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Wilco Versus Poco
This might make me a pariah in these parts, but I never got Wilco. (although I seriously love the Jayhawks.) Sky Blue Sky is perfectly pleasant, but to my ear, lacks substance, like a Blueshammer song about pickin' cotton. I learned to sing by singing along with records by Billy Joel, Elton John and Bob Seger, so the following, cut and pasted from Bob Lefsetz' blog, really hit home with me.
"I’ve Loved These Days
Meat Loaf never made it in L.A. Spin "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" and an Angeleno will be flummoxed. Who’s Phil Rizzuto? Sure, decades later we’ve heard it, but "Bat Out Of Hell" was in no one’s collection, the record got no airplay. And Billy Joel got little more.
Sure, "Piano Man" was a hit. And "The Stranger" made headway, but on the left coast Billy Joel was not a superstar. Even to this day, he might be able to sell out Yankee Stadium, but in the City of Angels he’s lucky if he can sell out an arena.
When we get nostalgic for the seventies in LaLa Land, we think about Van Halen, we wax rhapsodic about the new wave club scene. The concept of a Billy Joel radio concert on KMET is laughable. But surfing the Web over the weekend I found just that, an FM broadcast of a Billy Joel concert at Nassau Coliseum back in 1977.
Over dinner, I’ll tell you how to find these things. Then again, if you don’t already know how, the information will be useless. You’ve got to search blogs, download via RapidShare or Megaupload, and then decompress the .rar file with an application you’ve downloaded from the Web. In an era where most people who might want to hear this show don’t even know where files download on their computer, this info might as well be etched in hieroglyphics. But if you’ve got a bit of savvy, the rewards are endless.
Not everything’s a hit. That Zeppelin show from Long Beach might be straight from the soundboard, but one listen was enough. But those Rolling Stones alternative takes were magical. And this Billy Joel concert is pristine.
They’ve even got the soundcheck. It’s an aural backstage pass.
And it takes a couple of numbers to get the sound right.
But then…
I thought Billy Joel was a joke until 1981, when he released "Songs In The Attic", a live reworking of his overlooked material from the seventies. I mean who wouldn’t hate a guy posing with an instrument he didn’t play on the cover of his album? I still don’t love "52nd Street", but "Summer, Highland Falls" brings me right back to my youth, working at a camp in the Catskills. And it’s not pure nostalgia, I can’t forget where I am now.
We are always what our situations hand us
Either sadness or euphoria
Ain’t that the truth. Maybe it’s because I hate the middle of the road. But that seems to be the story of my life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I fall on my face reaching for the stars, it’s a small price to pay for that warm feeling inside when I triumph.
I was high in the mountains, listening to this concert on my iPod, and I could see the history of our business in relief.
Billy Joel could certainly play. You could hear all those piano lessons. And his voice was still high and clear. And the lyrics, Billy was saying something.
Billy didn’t make it the first time out. He failed with the Hassles, his deal with Artie Ripp didn’t deliver a hit album. He ended up in L.A., playing in a bar. And ended up with a song, the aforementioned "Piano Man". And trying to follow it up, executing upon the same formula, "The Entertainer" immediately ejected serious listeners from his fan base. An artist doesn’t repeat himself, he keeps exploring.
Slow down you crazy child
You’re so ambitious for a juvenile
Today’s artists are built in a day. They buy a Mac, fire up GarageBand and record a track, post it on MySpace, immediately e-mail you an MP3, insist you pay attention. Whereas it used to be much harder to make it. You had to practice, play endless gigs, fight for a chance to get a deal. Where it still might take you multiple albums to break through.
But today it’s as if anybody who buys a ticket can play for the Yankees. And you wonder why we’ve stopped watching?
The major labels say they purvey the official merchandise. But if they’re not selling kids wet behind the ears, they’re selling safe shit like "The Entertainer". And suddenly able to have a voice, outsiders insist you listen to them, now they can broadcast their desire to be famous, even though they should be home practicing.
In other words, Billy Joel is fuckingfantastic.
And that’s a surprise three decades on. He was a niche player back then. A journeyman. And his multiple marriages and car wrecks have made him a modern joke. But at least he’s smart enough to stop recording. Oh, he can still play, but he seems to have run out of things to say.
And he used to have plenty he wanted to tell us. Especially when he still hadn’t made it, even after his first hit, when no one seemed to care.
