Poco's Magnum Opus - now even more..uh...magnum

All the jokes about how a band called Poco didn't have more success - at least the band during its first...and second, third, and fourth incarnations - have been made, and when the band that was Pogo until the creators of the comic book character whose name the band borrowed threatened to sue finally got their big break, they weren't really Poco anymore, but the renamed Cotton-Young Band. But their best work was behind them by that time, and even though I think an album like Cantamos from the underrated post-Furay four piece is a ridiculously underrated work, the real masterpiece of the Poco discography is the last album the band cut with founder Richie Furay, before David Geffen whisked him away by shaking bundles of dollars in front of him. Furay would deeply regret the unfortunate misadventures of the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, but that's another story for another time. And at least he left after helping Poco record an album that made good on the promise of the band's work up 'till then. That album is Crazy Eyes. 

All Music is as often wrong as they're right, but Bruce Eder's short write up is right on the money when he says "it's the fruition of everything they'd been working toward for four years" and that "there's not a weak song, or even a wasted note anywhere on this album". True, and true. What's also true is that Poco recorded more than the nine tracks that made the album and what's also true is that these are of the same high quality as the rest of the album. You can certainly see where this is going...yup, alternate album time, folks! So, here's the expanded Crazy Eyes, boosted by four outtakes issued on the The Lost Trail anthology of the Epic years. Of those four, the Rusty Young instrumental "Skunk Creek" is probably the least essential, while the most impressive is no doubt the original version of "Believe Me", before Furay reworked it for the first Souther-Hillman-Furay album. Here, it's a seven and a half minute rock monster, or at least what could pass for a rock monster in Pocoland. The other two numbers are older: Furay's "Nothing's Still The Same" was written around the time of the debut album and played by Poco in concert in the late 1960s, but never made an album. And Paul Cotton recut "Get In The Wind", after having already done the number with The Illinois Speed Press in a blues rock style. 

And then there is of course the question of how to rearrange the new line-up. Eder's right about "Let's Dance Tonight" being a great album closer, but you know what? It's an even better opening number, where Furay makes you an invitation you can't refuse: "slippin' away, heading out to L.A./ gonna sing in the city tonight". Who woudn't want to join him? It's also a notedly more energetic opener than the original album's, Cotton's "Blue Water" which gets pushed to second track. From Furay's fantastic opening shot, I wanted to preserve the logic of the original album's first side that gradually introduced the cast. So we get the same here, when first Furay, then Cotton, then Young and then Tim Schmidt take a lead role. From there, it was about balancing Cotton's and Furays number, while I also wanted to gradually build to the more epic numbers, closing with a trio of longer songs. The aforementioned "Believe Me", the Cotton-sung J.J. Cale classic "Magnolia" (which became a live staple for the entire time Cotton was in Poco) and finally the title song. "Crazy Eyes", written for and about Gram Parsons. 

The song also dated from a couple of years back and wasn't written or planned as an elegy to Parsons, who was still very much alive in early 1973, when the album was recorded. But lines like "to be or not to be is the question now / crazy eyes, don't you forget how" take a new, eerier meaning. It's like Furay felt his old friend and former neighbour slipping deeper into drugs and selfdestruction. Together with Furay covering Parsons' "Brass Buttons" (a song he also namedrops in "Crazy Eyes"), although unplanned, Crazy Eyes the album became in many ways that eulogy to Parsons, who died four days after its release.

With the four outtakes added back in the complete Crazy Eyes clocks in at a little over 55 minutes - sitting right between a very long (too long for vinyl) single album or a very short double album. But since country was one of the few genres where sub-30 minute albums were still a thing in the early to mid-1970s, I'd say the whole thing works as that short double album, where the songs would have been presented as such:

Side A

Let’s Dance Tonight

Blue Water

Fool’s Gold

Here We Go Again

Side B

Nothing’s Still The Same

A Right Along

Brass Buttons

Side C

Get In The Wind

Skunk Creek

Believe Me

Side D

Magnolia

Crazy Eyes

Well, sorry for some moments of nerdy sequencing discussion, let's get to the music. So here's the complete Crazy Eyes, making Poco's best album even better...