Some Call It Arrogance, Some Call 'Em The Best Bar Band Done Good You've Never Heard Of...

Not to underestimate the broad knowledge of my readership, but how many of you remember Arrogance? If you're not from North Carolina, there's a pretty big chance you haven't heard of them. I sure hadn't heard of the band before stumbling onto them while - quite fittingly - looking for hidden gems for the All Pearls, No Swine series. as a matter of fact, the first tracks landed in that folder, but I kept finding more and more tracks of them that I liked, so I did a deep dive that inevitably ended up with an anthology. And as usual, ol' OBG goes big, with a two-disc compilation covering the best bar band you might never have heard...or heard of... 

Arrogance were nothing if not verstile and have gone through a number of different musical styles throughout their career, which is a bit of a challenge for a career overview, so this time I opted for a chronological approach, where the sylistic breaks are still noticable, but you don't get wiplash from jumping from one style to another.

They started out as a hard rock outfit in the Deep Purple mold, with numbers like "Black Death" even dipping into Black Sabbath territory thematically, They released a single with that song and another self-written effort, "An Estimation",  in 1970, but it went nowhere, so Arrogance was in a holding pattern for a bit. The entered the studio in April 1971 to record their debut album, but that project was finally shelved and only saw the light of day in 2016 as Knights Of Dreams. Knight Of Dreams shows them moving away from the early hard rock into a still hard-edged rock sound with prog tendencies. Mike Greer used two of his compositions fom the sessions, the ballads "Send Me Back" and "Night Of Dreams" - both found on our One Buck Records album of the day - on his solo debut Between Two Worlds, released on tiny local Charlotte, North Carolina-based label Sugarbush in 1973. The same year Arrogance finally got a record of the ground, also on Sugarbush. 

By this time of the hopefully titled Give Us A Break, the music of Arrogance had already changed significantly, becoming a lot more mellower and acoustic, touching vaguely on country rock, but also incorporating jazz and other elements. Sophomore effort Prolepsis also came out on Sugarbush, before Arrogance finally signed with Vanguard for 1976's Rumours. These three albums form a loose trilogy of acoustic-based music with folk and country influence. There's a ton of wonderful stuff here: Their inofficial hymn "We Live To Play" - less than thirty seconds and a capella - for one thing, recorded twice and featured here twice, And many other wonderful songs, such as "Ma And Pa", "To See Her Smile", "People Aren't Free", "Why Do You Love Me", "Sunday Feeling", and the epic "Sun Sweet".

With this kind of friendly acoustic/country-rock - even with the many wrinkles Arrogance added - falling out of fashion, the band rejiggered their sound for 1980's Suddenly, issued on  Curb Records, taking on a more modern pop sound, with light hints of power pop and the slightest sprinkle of New Wave.  Not everything on that album is great, but highlights such as "It Ain't Cool To Be Cruel" or "Bring It On Home" show a band having a second wind, though that did not result in sales, which means that not too long after the live album follow-up Lively from 1981 Arogance decided to call it quits for the time being. The band got together in 2000 for a couple of well-received live gigs, having them play a couple of gigs per year throughout the decade.

Arrogance always were first and foremost a draw as a live band, so it makes sense thar the entire back half of the second disc is dedicated to Arrogance as live performers. You can imagine the parties they got started when listening to some of this material. Most of these come from Lively, while the last three  tracks are from the band's reunion in the early 2000s, including the Dogbreath medley which compiles three of the 60s garage rock classics the band would occasionally play as garage cover band  'Dogbreath'. This medley is an exclusive One Buck Records creation.

So, this exhaustive (but not exhausting!) compilation has a bit for everyone, from the heavy rock of their beginnings, to the country-rock and stylistic mish mash of their middle year to the pop sound of their later period, and it's not arrogant at all to say they did some really god work in all of these. They might not be a great forgotten band, but definitely a band worth rediscovering. Which We LIve To Play - An Anthology gives you the perfect opportunity to, as per One Buck Records custom. Not to mention that this should do nicely as the soundtrack for the rest of your weekend...

Discography: Poco (Part 2)

 ...and here's the top ten albums of Poco, as decided by the One Buck Guy!

