Customer Reviews

Elephant Mountain

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you don't have this album buy it immediately! It has got to be the most eclectic album of it's day. It was defintely ahead of it's time. It has some jazz, blues, country, rock, and celtic influences, not to mention Jesse's exquisite voice. Music of the 60's at it's best but not outdated. Thoroughly enjoyable with today's standards. Get one for your best friend..no one should miss out on this outstanding music!

Probably one of the best rock albums of the 60s. Provides great listening music for any activity. While many remember the Youngbloods for "Get Together", Elephant mountain goes far beyond the comercial hit which receives so much air time. Those of us that remember the real sixties can relate to listening to songs like "quick sand" and "ride the wind" and the memories produced by this album. I can remember passing this record back and forth amoung friends, all who treasured it. If you like Jessie Collin Young and the Young Bloods, you will find this to be their best work.

I have never understood the neglect that greeted this late Sixties masterpiece, one of my very favorites since it first came out. Maybe they had trouble duplicating the sound in concert (with the loss of Jerry Corbitt they were down to a trio, and some of the tracks here include a very rocking full orchestra.) Maybe the sound that the band and producer Charles E. Daniels (yes, ole Charlie Daniels!) laid down was just too complex for the average listener. There's rock, jazz, blues, bossa nova, C&W...sometimes all in the same long cut! Just give it a try. Years ago, I played it while a musician friend was present and he stood there with his jaw dropped until he exclaimed, "Who IS that!?" It's the Youngbloods. Check it out.

An astounding record, way too hard to find since its original release. "On Sir Francis Drake" is a very long instrumental that goes from a kind of rock and roll-classic fusion to jazz to midnight blues. And at it's beginning there's a priceless joke rap from the producer, Mr. Charles E. Daniels. (Yes, Charlie Daniels!) "Darkness, Darkness" is probably the blackest song ever written, a scream of despair, but the rest of the songs will cheer you back up, no doubt about it. "Quicksand" is done with a full orchestra that rocks, for a change. Don't miss this one, it was just too complex and eclectic for the tastes of the time, I think,

sang Donovan. It never happened. Musically, it happened, but as far as popularity goes, some categorize the Youngbloods, mistakenly, as one-hit wonders, a result of "Get Together" becoming a hippie anthem.
Make no mistake, the time in rock music history when "Elephant Mountain" was created was incredible. The Beatle's "Sgt. Pepper" pushed experimentation to the outer limits, inspiring Frank Zappa's masterpiece, "We're Only In It For the Money"; "Good Vibrations" by the Beachboy's Brian Wilson; "Satanic Majesties Request" by the Rolling Stones, and last, but not least, and perhaps the best, "Elephant Mountain" by the Youngbloods.
None of the Youngblood's other recordings approach it's level. Why? Banana went wild with a big recording budget -- that's why. Bless his soul for it. Banana, besides exploring sound like an astronaut in the studio, hired the best musicians in town, in the big city, in Los Angeles, where quite a few professional musicians hang their hat. Who did he get? Joe Clayton for the trumpet on "Smug"; tenor sax legend Plas Johnson for the end of "Beautiful"; David Lindley on fiddle (he's currently touring with Jackson Browne) on "Darkness, Darkness" ; and Victor Feldman on vibes for "Ride the Wind" and Banana conducted an 18-man studio ensemble.
The experimentation with sound? Remember, this was the time of Jimi Hendrix "Electric Ladyland" -- and Hendrix raised the stakes with feedback. Banana had a few tricks up his sleeve. Banana took ouput from and EQ unit and put it into another, and then took that output and put it into another, and in Banana's own words: "...made things real weird and distorted..." Don't think the engineers didn't object either. The producer, Charlie Daniels, kept the suits off Banana's back. The band, too, remember them, sprinkled brief streaks of melodic experimentation throughout the album. Banana wrote the music for this gem by hand with an old Wurliztzer elecric piano. When the album was done Banana climbed a mountain -- a real one.
What's the result? A dreamy, electric neon-lit jazzy, country, rock, and ragtime doze off to miracle, something unique, something different, and something to cherish.
I got to see this band, live, at their peak, at U.C. Davis. I even got to sit on the back of the stage. It was incredible. They played "Elephant Mountain" and a few other of their other usual suspects. Some of this other stuff isn't bad either. There's "Get Together", which everybody knows, but there's also "The Wine Song" and "Grizzly Bear" for example.

