Great Poco Release on Bootleg CD: Live from 1975

 

Poco: Live: Wollman Memorial Skating Rink New York 22^nd August 1975 (Rox Vox 2159)

Venue: As titled

Sound quality: Stunning. Significantly better than most other Rox Vox releases

Cover: digi-pak with slot inside holding 8-page booklet with photos and liner notes. Nice presentation.

Tracklist: Keep On Tryin’/ Sagebrush Serenade/ Blue Water/ Fools Gold/ Rocky Mountain Breakdown/ Bad Weather/ Hoedown/ Ride The Country/ Making Love/ Georgia Bind My Ties/ Restrain/ Railroad Days/ Sittin’ On A Fence/ High And Dry/ A Good Feelin’ To Know/ A Right Along

Comments: An article came through my Facebook newsfeed a couple of months ago with the poster taking issue with NPR's typically narrow focus and condescending attitudes towards rock, often ignoring it altogether. I'm no Deadhead, but leading off by referring to Jerry Garcia's playing on CSNY's "Teach Your Children" as "primitive" is not a good start. It's an instantly recognizable and inventive part of rock history and was recorded when Garcia had only been playing the instrument for about a week. If there is evidence that Garcia was a genius, that is exhibit A. And I wasn't the only one to notice the short shrift Rusty Young got for his innovative experiments on the pedal steel. Music coverage has expanded ~a little~ in recent years on NPR, but not so much that I didn't cancel their newsletter after giving it a second chance. Same ol' prejudice, priorities, and narrow vision. Some local NPR music programs seem to be far more adventurous than the national organization. I'm not a fan. So sue me.

 And now Rusty Young is dead, having passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack on April 14. While NPR, in their article dated Jan. 20, 2020, didn’t feel it necessary to include Young’s contribution to the expansion of the pedal steel, he will not be subject to such an oversight here. His contribution was HUGE.

 I first saw Poco in concert during their tour supporting the DeLIVErin’ album, an album I still rate among the Top 10 live albums of all time. And as good as that album was, the expanded performance at Trenton State Teacher’s College blew my 16 year-old mind away. The harmonies, the songs, the jams on medleys, and the other-worldly sound emanating from Rusty Young’s pedal steel – all of it. I looked around for a Hammond B-3 organ. It wasn’t there. That was Young coaxing organ sounds out of his pedal steel by playing chords through a Leslie cabinet when he wasn’t expertly playing more traditional runs to rock melodies.

Poco has never been the subject of bootlegger’s affections, receiving just one release during their heyday by the great TMOQ label, Country Bump (TMOQ 73036). TMOQ could certainly recognize a great live performance when they heard one. And if it’s a 1971 radio broadcast emanating from Columbia Studios in L.A., (9/30/71) all the better. It’s an album worth tracking down, but don’t expect to get it cheap. Despite being a band that never dominated the charts, Poco fans are a loyal bunch and Country Bump is one rare slab of vinyl.

Which brings us to this CD. In 1975, Poco was in a transitional period, having been reduced to a four piece with a label switch from Epic to ABC. Although their former label, Epic Records, released a contract fulfillment live album in 1976, that record was actually recorded in late 1974. With Poco’s first release on ABC, 1975’s Head Over Heels, the group seemed revitalized and it showed on their supporting tour. The album peaked on the Billboard album charts at number 43, far surpassing the previous year’s Seven, with their single, “Keep On Tryin’,” being the bands first single to break the top 100 since 1970’s “C’mon.”

Wollman Memorial Skating Rink starts off with “Keep On Tryin’” and Poco work a total of 4 songs from their current album into the set, including the fabulous (and criminally overlooked) “Georgia Bind My Ties.” Much of the rest of the set consists of more contrified material from their most recent albums (“Sagebrush Serenade,” “Blue Water,” “Bad Weather” being among the best), ending on a rockin’ note with a pairing of “A Good Feelin’ To Know” And “A Right Along,” the last being another overlooked gem by AOR radio from 1973.

If Poco had mellowed any since DeLIVErin’, it wasn’t much. This is the 2^nd best live album of the band’s career and compliments DeLIVErin’ nicely.

 Grade: A

Bonus view:

Double live CD by the Meat Puppets. Does it add up to one good one?

