Discography: Poco (Part 1)

So here's a new idea for a series on this blog. Because, you know, there ain't enough of them already. But I've been playing with the idea in my head for a while now, and the little alternate album Poco retrospective on these pages these last few weeks sprung me into action. To wrap up the whole Poco thing, I'm going to present the first installment of Discography, which, as you might have deducted from its ambigious title, looks at a band's or artist's discography and ranks the albums. As any good countdown should, we'll be counting down the spots, so the trash gets taken out first. A couple of ground rules: I'm obviously not rating greatest hits comps or box sets, but also no live albums. Studio albums only, folks, so it's a level playing field. 

With Poco I get in trouble right away, though,with the 'no live album' rule,  as one of their biggest sellers and critically acclaimed album is DeLIVEring, their 1970 live album, which - if you've read the write-up to From The Outside In - was a compromise to ease tensions brewing between co-founders Richie Furay and Jim Messina in mid-1970, but was also half new original songs, so it wasn't the classic 'greatest hits, but faster and sloppier' album. If I were to rank it, it would top the studio albums of the Messina-era and be a Top Ten Poco album. But nope, no live stuff, which is also good because in their latter years, when the band was essentially a nostalgia act, and no one expected nor wanted studio albums from them, they issued a couple of live albums, none of them bad, none of them necessary. Plus their 70s prime was also covered with a couple of newly released live albums, Live At Columbie Studios and The Last Roundup, both worthwhile, so Poco as a band has more live albums than other bands have issued albums altogether.

Anyway, let's get down to business, shall we?

19. Legacy (1989)

Okay, let's get this out of the way: This isn't really a Poco album. This is an album of five guys who called themselves Poco more than twenty years before, as for this one-off the 'original Poco' including Randy Meisner reunited. But this is atrocious stuff, the result of one of those weird mid-to-late 80s mini-trends of producers or musicians wanting to see their teenage idols back in action with modern studio techniques. (Richard Marx was a driving force behind this). There is no collaboration, no songwriting (almost all here comes from corporate songwriter teams), and almost no harmonizing, much less a sound that anyone would recognize as Poco. Hell, they didn't even let George Grantham behind the drums, leaving the playing to soulless L.A. hired guns. And the songs? Yuck. This is all-around awful stuff, and I say that as someone with a really high tolerance threshold for 80s AOR rock and AOR cheese. 

18. Cowboys And Englishmen (1982)

If this isn't the bottom of the litter on a technicality, it is easily the worst album made by Poco as an active band. The always dreaded record contract filler in its worst incarnation, the best thing about this album is the unexpecetdly attractive cover art. The rest? Oh boy. Sounding like a bored bar band on a slow tuesday night going through their repertoire for the same five barflies that are there every tuesday, you can almost hear them count down the minutes in their head until they're outta here. Not without slaughtering eight innocent cover songs. Seriously, if you want to hear how a band kills two Gordon Lightfoot classics back to back, this is the album for you. The only saving grace is the lone original, the Rusty Young medley of "Ashes/Feudin'", the latter a reminder of Young's country past and, somewhat surprisingly, being nominated for a Grammy. Other than that one, avoid at all costs. 

17. Inamorata (1984)

Poco's swansong for the band as an active recording entity, this is also awful, with everything you hate about 80s music production in place: cavernous drums, chintzy keyboards and unnatural sounding guitars all over the place, coupled with weak and derivative songwriting. Rusty Young has seemingly discovered New Wave only half a decade or so late, and tries to get into the game, with predictably awful results. Oh, and what's with the album cover that looks like it should be for a Marillion album? Inamorata has exactly two saving graces: A wonderful cover of Ricky Nelson's "This Old Flame", and Cotton's wistful "Days Gone By" with a vocal cameo of Richie Furay. The rest? Avoid at all costs. 

16. Running Horse (2002)

Poco's, uh, 'comeback' album, after 18 years away (since this is the Cotton-Young version of the band, it's predecessor is Inamorata, not Legacy). And boy, does it sound as no time has gone by, albeit not in a good way. This is a 21th Century album that sounds stuck in the late 80s, and I don't mean that in a good way. Still too many listless ballads and AOR songs, coupled with a synthetic production straight out of 1987. "Never Get Enough" is pretty neat, and the title song one of the few that actually move, but if you're missing out on this album, you're not missing much. 

15. Under The Gun (1980)

The follow-up to their unexpected hit record Legend couln't repeat the trick. Paul Cotton's title song is actually pretty good, but as far as highlights go that's about it. Rusty Young had now discovered Bruce Springsteen, and seemingly tries to write Springsteen-inspired songs, with predictably awful results. The best you can say about this album is that it is inoffensive while you listen to it. 

