Word: poco
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Poco is just about all country rock music made by deceptively good musicians. The most significant improvement over last year's performance is the emergence of Paul Cotton as a lead guitarist, allowing the band to stretch out some of the songs. "Keeper of the Fire," with its insistent rhythms, and the stretched out "C'mon," now closing the show, gave him a chance to show his abilities. Cotton is not Dicky Betts, or Eric Clapton, but his rock lines, though predictable, are more than adequate. He's also a very fine country rock guitarist, a genre which demands special...
Cotton's electric influences have far from absorbed the band's other styles. Poco has long included an acoustic segment in their shows, pickin' their way through "You Are the One," "Honky-Tonk Downstairs," and their medley of "Hard Luck," "Child's Claim to Fame," and "Pickin' up the Pieces." The acoustic songs, particularly "Honky-Tonk Downstairs," retain much more country feeling than the electric music. These songs are Rusty Young's, and he acknowledges his pedal steel predecessors with some of the purest country steel guitar outside Nashville on "Honky-Tonk," and his own instrumental "Grand Junction," with...
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...
...POCO REALLY functions on Richie Furay's limitless energy. Furay is the embodiment of how much fun it is to play rock 'n' roll for people. He must be a joy to play lead guitar for--he's one of the finest rhythm guitarists playing. Laugh not--playing good rhythm is tough, because you're responsible for pushing the lead guitarist to whatever heights he's trying to achieve, as well as keeping the music on an even keel by keeping the time and most of the beat, and most importantly, filling out the sound as though there...
...Poco's live show is an hour and a half of good, solid, adolescent fun. Good-time music, as homemade and homegrown as the assemblage that's the cover of their latest album. An encore is just icing. Yet, from last year, I knew their encore highlights their show. It's so theatrical--five minutes of screaming, shouting, chanting applause, with a personal attempt by the MC that finally brings them back, and into "El Tonto de Nadie, Regressa," 27 minutes that proves their musical expertise. The song is a montage of tempo changes, and a collage of guitar styles...