Word: organics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Twenty minutes of Bach's French Overture on the harpsichord. A pair of Bach sonatas with harpsichord accompaniment. Some Mozart and some more Bach, this time grumbled out on a pipe organ. Such a program has always had its place in concert life, if only as a vaguely ennobling form of musical anesthesia. But if anyone had suggested it to an impresario, he would have been shown, with gentle pity, to the street...
...onstage for a curtain call, shoulders hunched in a simian crouch, folded his hands in a Zen gesture of thanks. Grabbing his score from the harpsichord, he waved it over his head, signaled for quiet and asked, "How'd you like to hear the same piece on the organ?" When the audience roared, he clambered up to the organ and obliged. After his final scheduled piece, Newman announced, "We have to get out at 10:50. Those of you who want to, stay. I'll play Bach's Klavierubung until then." As an afterthought he added, "Come...
...express train. This startles those who learned their Bach straight, but Newman conquers the doubters with sheer personal conviction. There is something reminiscent of Schweitzer in the way Newman's intellectual and religious philosophy, Zen, permeates his music making and mesmerizes his youthful audiences. Even on the shrill organ at Philharmonic Hall, which at top volume sounds for all the world like a herd of angry Buicks, Newman is enormously compelling...
Rusty Young's steel and dobro playing is the instrumental core of Poco. His strength is his willingness to explore the rock possibilities of his country music instruments. From the steel, he pulls the Hammond organ sound vital to the ballads by playing through a Leslie tone cabinet, the standard Hammond amplifier. He's content to play the dobro through a wah-wah pedal, making "Good Feeling" sound like it's being played in a wind tunnel. Yet he can also provide country licks that would do the folks at the Grand Ole Opry proud...
...Tonto" is Rusty's song. He revisits each of the sounds that can be pulled from a steel guitar, particularly its use as an organ, and a vibrato guitar. Until the last five minutes, which are his to do with as he pleases. At which point he goes completely crazy, as does the band, and rips off Hendrix acid guitar licks and glissandos, complete with hand gestures. He knocks over his chair, and plays on his knees, and then he plays pedal steel with the chair. More Hendrix; then feedback; and finally some Moog licks. The element of surprise...