14. All Fired Up (2013)

If it has to be latter-day Poco, this is much better than Running Horse. It's still a very tranquil set, but the playing is good, the production not as grating, and this comes out as a friendly Adult Contemporary country-rock album, that plays well while running. You won't remember much about it once it's done, but as a last album, this could have been much worse. 

13. Ghost Town (1982)

Their first album for Atlantic Records, after they left ABC Records with the stinker Cowboys & Englishmen. You can see why that album was what it was, because Cotton and Young kept all their good compositions for this one, and sound like they are actually trying here. Rusty Young's title song is merely okay, but his "Shoot For The Moon" is a nice AOR ballad, if you can stomach that kind of thing. I'm also quite fond of Paul Cotton's album closing instrumental "High Sierra". This isn't a great album by any means, but it is at least respectable. 

12.  Legend (1978)

Thousands will disagree with me, as this was their big seller, throwing off two top twenty hits in "Crazy Love" and "Heart Of The Night", and is generally well-remembered by those who bought it at the time. And I admit it: This is really well done AOR and soft rock. That's the good news. The bad news? It's still AOR and soft rock, which - even when well done - has a ceiling in terms of how great this can be. Yes "Crazy Love" is a classic, their island vacation on "Barbados" is pretty neat, and "Heart Of The Night" is okay if you're into that kind of music. But yeah, the total shedding of any hint of country rock still hurts my personal enjoyment of this.

11. Indian Summer (1978)

The last hurrah for the 'original' Poco, as far as a band with a ton of lineup changes can be called such a thing, but this is still a band with a clear lineage to the original pioneering country rock outfit. Unfortunately the 1974-1977 foursome call it a day with their weakest album, running out of steam and ideas. There's still some fine songs to be heard here ("Indian Summer", "Living In The Band"), but the disco strings & horns on their "The Dance" suite - not to mention Tim Schmit's falsetto yells - are a terrible idea. When your proud hard-working country-rock band tries to compete with the Bee Gees, it is maybe indeed time to hang it up. 

So, the first half of Poco's discography is out of the way. If you've made it this far, you've seen that you can - and probably should - do without the first five albums listed, and then your mileage may vary. None of these are essential, obviously, but the last four are pretty good listens if you are not too discerning. The real good stuff is obviously coming when we hit the top ten in Part 2. You can also see that I have a clear preferace for the 'Poco' Poco years, leavng most of the 'Cotton-Young Band as Poco' albus behind. I get at this in the Legend mini-review as this kind of shameless AOR-soft rock has a definitive ceiling for me. Oh, als: Tim Schmit - who Rusty Young hated - is five times the vocalist that Young is, even though they both work in the same high and smooth register, so it stands to reason that any Scmit record will best one with tons of Young one exception to the rule will show up in part two). 

The fake Poco and the real Phil 

By the way, did you notice something in the above album covers? The famous running horse logo that graced their only hit record legend shows up in variations on no less than four other covers, including the last three the band would issue. Anything to remind people of the band's commercial highpoint...oh, quick trivia time: That iconic cover was created by...Phil Hartman, doing graphic design work to pay the rent while waiting on breaking through as a comic 

And that's it for today, folks, come back in a day or two for the top ten of Poco records which I can guarantee has some surprises for Poconuts, or Poconuts in training...

Howling At The Moon...Or Letting The Moon Howl At Us?

If you are a confirmed One Buck Head with some history of visiting here, you might remember that the point where power pop and New Wave intersect is a sweet spot of mine, as evidenced by OBG-compiled anthologies on Martin Briley and Randy VanWarmer that cover these guys' New Wave adventures. So it would seem surprising to you, that until a year and a half or so ago I was relatively unaware of Moon Martin. Probably heard the name, and I knew of course "Bad Case Of Loving You" via Robert Palmer and "Cadillac Walk" via Mink De Ville, but other than that...not much. So give a virtual hand to your music blog buddy and mine, Jonder, who mentioned Martin repeatedly in comments here, until I got my butt in motion to check out Mr. Martin. He also provided the albums of Martin's latter years over at Jonky's. Good job, J-Man, because Moon Martin does indeed rock, and the One Buck Record of the day is out to prove it.