You have to admire Jessie Colin Young. He wrote folk rock music that fit naturally on both AM and FM radio, without pandering to either. He was not just strumming his guitar, but gave his well written songs, that never rested on stock ideas, the careful arrangements they deserve.

Elephant Mountian shows this. All the songs have great melodies, and origonal chord progressions, showing that Young either had musical training or great insticts. Just listen to "Darkness Darkness," or "Beautiful" to hear how he takes folk and comes up with a spin that his uniquely his. You are never going to mistake his work for a Richie Havens song. His craft is top notch.

Young also had jazz notions: these are less sucessfull. The second track here is a Fendor Rhodes romp: nice enough to listen to, but it is primative by early Chicago or even Tim Buckley standards. There was a flawed notion in the late 60s that if you plunked around on an electric panio or with a upright bass for a few minutes, you were playing jazz. A lot of bad filler got onto otherwise good albums during this late 60s experimental euphoria. Still, you have to admire the impulse.

Ironically enough, Young used a lot of jazz on his solo albums, and this works quite well.

But Elephant Mountian is a increadibly enjoyable album with lots of high calabre work. It might not be an out and out masterpiece, but it is definately a 60s corner that should never be lost or overlooked.

I always liked the Youngbloods. They're "Get Together"; "The Wine Song"; and "It's a Lovely Day" are great tunes, found on other albums. But I was lucky enough to catch them live at U.C. Davis, and actually sit on-stage behind the drummer. I was so close I could see the tracks on their arms. But they played a mostly "Elephant Mountain" set. Donovan once predicted, "Electrical banana, bound to be the very next craze...", but it never happened. It should have. This album was one of the best. I like to listen to it before I fall asleep. I liked it back in the day, and I like it today, decades later. It's eclectic music: jazz, rock, and whimsical musings thrown together in a tight, light weave. Buy it!

The Youngbloods were a tremendously underappreciated band. "Elephant Mountain" shows exactly how fresh, witty, clever and versatile they were as a band.

Jesse Colin Young (vocals, bass guitar) provided one of the purest voices in Rock. Lowell ("Banana") Levinger was the instrumental glue that held the band together, excelling on keyboards, guitar, and vibes, among other things. Joe Bauer was so solid and professional that he could have been the house drummer for a jazz label.

"Elephant Mountain" has an invigorating mix of some of Jesse Colin Young's finest ballads ("Darkness, Darkness", "Sunlight", "Beautiful")and some instrumental jamming that allows Levinger to stretch out on keyboards. "On Sir Francis Drake" and "Trillium" are so catchy and smart that more than a few radio programmers must have copped them for program themes. ("Trillium" is named for the three-petaled, white wildflower that graces the back cover of the album).

Some of the tunes are goofs, merely there to provide transitions, like "Turn it Over". "Rain Song", and "Smug" show the Youngbloods jugband roots. Only "Sham" and "Ride the Wind" are done in overtly "West Coast" styles. "Sham" sounds a lot like Country Joe and the Fish, and "Ride the Wind" features the kind of laid-back jamming that "Joy of Cooking" became known for.

Nearly 40 years after its release, "Elephant Mountain" remains a gem of an album, the sparkle of which hasn't dulled in the slightest. It should be in the dictionary, next to the definition of "refreshing".

When a friend told me to buy this album back in college, I thought he was nuts. Yeah, they did "Get Together", good song, but let's get serious here. He played "Darkness, Darkness" on his eight track in the car, and I was totally blown away. The incredible thing is that the album kept getting BETTER with each cut!!!!! By the time "Ride the Wind" ended I realized I had heard one of the best albums in my relatively young life. Fast forward over 30 years, a marriage, two kids, a divorce later..... I kept telling my sons, both amatuer musicians, about this album "Elephant Mountain", but I couldn't remember the name of group!!! It was driving me nuts!!! Ah, senility is creeping in. And then one day I heard "Get Together" on a TV commercial and it all fell into place again "The Youngbloods!". I am listening to the album right now, and it's as great as I remember it. I'm still getting goosebumps. This is a must for any music lover, period. I agree with the reviewer who said that this album was ahead of its time.... Simply brilliant musical arrangements, excellent lyrics, hypnotic vocals.... Incredibly, I cannot find a single music site where I can download the album in it's entirety, but I caught some cuts in Itunes and it's in my Ipod now.... extasy!!

You need to have this album. It's on my top ten best all-time list and still sounds amazing. You really do need to have this album.