My First POCO CD

Can anyone recommend me a Poco CD? I'd really like to check them out.

I was going to go for the Original Albums Collection but it seems to be going for a couple of hundred bucks at the moment.

Thanks

 

The first three albums are very good. My favorite being the second album, "Poco". Toward the end of the 70s and into the 80s the band became way to soft rock for my taste, but many others really liked the softer side of Poco.

 

the first three or four are great. good overview on "forgotten trail" which can be had used cheaply. it is a 2 disc set.

 

"Good Feelin' To Know"
"Crazy eyes" or any collection that contains "Magnolia"

 

Start with the first, Pickin' Up The Pieces, then get the rest in order.

 

I'd go with "Forgotten Trail" It includes almost everything essential from the first part of their career, and some great outtakes.

 

Our host's 'Legend' is a good start

 

Everything from Pickin' Up The Pieces to Crazy Eyes is worth having, with Pickin' ... being an early masterpiece of the whole country rock thing.

 

Deliverin' - great live album

also mentioned previously...

Good Feelin' To Know
Crazy Eyes

 

The best bet for a new person is the Columbia double disc compilation, The Forgotten Trail. It features a well rounded selection of cuts from albums as well as a few choice, previously unheard tracks as well. The set succesfully encapsulates what made Glenn Frey sit at the foot of the stage at the Troubadour while Poco played all those years ago. He was looking for a template and he found one.

The first disc is as good a compilation of those first three studio albums as you can find. It also includes three numbers from the live album that almost broke them into a larger market, Deliverin'. Next, Jim Messina leaves, on very good terms, and Paul Cotton came over to replace him. Messina hung around long enough to make sure that Cotton was up to date on what Poco had been doing for the last three years.

Few can touch Rusty Young on pedal steel and Cotton proved to be the perfect match for Young's wildness on the instrument. Live Cotton and Young were a good team who did what they could to make the song sound better. In the early days of the second version of Poco, Young and Cotton were just as good live as Messina had been. Depending on how much you like Young's playing, maybe even a bit more so.

The second disc highlights cuts from the next three studio albums. It also features a reminder that Timothy B. Schmit was really working hard at songwriting in those days. Both Here We Go Again and I Can See Everything still sound good today. They fit perfectly in with what Furay was doing at the time.

Schmit's Whatever Happened to Your Smile is basic, good-time, top forty single. You can almost see them doing it on The Sonny and Cher Hour as Sonny makes a smart-aleck remark about a pedal steel guitar belonging on another show. The song, as was the course with much of Poco, went nowhere on a larger, considerably commercial level.

Multi-instrumentalist Rusty Young was writing instrumentals at the time and when they show up on this collection they sound fine. Cotton's tune Bad Weather could make the lower charts today.

It also showcases a couple of more expansive, somewhat experimental pieces of work such as Crazy Eyes (with Chris Hillman on mandolin, Joe Lala on percussion, Paul Harris on piano). Among the unreleased cuts on this disc are a seven minute plus version of a song that Furay took to Souther, Hillman, Furay Band, Believe Me.

The second disc holds Poco's great hope for the top of the charts, the song A Good Feelin' to Know. This is the song that broke Richie Furay's back. It seems, from most of what I have read, that all of his hopes and dreams were pinned on the success of that song. After all, he had seen his friends from Buffalo Springfield, Stephen Stills and Neil Young go onto icon status and he, by his own admission in interviews later, couldn't figure out why Poco (and he) hadn't achieved the success that critics and fans told them was their due.

Its a great song. Is it a classic... a classic that is not entirely dependent on how much you personally love Poco. However, the charts did not agree as enthusiastically as Furay and company may have hoped. Hearing the dollar bills whispering on wind chimes owned by David Geffen, Furay soon takes off to form The SHF Band. Poco is now Rusty Young, Tim Schmidt, George Grantham and Paul Cotton. Which leads to the second recommended anthology...

Poco; The Essential Anthology (1975-1982). This is where the Eagles comparisons must really grate on Young and company's nerves. It is still Poco but you can tell focus has changed. And not in a way that happens when a key member leaves. There is no brand new sound nor an effort to sound like Messina or Furray in the writing. Cotton and Young and Schmit were decent enough writers by this time that they could carry the group. But it is clear that on some songs, they were succumbing to some outside pressure to produce some hits. Come on, who doesn't want Eagles, Loggins and Messina and even Firefall money in 1977?

The Essential Anthology opens with Timothy B. Schmidt's Keep on Tryin'. This is so close to the perfect early Eagles song that, when Schmit joined them, the Eagles would cover it live. A few years ago I was able to interview Rusty Young and asked if they were trying to mimic the Eagles at this point. He emphatically denied it, but did admit that record company pressure to cough up a few hits was the worst thing about the job in those days. That and the pay... Which is something that Frey mentions directly in the Eagles documentary. (And I am para-phrasing a bit here on exactly what Young was saying because my notes from the Young interview fifteen years ago or so aren't in this office right now. But his meaning/intent was clear.)