10. Poco - Poco (1970)

Oh well, there'd be some disagreement over this, I reckon, if we woud have enough people who like and know Poco and also would deign to comment, but, alas, I guess I can rank anything anyway I want without much protest. I already made a lot of points in my write-up for my reimagined version of this album, You Better Think Twice, so I'll keep it short. The production is a little better than the debut, but the band is still sounding uncertain, and the terrible (almost) sidelong jam stays an exceedingly awful idea. You Better Think Twice would trade places with the next entry, but Poco stays stuck here. 

PS: Also, what the fuck is going on with that cover? It makes Poco sound like a brand for orange juice. Fresh from, uh, the fields in the mountains?!?

9. Pickin' Up The Pieces (1969)

I know, I know. I'm sorry, I just can't get into this album. Sure, it's historically important as their debut, but man, this thing has aged badly. The cheesy late 60s countrypolitan instrumentation. The forced 'we're having so much fun' yeehaws and laughter. The compositions which are kind of twee. Here, they don't sound much like country-rock stalwarts, having more in common with rootsy jugband music bands like the early Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, The Lovin' Spoonful or The Beau Brummels. The title song is a classic, of course, and "Just In Case It Happens, Yes Indeed" a semi-classic. But this record has to overcome its sound and aesthetic, and struggles to do so. 

8. Seven (1974)

Pretty good, but not truly top notch. My recent resequencing helps, as do a number of quality cuts like Cotton's "Driving Wheel", Young's "Rocky Mountain Breakdown" and Schmit's hard-edged "Skatin'". But there's only eight cuts, and one or two are only so-so. Still, the playing and singing here is impeccable, showing right out of the gate how good the Cotton-Young-Schmit-Grantham group could be. Also notable: Phil Hartman's first Poco cover, and a memorable one at that. 

7. Blue And Gray (1981)

Well, I've said a bunch of stuff about this album in my write-up to its slighly altered configuration on this blog. So I'll keep it short: A welcome stab of the Cotton-Young iteration of the band at coherence and respectability, even if they arguably can't quite pull the whole Civil War song cycle thing off entirely. But there are some welcome reminders of Poco's country-rock past on this, Cotton's "Sometimes (We Are All We Got)" is a totally underrated classic and - despite the band already planning their exit from ABC Records - here they sound as if they are trying. And, well, they mostly succeed. 

6. A Good Feelin' To Know (1972)

I'm pretty sure that a lot of Poco fans would find this ranking way too low for what is generally considered one of the best - if not the best - of the Furay era. But I have some...reservations. A Good Feelin' To Know was the band's overreaction to what they felt was a limited and limiting production courtesy of Steve Cropper on predecessor From The Inside, so they veer into a very slick production. Also, seemingly every songwriter in the band strives for epics, not always with entirely convincing results. Cotton's "Ride The Country" is a nice first stab at the western epic he always tried to write, only slightly let down by his pressed nasal faux-Neil Young vocal, while Schmit's "Restrain" gets a bit on my nerves and Furay's "Sweet Lovin'" can never quite live up to its grandiose gospel opening. The shortest song here, a cover of Stephen Stills' "Go And Say Goodbye" with split lead vocals, is also one of the best, because it isn't overwrought, just a great cover of a very good song. And then there's the title track, the album that should've made Poco and finally broke them. When the album barely made the Top 75 and the single failed to find commercial success, Richie Furay decided that Poco were probably never going to make it commercially and started to look elsewhere.

5. Rose Of Cimarron (1976)

An ultra-underrated album from the tail end of the Cotton-Young-Scmit-Grantham era. After predecessor Head Over Heels flirted a lot with being a pop record with country leanings, Rose Of Cimarron redresses the balance towards country, even if production and playing stays pop-adjacent, adding to the questions of why the original(ish) Poco never did break through. Young's title track has become a genre-classic, and tracks like the country medley "Company's Comin'/Slowpoke", "Too Many Nights Too Long", "Starin' At The Sky" and "P.N.S. (When You Come Around)" should have been. Great album, top to bottom. 

