Review:

on 2011-05-31 CharlesMartel Said:

Starting a rock track off with cowbells may not exactly seem as the best way to get a song going. Yet Mountain manage to do quite well with the opening cowbells on "Mississippi Queen". Yet if you are looking for startling originality much beyond that, you won't find it here. Mountain were considered by contemporaries to be so much a Cream clone that they recruited a keyboard player just to dispel the rumours.

"Mississippi Queen" may have been their most famous track, but these days it sounds really dated. To what extend the track borrowed from Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" a year earlier, is hard to tell. There are only so many songs you can write about Mississippi River paddlesteamers. Or is this more about a stripper encountered aboard (or nearby) the boat as it passed through Louisiana? Whatever, when I listen closely I think I can even hear echoes of "Proud Mary" in the song. This is pretty much the only song I remember from Mountain and I guess it is pretty representative of what they put out.
Rating: 6/10