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...