
Runnin’ from the gun
Caught in webs of invention
It’s the blood, it’s the blood of the sun

Leanin’ out of the window
With the sunshine at my side
To leave the hard road behind me
There’s a light on the road that I ride
Hidin’ in the ocean
With the sunshine at my side
To leave the hard road behind me
There’s a light on the road that I ride
Standin’ on my pillow
Talkin’ to the moon
Wadin’ in the ocean
I’m sendin’ for you soon
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, Saturday I go out to play.
The eagle flies on Friday, but Saturday I go out to play.
Sunday I go to church where I kneel down and pray.
And I say, “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy on me.
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.
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.
Then I say, “Lord have mercy, wont you please have mercy on me.
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

Mountain Woodstock
Mountain’s official debut studio album, Climbing! Recorded 1969 – 1970; released March 7, 1970
The third song of the set was one of the songs that would appear on the band‘s debut album, Climbing!, in six months. Cream bassist Jack Bruce and Pete Brown wrote it.
When the wagons leave the city
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
Looked as if they might have known
Oh the sun was in their eyes
And the desert was dry
In the country town
Where the laughter sounds
Oh the dancing and the singing
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
Oh the sun was in their eyes
And the desert was dry
In the country town
Where the laughter sounds
Oh the sun was in their eyes
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.

The long red, flowing through my mind
Dream here, dreamin’ there
Two pieces all the time
Sobered, wisdoms in my dreams
Bits and pieces in my arms
This is always what it seems
Long red, helpin’ you to find a day
Bright red, how am I gonna find a way?
Bright red
You have changed me too
Stranger now it seems somehow
Bright red has turned to blue
Long red
Tears and shades of gray
I have [Incomprehensible] you
I’ve lost forever from today
Long red, helpin’ you to find the day
Bright red, how am I gonna find a way?
Long red
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 

Who am i but you and the sun
A slight reflection in everyone
Was it me who let you walk away
Were you the one
Or is it we’re the same
What are we in time going by
The simple story of a younger life
Happy dreams and somehow through the day
Were you the one
Or is it we’re the same
Look at me, now
I’m a part of you
Love is only what we come to live
The waking, breathing and all with you
A crystal passing reflected in our eyes
Were you the one
Or is it we’re the same
Quiet as the voices in a dream
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
Look at me, i believe it’s true
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.

Sitting in a blue room, staring at the wall
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
Look at me, Lord
Listen and see
Look at me, Lord
Listen and see
Girl, you say you love but the truth is in your eyes
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.

Well she was born in a north woods town
Twenty-one winters ago
And she grew tired of the freezing cold
And living in the blinding snow
But this girl knew she wouldn’t be there long
‘Cause she had plans and dreams
And she’d seen pictures of the sunshine state
In the pages of the magazine
So she waited them tables and she used her smile
Saving every penny she can
For a one-way Dixie bound Amtrak ticket
Headed for the promised land
Her momma and daddy begged her not to go
When the day she dreamed of came
And she waved goodbye sittin’ way up high
From the window of a southbound train
Now she’s got 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
Now she’s startin’ a brand new life
Ridin’ on a southbound train
Whoa…
She said, ‘Hello sun, good mornin’ Daytona
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.

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