 

[review by Bill Glahn]

Meat Puppets: Meltdown/Attacked By Monsters (Interference INTR2CD0006)

Venue: (CD1) 9/1/88 KCRW Studios, Santa Monica, CA (CD2) 4/16/93 KCRW studios, Santa Monica, CA

Sound Quality: very good low generation broadcast recordings, mildly compressed

Cover: 8-page booklet and tray card in slimline double jewel case

Tracklist: (CD1) Introduction-In Love/ Wish Upon A Stone/ Light/ Touchdown King/ Bali Ha’i/ Automatic Mojo/ He’ll Have To Go/ Magic Toy Missing/ Pass Me By/ Meltdown (CD2) Introduction/ Lake Of Fire/ Violet Eyes/ Never To Be Found/ Attacked By Monsters/ El Paso City/ White Sport Coat

Comments: 

The phone is no friend of Curt Kirkwood's. Too often, the tidings it bears are foul. He calls them “incomings from Tempe.” They go like this: Your brother's wife overdosed this morning; she's dead. Your brother got busted again last night, and he told the cops he was you. Your brother showed up at my house yesterday with a crack pipe and a bag of needles, and he looks like hell. Your brother took off from rehab. Your brother's holed up in a Motel 6 on the Black Canyon Freeway, smoking rock like it's judgment day. (Austin Chronicle, Shooting Star, January 1, 1999)

That was just the first paragraph of the revealing article in the Austin Chronicle documenting the band’s decent. You can read the whole sordid affair on this link. 

The last 2 albums that the original line-up would make until 2019 were the ominously titled Too High To Die (1994) and No Joke! (1995). The first of those two yielded the band’s only chart single, “Backwater.” The second, despite a crafty production by the Butthole Surfers’ Paul Leary (a man experienced in navigating minefields in a band prone to drug excess with newfound major label cash), barely dented Billboard’s Top 200 album chart. No Joke!, may have sounded great, but the subject matter was something radio wouldn’t touch.

As unauthorized live CDs go, there isn't a whole lot around on the Meat Puppets. That makes this release something of a surprise.

Meltdown/Attacked By Monsters presents two radio broadcasts from college station KCRW in Santa Monica. The first in 1988 when the band were darlings of college radio and the alternative press, the second as a major label act on the verge of stardom – in no small amount due to a guest appearance by the Kirkwood brothers on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged session.

On the 1988 broadcast, the Meat Puppets appear fairly focused on playing material for their album-in-progress, Monsters, with 4 tracks from that release and one more that would appear as a bonus track on a later CD re-issue of that album. There’s a couple of tracks from previous albums included in the set and a couple offbeat covers including “He’ll Have To Go,” performed in a way Jim Reeves fans couldn’t possibly envision. But a significant portion of the disc is taken up by the band doing their best to be “witty.” And failing. The sorriest example being the rather stupid rendition of “Bali Ha’i” that takes up the first 2 minutes of track 5 followed by 5 more minutes of a ludicrous conversation about Brian Wilson. “Brian Wilson led the band, Brian & the Family Stone and their big hit, ‘Stand.’” Please. And the DJ, of course, laughs at every witticism and plays along. She obviously feels the hipness of their presence and wants them back. Unfortunately these bits of comedy, which you will never want to hear again, are not indexed separately from the songs. There is some relief that the next track, a blistering version of “Automatic Mojo,” is a stand-alone track. As is the take on “He’ll Have To Go.” Then back to inane conversation tacked onto “Magic Toy Missing.” Disc one contains some brilliant moments and far too many cringe-worthy ones. On to disc two.

The 1993 broadcast repeats the formula of not separating songs from conversation, only it's much shorter in length. Sure, you get the song you’ve been waiting all this time to hear, “”Lake of Fire.” And it concludes with an acoustic version of Marty Robbins’ “White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation” before the all-too-precious DJ concludes the session. But it’s a totally uninspired version. The drugs are, apparently, wearing off.

In totality, the combined length of BOTH discs is a bit under 72 minutes. The amount of music presented is about half that. With a lot of editing, this might amount to a fine vinyl LP. Considering that the cost would be about the same as this 2CD without the bullshit, maybe some enterprising vinyl company will do just that.

Grade: despite the excellent sound, this gets a C-

Bonus view: a full concert from 1992. Great sound and visuals.