Since the One Buck Guy is not one for doing things half-assedly, today's offering is another two disc proposition, with two drastically different listening experiences. Disc One, Crescent, is - as the subtitle suggests - presenting a Moon on the rise and focuses on Martin's heydays in the late 70s and early 80s. Crescent mainly draws on the first three albums he issued for Capitol, which arguably present his best work. 1982's Mystery Ticket and 1985's Mixed Emotions get a representative selection each - the former's clear highlight "Don't You Double (Cross Me Baby)" and the latter's "Short Skirts - but were decidedly weaker stuff. After Mixed Emotions Martin was dropped by Capitol and took a big break before a low-key return in the early 90s. 

Selections from those very low-key comeback efforts on small and mini labels throughout the 90s make up the second disc, Decrescent, which, well, show a moon (arguably) in decline. While I was happy to comb through those recordings from the 90s courtesy of Jonky's, and there's quite a bit to like here, they were also a step down and a step away from Martin's imperial phase. One thing that jumped out was that Martin would take the same songs - sometimes in exactly the same recordings - from mini-label to mini-label, so the overlap of songs is, uh, overkill. Do we really need three almost entirely same-sounding versions of Dylan's "Stuck In Mobile (With The Memphis Blues Again)" from Mr. Martin? I don't think so, so I picked what were the best-sounding versions to my ears and left it at that.

Another thing about those llatter-day recordings was that Martin, like many aging artists, discovered or redisvovered his love for the Blues, which I personally don't think is his strong suit, so I really only picked songs I liked and came up with a lean 12 song less-than-an-hour sequence that gives you a good overview of what Mr. Martin was up to in the 90s, far away from prevailing music trends or the public eye. Just to give you an idea of how low-key that 90s return was: His comeback record Dreams On File was issued by FNAC Music, FNAC being a French electronics store chain with, at least at the time, a huge music selection, and FNAC Music being their in-store label. Anyway, for those keeping records, Decrescent's track list breaks down as follows: Tracks 3, 5, 6, 9 and 11 come from Dreams On File; 1 and 4 from Cement Monkey; 2, 7 and 12 from Louisiana Jukebox, and 8 and 10 from Lunar Samples.  

So, that's a lot of Moon Martin coming your way. I'm glad to have discovered Mr. Martin, and so will you, if you don't know him yet. Even if you know him and are a fan, Full Moon will serve as a handy primer either way. So let's howl at the moon have the Moon howl at us...

Let's Have Poco Sing Again...Once More

...and thus we arrive at the end (or almost, more on that later) of our little Poco retrospective/partial reissue campaign, with something that you have already seen on these pages, but only if you've been around for a while. I posted my resequenced version of Poco's Cantamos, their last album for Epic Records, in March 2024, and a lot of the observations and remarks about the music and the sequencing in that write-up still hold true. 

Some, however, can be amended, such as my wondering about the original, still ugly-as-all-hell cover with the small picture of the band not even in the centre of the image. Well, it turn out it was a cutesy gimmick, that nonetheless had pretty harsh consequences. The cardboard cover (with the weird Southwestern art) of the original pressings were indeed having a small cut-out window through which you could see the band on the inner paper sleeve. Whether a band of Poco's rater modest commercial standing needed this kind of artsy gimmick is another question, one that Epic Records also asked themselves, deducting the money for that gimmick from the band's payout, which led almost immediately to a resolution of the marriage between band and label. 

Poco had already arrived at the end of their current contract and were negotiating a new one, but that money issue led the band to sign with ABC Records, prompting Epic Records to swear revenge on the band they had supported throughout a mostly underwhelming commercial run. And they did, issuing a best of and a live album within days of the band's new albums for ABC to cut into the band's sales and confuse buyers as to what was the new Poco product. Ah, petty record companies! European fans of course didn't get the gimmicky cut-out, instead getting the worst of all solutions. A plain cardboard label with the small band image printed on the Western motive and no sign of the inner sleeve with the entire empty cantina image. They could have at least centred the band image, as without cut-out there was no pointin having it off-center. But no one thought that much about it, I guess.

Anyhoo, the music is as good as it ever was. And a little better in this configuration. So, Cantamos, folks...

While this r e-issuemarks the end of albums to post from Poco, we're not quite done yet with the band. They will serve as guinea pigs for a new feature I let you discover very soon...

A Quick, But Long (Re-Up) One While He Is Away (Y'all)

 

A visitor asked for this, but since this might be of interest for more than one of y'all, here's a mini-megapack of Bluegrass Chartbusters, collecting Volumes 1-5. It's never to late to get with this cool series, so be an honorary good ol' boy, get with the fiddles and banjos and enjoy some fantastic rock and pop covers from about 50 years of music history, courtesy of aces like Cornbread Red, Iron Horse, Brad Davis, The Sidekicks, as well as cool local bands like The Grass Cats. More info in the original write-ups, obviously, but yeah, there's some really cool stuff here, so get goin' to the hoedown, y'all...