However, despite strong interference from ABC and later MCA, Young and the band never stopped trying to do something interesting. It is easy to write this era off as soft-rock etc. But it is really Cotton and Schmit and Young doing a bang up job within the context of Poco. Anyone expecting the lyrical insights of Hotel California (the album) at this time were not paying attention. Poco was never that. And listening to this anthology (1975-1982) they weren't as far from their original sound as some may think. Young's instrumental work usually keeps things interesting.

Young's Rose of Cimarron (on this anthology) is a long time favorite of mine. I cannot divorce my emotional reaction to the song long enough to figure out if it is a classic or a failed attempt at excellence with grandiose wishes. All I know is that when I hear it, I keep thinking that a screen is going to pop up from nowhere and say "Directed by John Ford". Every time I watch The Searchers and John Wayne shuts the door, I hear this song. A lot of other people don't, but I do!

I also enjoy Cotton's Tulsa Turnaround and especially Indian Summer. Everything those two were doing at the time was meant to keep them going forward. If Crazy Love or In The Heart of the Night are a bit too slick, so was a lot of stuff on radio at the time. Everyone wanted Eagles money and by the end of the decade, Disco money. To which Poco was not immune either, I like the Indian Summer album, but Young's ten minute The Dance from that album is not the hidden classic I had hoped it would be. But neither is the eighteen minute cut from their second album, El Tonto de Nadie, Regressa.

Complaints of Poco sounding like the Eagles have never worked on me. I am old enough that the Eagles sounded like Poco. Despite what I was reading in Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, etc. at the time, neither group sounded like the Flying Burritos either. The big difference in all three groups was that the Eagles had a strong leader who was willing to be a dick when the time called for it and they also had a lyricist with his own delusions.

There are some other anthologies. Hip-O's double CD, Poco Gold, focuses too much on the later years, leaving the Columbia era to a scant five cuts I think. Which is way too little on a double disc comp. Plus it is kind of hard to find. Epic's single disc The Very Best of Poco does a decent job of condensing their early years plus it also has their great cover of Still's Go and Say Goodbye.
There are some good budget discs. Poco:On the Country Side is a lot of fun. and Sony also did a single disc anthology of the Columbia Years. The Poco version of Columbia's Setlist series is all live and well worth the time. As is Live at Columbia Studios 9/30/71. It is fantastic as well. Poco live is always worth grabbing.

Good luck with Poco. Rusty Young is still out there. You may want to check out the official Poco at http://www.poconut.org.

 

What do you think...should I do it?

glad i clicked on that link. nice to see he is finally doing a solo release.

 

Is this an urban legend or do you have evidence a Hoffman-mastered disc actually sneaked out? Until then, the MCA gold CD is mighty fine.

 

Really depends on what kind of music you like. I would actually disagree with most of the above posters cause I prefer the later Poco Catalog. I wont listen to anything before Rose of Cimarron/Indian Summer (1976/77). Legend/Under The Gun/Blue and the Grey/Ghost Town/Inomorata. These are also the most popular albums (Album sales) which doesn't mean the music is better...just more widely accepted by the general public. It's "Radio friendly". Their later output is closer to the Eagles sound. The early stuff Im sure is great for what it is...but it puts me to sleep. I can find very little on "The Forgotten Trail" that I ever want to hear again. By all means Pick up the Forgotten trail for a taste of Early Poco....if you don't like it DONT dismiss the band. Pick up Legend or Under the Gun and get a taste of the Late 70's/Early 80's Poco. It's like listening to 2 different bands.

 

Going by the clues Steve mentioned in a post a few years ago...

 

I'd start with "Deliverin' " -- good profile of the band at its peak.

 

Should you do what? Who has a solo release?

 

I believe Rusty Young...its on his website

 

Thanks for all the replies guys. I've ordered Forgotten Trail as it seems a good place to start.

 

My favorite Poco album rarely gets any love - Cantamos. I believe it's where everything really came together after Richie left the group. For me, that foursome IS Poco.

 

Love this post. Particularly being old enough to see the Eagles as a successor band. For me, their second album is a high water mark. Jim Messina's contributions can't be overlooked.

 

I have that MCA Gold CD and I agree, that it sounds great, which I can't say for most of those MCA Gold discs, but this one is good!

 

If you want a single album I'd get Head over heels, simply because it combines the country rock of the earlier albums
with the more commercial sound of the later ones
btw I don't agree with Billion$Baby's opinion above that they are two different bands , they just evolved from the pure country rock of the debut
to a more pop/radio friendly sound like almost all other bands of this genre

 

Don't forget to also check out Rusty Young and Bill Lloyd's great (and sadly overlooked) supergroup "The Sky Kings", which was finally released on Rhino Handmade and now goes for big $$$'s!

http://www.amazon.com/From-Out-Blue-Sky-Kings/dp/B0001MBKKG

 

Chris can you post levels from your gold, curiosity has bitten me, want to see if there is any difference from my old US Sanyo, thanks!