4. From The Inside (1971)

Again, I talked quite a bit about this album in the write-up of its One Buck Records companion album From The Outside In, so I'll keep it short here. Unloved dry soundscape by Steve Cropper and everything, this is a great album, no matter how many doubts the band has. The songs are what counts: Other than the long, slow and way too long remake of "Do You Feel It, Too?", every song here is good, and some are great, like Richie Furay's "Just For Me And You".  

3. Head Over Heels (1975)

For their debut with ABC Records, Poco brought out a twelve-song set full of short, crisp, beautifully arranged songs, mostly straddling the line between country and pop. Which, incidentally, is the sweet spot for this band. This is what they do best. Highlights are too numerous to mention, although it's again a  mystery why a song like Timothy Schmit's "Keeop On Tryin'" didn't become a hit. Story of their career...

2. Cantamos (1974)

Yes, this also got resequenced around here, and yes, I said a bunch of stuff, so no need for many more words. The songs are a batch of winners with only one so-so number (Young's ) in the middle. Honestly, this is a 100% effort for what could have been a record contract filler, as this turned out to be the last record for Epic. It also has two of my absolute favorite Poco songs of all time, Cotton's "Western Waterloo" and Schmit's "Whatever Happened To Your Smile". Just great stuff, but not quite as great as... 

1. Crazy Eyes (1973)

'Nuff said. 

(Several times...)

And here it is, folks, the end of this first installment of Discography, which hopefully puts you in the mood to give a listen or relisten to the best the band had to offer, which I maintain, is some of the best of its genre. 

And since all of you faithful deserve a little something for reading along, today's musical bonus is The Last Roundup, the live album that was prepped for release as Poco's thirtienth album in 1978, but was shelved when Schmit was recruited by the Eagles and left the band, with the band going on an indefinite hiatus, that finally wasn't very indefinite...It's a really nice album that gives you tons of highlights from the band's mid-to-late 70s output. It also has Richie Furay guest on two numbers (though weirdly he takes lead on "Magnolia", instead of one of his own numbers). 

So, Poconuts, and Poconuts in training, enjoy some of the finest country-rock of its time, with the albums listed above or The Last Roundup, with the link for once part of the write-up...

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?  

All Pearls, No Swine - Same As It Ever Was...

 

All Pearls, No Swine is back, and for the first time with live compiling, or almost! I compiled this a couple of weeks ago and, uh, that's it. No particular organizing principle, no nothing – which means, it's the same as it ever was. Only one principle, same as it ever was: quality control. Good stuff from mostly unknown, or little-known properties, same as it ever was. A mix of some rock, some folk, some country-leaning stuff, same as it ever was.

Thirty nine volumes in we still have time and opportunity to discover some folks here, but by this stage the number of alumni starts to rise. Veterans Podito, Doug Firebaugh and big brother Alex Taylor have already shown up several times, all coming up with quality contributions once more. We've met Toad once before, and they're back with a real corker: Almost twelve minutes of "Life Goes On" - which, with a title and song length like that, is obviously the compilation closer. Loose Boots are back with another little country rock gem, "Only Lonely Roads", while German folk outsider Sibylle Baier comes up with another narcoleptic folk beauty, “Colour Green”.

We also say hello to a couple of newcomers like Sum Pear, Amigo, Blaze Foley, Mac Davis, Gold and the intreaguingly titled Don Speer And The Hudson Profit Expedition. We also get some prog with the likes of Chetarca and then-Yugoslavian combo Smak,while Tom Eslick and Victoria bring different types of folk, the latter by covering Warren Zevon's little-known early pearl “Tule's Blues”. And finally, as possibly the best-known name in the bunch, there's Tommy Bolin, upping the rock factor with an punchy demo of “Wild Dogs”.

So, twenty fine tracks of music worthy of being (re)discovered music of the 1970s. Same as it ever was! So, have a good start into the weekend with this, a lovely soundtrack to your saturday morning or afternoon...

