The Trick Is To Keep Going

Poco, one of the first country-rock bands to achieve artistic and some commercial success in the late 1960s and early ’70s, is certainly not completely under the radar. But their early catalogue to some extent apparently is.

The group that came from the splintering of Buffalo Springfield, with singer/songwriter-guitarist Richie Furay and guitarist-producer Jim Messina from the Springfield joining with pedal steel player Rusty Young, drummer George Grantham and bassist Randy Meisner, produced some of the most pleasing harmonies, hottest picking and well-written songs in the early days of country-rock.

By the time first Meisner, who is credited on the first album but was out by the time it was released, then Messina, Furay, and later addition bassist Timothy B. Schmit had departed, the group recorded six outstanding albums. Poco has marched on over the years, made some interesting records and is together today with Young and Paul Cotton, who replaced Messina, still in the band. They enjoy a loyal following and have actually staged some reunion gigs with original members this year.

When a few years ago, it came time for me to track down the early records that I liked so much, I found it wasn’t easy finding what I wanted as the CDs released in the early ’90s were scarce. In Europe, Beat Goes On Records issued a number of two-fers of these albums but I was unsure about the mastering quality. (continue reading…)

From the opening double guitar lines of the Blind Faith classic Had To Cry Today, Steve Winwood’s and Eric Clapton’s performance on their recently released CD/DVD Live From Madison Square Garden is electrifying.

Not electrifying in a showy, glitzy, glamorous sense, but in a musical sense. The two giants whose careers started in the 1960s and have paralleled each other, intersecting once for an extended period in 1969, show they are still fully capable of producing inspring and creative performances on their own material and covers of some of their contemporaries.

It seems fitting that the duo begins their MSG show, which was recorded in February, 2008 over three nights, with the opening track from their only album together, Blind Faith.

It also shows off Winwood as an extraordinary and somewhat overlooked guitarist, who is Clapton’s perfect foil, particularly when they solo simultaneously at the end of the tune.

The track, always overshadowed by two others on that 1969 album, Cant’ Find My Way Home and Presence Of The Lord, also gets its due, as a riff-driven vehicle but with some very unconventional chord changes for a guitar-slinging number. (continue reading…)

In Concerts Vol. 3, I wrote about the single concert performance that was probably the best out of hundreds I’ve attended and certainly the most influential: Cream at the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, September, 1967.

That wouldn’t be the only time I would see this amazing trio. I was lucky enough to see them three more times in a little more than a year. The second opportunity came in April, 1968. I was still going to school in Boston at Berklee School of Music and coming home on weekends to rehearse and/or play the Connecticut club scene with Pulse.

Cream was scheduled to play at Boston’s Back Bay Theatre in April, but they were also going to play near my hometown in New Haven at Yale’s Woolsey Hall on April 10th and I decided to come home for that, mainly because I had a new girlfriend who was still in school in New Haven. This would be our first big concert date. That made sense.

The intact ticket above is from that date. I didn’t  hold on to many tickets or stubs from that period, but I kept this one tucked away in an old wallet. I’m glad I did. The reason it’s intact is that the Yale students didn’t take or rip any tickets, they just looked at them. Thank you, Yalies.

After playing for a week of a scheduled two-week engagement in Boston in September, 1967, Cream cut short its stay there over money problems with the owner of the Psychedelic Supermarket, not to mention they disliked Boston because of the discrimination and derogatory comments on the streets they endured, and moved on to play New York at several venues, including the Cafe Au Go Go and Village Theatre (later Fillmore East).

They also played two shows in Michigan, the second at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in a much booted performance with fairly decent sound, a pretty good example of what they sounded like that fall. From there, they toured Europe fairly extensively, leading up to the release of their second album, Disraeli Gears (November, U.K., December, U.S.), the record that really started to break them as a big act. (continue reading…)