The French Connection: Ear Candy A La Française, S'il Vous Plaît...

Oh bon dieu, mais qu'est-ce qui s'est passé avec cette séries? I knew it had been a while since I posted something from my adopted home country but it seems that the last time The French Connection connected you with Gallic music of some sorts was *checks notes* October 2025?!? Time to change that, though admittedly, if it hadn't been for a bit of a chance encounter, the return to music from the frog- and snail-eating part o the world would've been even longer. 

But a couple of days ago I caught Phoenix's "Lisztomania" on the radio, and I thought to myself, "why, that was a cool tune", and then thought that the accompanying album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix was also really neat, and that the kind of fluffy ear candy pop on it is the perfect music for the spring with summer temperature that we have around here this week (today, it thankfully cooled down a bit, after a week of temperature saround 35°C, which really is too much. It's also too much historically speaking for a month of May, but that's probably the new normal with global warming continuing unabated. But I digress.

Hipsters et fières d'y être

So, Phoenix. If you vaguely remember having heard something about these guys or this album, that's because with this album especially they made some waves in the States, even winning a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album of the year. How you feel about that will say a lot about what the Grammies do with their voting categories, or how the term 'alternative music' has changed since its inception in the early 90s. Because nothing about this album screams 'alternative' in a way that you and me and other older folks remember that term. This is lush, extremely produced, intelligent pop music, which i only alternative, if the mainstream choices are hip hop, EDM or a mix of both. In no sane world would this run as 'alternative music', but the Grammies have always been insane (not in a good way), and category fraud has been as rampant as at their cousins, the Oscars, if not more so. 

Honestly, I remembered that Phoenix basically did all the TV late night shows back when that still meant something, but the whole Grammy and platinum (for single "1901" ) and gold certifications (for "Lisztomania") thing passed me by. But yeah, for a couple of weeks in 2009 Phoenix looked like the next big thing in alternative pop music. And, you know, deservedly so. If you remember these two singles, you sould remember them fondly: big catchy songs with big catchy choruses, even though some of the idiosyncratic lyrics are probably best blamed on these guys not writing in their mother tongue. Or, you know, being French arty hipsters. I mean, c'mon, these guys hail from fuckin' Versailles! 

Le hipster chic, mode ironique, eh...

Oh, but Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix deserves whatever prices they want to give out, and whatever chart success it can get! It's such a confident, impeccably played and produced record. If you want you can hear hints of, say, Antmusic-era Adam And The Ants in "Listzomania", and there's some clear New Wave influences, while lush instrumental "Love Like A Sunset Pt. 2" reminds you of Avalon-era Roxy Music. Opulent pop aren't dirty words, you know, so there's no need to couch this in 'alternative' clothes. 

Seing how a straight up post of the original album would be lame-ish, you'll even get an extra special, One Buck Records only bonus track edition, with a handful of live unplugged tracks from a small live for radio concert in Germany in october 2009. It's interesting to hear these songs in a more stripped-down form, plus they (and thus I) throw in a cover of Dylan's "Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands", because why not. 

Check out Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix for the sound of the spring...

P.S.: If you like polished pop made in France, I invite you to check out Geyster right here. 

Hotdang, Boys And Girls, It's Them Incredible Bluegrass Chartbusters Once More...

Yes, that other flagship series is back with another volume, and I'm not overselling anything when I say this one's a killer. Having spent a good bit of stolen moments here and there on this series, I did a ton of revisions on it, including this volume, making place for more and more cool beans discoveries. It also means that the line up of recurring favorites and favorites-to-be is now almost complete. All the stalwarts of previous volumes are back, including relatively recent addition Love Canon with a cover of ZZ Top's "Legs" as the kick-ass opener. But we also have the debuts of two great combos that will bring enjoyment to this series and your homes for weeks and months to come.

So, give a big, hearty 'howdy y'all' to Bourbon Revival and The Infamous Stringdusters. The former are my latest discovery, and boy am I glad I found them. They don't have a lot of covers (or published songs fullstop) to their names, but the ones that they brought out are all really good. They debut with "I Want You To Want Me", 'cuz you can never have enough Cheap Trick in Bluegrass, folks. The Infamous Stringdusters, also a band I stumbled on recently, have been way more active, which makes sense since they recently celebrated their 20th anniversary. Thye are mainly doing original songs, but from time to time record the odd pop or rock cover.  For their first appearance we got a stone-cold classic, Tom Petty's "American Girl". 