Two Halves Of Seven Equal ? - Or Poco's Weird Math Problem

Uh-oh. That's no doubt what the remaining members of Poco must've thought when band leader and main songwriter Richie Furay handed in his resignation just before the release of Crazy Eyes. Gone was Furay's recognizable voice, his stage presence, and most importantly, the songs. To be fair, the band had come a long way since Furay had utterly dominated the songwriting on the band's first two bands. Paul Cotton brought a strong songwriting presence immediately, and had three songs apiece on From The Inside and A Good Feelin' To Know and two - the same as Furay - (not counting a coer each) on Crazy Eyes. But Schmit had been content to contribute the occasional ballad, and now had to step up his production, while Rusty Young's real coming out as a songwriter would have to wait for another album.

So while the odds for a quality album seemed slim, the now quartet acquits itself pretty nicely. While Young contributes only one song, his "Rocky Mountain Breakdown" is the best of his country reels, and has a cameo of founder Jim Messina on mandolin. The biggest surprise are Tim Schmit's songs, especially "Skatin'"  and "Just Call My Name", which see Poco experimenting - for the first and only time, really - with a harder edged guitar rock sound. While Paul Cotton had been drafted into the band specifically to beef up the rock guitar in Poco's country rock, Schmit had mainly been known for delicate ballads, but does a pretty good job on these, while Cotton's opener "Driving Wheel" is another of his storytelling epics and quite impressive, while expansive closer "You've Got Your Reasons" also does quite nicely. "Faith In The Families" was a stage favorite and maybe thus chosen to represent the album on their Greatest Hits collection. 

So most of the album's songs were fine, and yet there was something off about Seven, something that made me rarely put the album on and often pull it out of the CD player before the album was done. And yet it took me only a cool 20+ years to figure it out. Sure, having it on CD with no side breaks, and having listened to it about three times in that time span didn't help, but still: For a dude who - since this lil' blog adventure started - spends a lot of time thinking about sequencing, it's kind of tough to realize that Poco did the old 'one rock/quick side, one ballad/slow side' and that's caused such a weird, and not entirely satisfactory, listening experience. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg thing: Did I not listen a lot to the album because it's running so weirdly, or did I not realize why it's running so weirdly because I barely listened to it. It's the latter, of course, but still: consider the One Buck Guy miffed that he missed this little detail. Then again, since the start of this blog adventure I'm much more sensitive to these things than before, so beforehand I jad just shrugged it off, and the album with it. 

To be fair, this two different sides deal is a weird gambit for a band like Poco, whose music lives between these poles, but is never that rocking, nor that slow, comfortably living in a midtempo world that carries hallmarks of both sides. So it was always a weird idea that Poco would try to attach two identities to two album sides. It's just not a good fit. What happened with the original configuration of the album left me baffled, on numerous levels. On one hand, possibly to fulfill the 'rock side' part of the concept, there were Schmit's heavy rock numbers, So it was not only strange to have two heavy rock tunes from Schmit, but it was even weirder that they ,  each other back to back. But the conception also explains why - after the reasonably promising first half - the album sort of drifts away together with the listener's attention when ballads and midtempo numbers are all cluttered together in the second half. 

This can of course be corrected in a rather simple manner: Resequence the album so that the ill-fitting two side concept is dissolved. Alternate the rock and slower songs, as well as the Cotton and Schmit vocals, and you have a version of Seven that is a much better listen. Which is - you might've guessed - exactly what our One Buck Record of the day is. A sronger version of a pretty good, if not quite top-tier, Poco album. there's a lot of worse ways to spend half an hour. 

Hey, You Wanna Take a Ride In Kris Delmhorst's Cars?

 

Aaaaaand here's the last part of our impromptu Cars appreciation week here at One Buck Records, appropriately titled Cars. That is of course because it's a tribute from former-Brooklynite-adopted-Bostonian Kris Delmhorst to one of the city's premier bands. To do the songs of Ocasek & Co. justice, modern-day folkie Delmhorst has invited a ton nof musical friends to pump new life into these songs, folks like fellow Bostonian (and then-labelmate) Mark Erelli on Lap Steel and backing vocals or classically trained bass player and producer Zack Hickman, mainly known for collaborating with Josh Ritter. As a special bonus, she also gets original Car Greg Hawkes to play some Ukulele on the album! 

