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...