Other folks debuting: Interstate Express with the Eagles' "Take It Easy" and The HillBenders, a group specializing in WhoGrass, including covers of the entire Tommy album, from which the claasic "Pinball Wizard" comes. And two other tracks have blink-and-you'll-miss-'em artists: Wheatstone Bridge clock in with a great cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", but as of today, we won't see them again. And the fine bluegrass cover of Bryan Adams' "Heaven" by Chad Darou and Cia Cherryholmes seems to have been a one-off. 

So, crank this up, get some overalls or straw hats (or not), and get the hootennany goin' once more...

Is This A Mixtape? Yes! Is It Weird? Yes! Is It Yes? Yes!

If you've been around a while, you know two things about the One Buck Guy and prog rock: I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but I like Yes. But I like a lot of the bits and pieces from Yes that a - shall we say more classic - fan would probably frown upon. Hell, the One Buck Record of the day even proudly contains what is unofficially the worst Yes song of all time. Classic Rock ranked all (the) released tracks from Yes, and Tormato-era b-side "Abilene" came in 207 ot of 207! And yet here it is! Suck it, Classic Rock, I like what I like. and once you don't have to worry about the admittedly ridiculous opening (a synth made to sound like a horse neighing, predating Neil Young's synth horse experiments on Trans by a couple of years), the song is pretty neat. Sue me! 

This is just one example of what to expect - and not to - here. This albums is called a Mixtape, but isn't tagged as such, because it isn't one long megamix like the ones that are, even though that was the original idea. No, Mixtape here is meant to show you that this is someone's mix, a personal selection of songs. Oh, also: You have to take the word Mix really seriously. This was made during the 'OBG goes wild on Audacity'-era (some might say the 'OBG, WTF?'-era, but let's not dwell on that...), so it really is a mixtape in the literal sens, mixing and matching moments from Yes that I like. Often it's complete songs, but sometimes it might just be an extract  from a longer piece, or I edited out something I felt was superfluous, like the false ending to "Into The Lens (I Am A Camera)", the aforementioned fake-horse-bullshit on "Abilene" or even the occasional gratuitous keyboard solo. 

Before you recoil in horror, know that a lot of the music is intact, including my two favorite long-form pieces from Yes, "Homeorld (The Ladder)" and "Roundabout". But there is also a track called "A Moment - Alternate View", which is a remnant of the original idea, before plans changed. When I still wanted to do a one-hour megamix of my favorite Yes moments, I had prepared little bits from longer pieces that were supposed to serve as bridges in between the songs. But then, halfway through I realized that my original plan was counter-productive to my 'personal best' approach. If I want to hear one of my faves right away, it has to be indexed, so out went the continuous megamix idea, but I already had a couple of these 'linking bits' ready, so I decided to throw them on anyway. 

Seeing that this is a truly personal mix, in every word of the sense, you get - for better or worse - some exclusive edits. I've always liked Yes' take on Simon & Garfunkel's "America" for example, but the album version took forever to get to the vocals/song section, while the single edit threw out one of my favorite parts: the little country licks Steve Howe played - and for a classically trained Brit he sure loved to play a country lick or two - so I edited a third version that splits the difference between the two mentioned. 

The so-called 'Chop Shop Mix' of "White Car" is a whole 'nother story. I had always liked the original one-and-a-half minute doodle off Drama, but it really was just a doodle, an intro and a short verse. So I tried to make it into more of a song, using the original song, the tracking sessions version and a live version from the Drama tour to create this version. I always felt that that song deserved more than to be an excuse for Geoff Downes to doodle on his keyboards, for Horn to mess around with a vocoder and for both to tease the audience with a couple of notes from "Video Killed The Radio Star". Whether this new mix makes this more of an epic song or whether it works for you remains to be seen, but hey, lemme know, eh. 

So yeah, this is what YESterdays is, and I hope you enjoy it. The whole adventure spread into a two-disc thing at the time, but I'll just send out this as a test balloon, and can bring out the sequel if anyone is actually interested. and despite being essentially a Part 1 or Volume 1, this album is - as all of my alts and other albums are - sequenced to tell a story, so it has a short prelude in the classical-sounding "Vevey's Theme" and ends with an epilogue of sorts, Chris Squire's amazing solo bass version of "Amazing Grace". 

So, time go back in time and enjoy some YESterdays...yes?