As a matter of fact, it's the musical coloring that Delmhorst and her assembled crew do, that makes the difference. The songs are great, obviously, but Delmhorst and collaborators add all the bells and whisteles – sometimes literally – that make Cars thoroughly enjoyable: From Penny Whistle to Clarinet to Banjo to Mandolin to Laura Cortese's very present fiddle, there's a ton of interesting stuff going on here musically, that saves this from being a nicely meant but underwhelming tribute. “You Might Think“ is paced by a fiddlepart that I love, while “Shake It Up” gets a New Orleans Brass Band—style arrangement and “Magic” transforms from a giddy pop song into a delicate ballad. 

On “Why Can't I Have You” Delmhorst brings the speed way down and the moodiness way up. “Tonight She Comes” with accordion and fiddle sounds like a folk song, though the lively group vocals betray its original perfect pop side, while “You Wear Those Eyes” gets a slightly jazzy makeover. Drive is probably the most conventional covr here, and while the song stays beautiful, Delmhorst doesn't do much of note with it. But sometimes a faithful cover is a-okay also, I guess.

Cars is a very fine album that gives a new spin and shine to these Cars warhorses, and Delmhorst's love for the band and the originals celearly shines through. The band gets a 'thank you for the summer of '84' credit, when Heartbreak City blew up and presumably led young Kris to the Cars. Consequently, she covers all five of that album's singles. Anyhow, full speed ahead for some nice reimaginings of some of the band's biggest and best...

...The Time That Two Future Cars Took A Turn Down Folk Rock Avenue...

Welcome back to Cars appreciation week! Oh, you didn't know it was Cars appreciation week around here? Neither did I, until just about now. But mentioning the long and winding path to the seeming overnight success of the Cars made me think that Ric Ocasek's and Benjamin Orr's  unexpected detour into folk/soft rock is worth a detour. So we jump in the car, next destination: Milkwood. 

So how exactly did Ocasek and Orr end up singing three-harmony soft folk songs? Blame Jim "Jas" Goodkind, who searched for band members to form a blues rock group (well, it was the early 70s...) and ended up with one Richard Otcasek, armed with an acoustic guitar and a couple of songs. So the two forgot about the whole blues rock deal and played as an acoustic duo, before Otcasek proposed bringing in his old friedn from high school, Benjamin Orzechowski. Milkwood built a bit of a following in Boston and the area, then signed with Paramount Records to record 1973's How's The Weather?, our One Buck Record of the day. 

Hey, what is Waylon Jennings doing there on the right? Oh, hold on, it's Benjamin Ortchowski, soon to lose the beard and then a ton of letters of his name...

And of course there is more to Milkwood than that, because Ocasek and Orr met Greg Hawkes while working on How's The Weather?, adding sax and taking care of the horn arrangements. So while Milkwood doesn't sound anything like The Cars, it's interesting that three fifths of the band were assembled here to work on an album that Milkwood had high hopes in, but sank like a stone. When How's The Weather? flopped, the band was done within weeks of that failure, with Orr and Ocasek moving on to other short-lived bands, until...well, you know. 

But enough about the band, what about the music? Well, it'spretty neat. Nothing earth-shaking, very much in the vein of America, with Ocasek's decidedly odd humour and slightly askew point of view only shining through in very brief moments. Ocasek is at least very well cosplaying the part of the sensitive folkie, with song titles including "Dream Trader", "Winter Song" and - don't laugh - "Timetrain Wonderwheel". This is all very pleasant, if not exactly what you'd expect three future Cars to come up with. But it's definitely more than just youthful ephemera. It will probably not climb up your personal best albums ever list, but it's a really nice early 70s folk-rock (with soft rock touches) album, if you are in for that kind of thing. 

Aah, the letters are still there, but the future Mr. Orr is much more recognizable like that...and check out the snazzy 'stache on Slick Ric...

Today's offering is a whole package, including artwork, photos and a Boston Globe article with enlightenig comments by Jim Goodkind that functions as virtual liner notes for this album. So, enjoy your trip into Milkwood, then we will be back with a last little Cars-related surprise in the next few days...