In other words, we’re no longer getting the best and the brightest. They’re going into tech. Where you can operate unfettered and make real money. Shit, you can’t get rich in music, you can’t get enough people to pay attention. It’s not efficient. And maybe it’s this lack of efficiency, the wasted effort, that will finally deliver music worth hearing in the future.
There are no shortcuts. You aren’t born being able to program in C++, nor can a three year old play the piano. And those thirteen or fourteen, even seventeen or eighteen, haven’t lived enough to have anything worth listening to. It’s the rough edges, the hard life, that makes your stories interesting. Billy Joel ran away from his record label and played in a piano bar to survive. Today’s kids quit the soccer team and cut a record on their computer and now they’re ready for world domination. Huh?
They say that these are not the best of times
But they’re the only times I’ve ever known
That’s the problem, we baby boomers lived through the sixties and seventies. And today’s generation, our brethren purveying pabulum, want us to forget this golden age. An alternative take of "Gimmie Shelter" came over my iPod and I got goosebumps. I remembered hearing it for the first time in my buddy’s bedroom and being transfixed. Hate to tell you, nothing Wilco’s ever done is close.
Get pissed off. But as good as Wilco might be, bands of that caliber never made it in years past. Wilco was Poco. A good band that had fans, but not superstars. I’m waiting for superstars to return."
What do you think?
"I’ve Loved These Days
Meat Loaf never made it in L.A. Spin "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" and an Angeleno will be flummoxed. Who’s Phil Rizzuto? Sure, decades later we’ve heard it, but "Bat Out Of Hell" was in no one’s collection, the record got no airplay. And Billy Joel got little more.
Sure, "Piano Man" was a hit. And "The Stranger" made headway, but on the left coast Billy Joel was not a superstar. Even to this day, he might be able to sell out Yankee Stadium, but in the City of Angels he’s lucky if he can sell out an arena.
When we get nostalgic for the seventies in LaLa Land, we think about Van Halen, we wax rhapsodic about the new wave club scene. The concept of a Billy Joel radio concert on KMET is laughable. But surfing the Web over the weekend I found just that, an FM broadcast of a Billy Joel concert at Nassau Coliseum back in 1977.
Over dinner, I’ll tell you how to find these things. Then again, if you don’t already know how, the information will be useless. You’ve got to search blogs, download via RapidShare or Megaupload, and then decompress the .rar file with an application you’ve downloaded from the Web. In an era where most people who might want to hear this show don’t even know where files download on their computer, this info might as well be etched in hieroglyphics. But if you’ve got a bit of savvy, the rewards are endless.
Not everything’s a hit. That Zeppelin show from Long Beach might be straight from the soundboard, but one listen was enough. But those Rolling Stones alternative takes were magical. And this Billy Joel concert is pristine.
They’ve even got the soundcheck. It’s an aural backstage pass.
And it takes a couple of numbers to get the sound right.
But then…
I thought Billy Joel was a joke until 1981, when he released "Songs In The Attic", a live reworking of his overlooked material from the seventies. I mean who wouldn’t hate a guy posing with an instrument he didn’t play on the cover of his album? I still don’t love "52nd Street", but "Summer, Highland Falls" brings me right back to my youth, working at a camp in the Catskills. And it’s not pure nostalgia, I can’t forget where I am now.
We are always what our situations hand us
Either sadness or euphoria
Ain’t that the truth. Maybe it’s because I hate the middle of the road. But that seems to be the story of my life. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I fall on my face reaching for the stars, it’s a small price to pay for that warm feeling inside when I triumph.
I was high in the mountains, listening to this concert on my iPod, and I could see the history of our business in relief.
Billy Joel could certainly play. You could hear all those piano lessons. And his voice was still high and clear. And the lyrics, Billy was saying something.
Billy didn’t make it the first time out. He failed with the Hassles, his deal with Artie Ripp didn’t deliver a hit album. He ended up in L.A., playing in a bar. And ended up with a song, the aforementioned "Piano Man". And trying to follow it up, executing upon the same formula, "The Entertainer" immediately ejected serious listeners from his fan base. An artist doesn’t repeat himself, he keeps exploring.
Slow down you crazy child
You’re so ambitious for a juvenile
Today’s artists are built in a day. They buy a Mac, fire up GarageBand and record a track, post it on MySpace, immediately e-mail you an MP3, insist you pay attention. Whereas it used to be much harder to make it. You had to practice, play endless gigs, fight for a chance to get a deal. Where it still might take you multiple albums to break through.
But today it’s as if anybody who buys a ticket can play for the Yankees. And you wonder why we’ve stopped watching?
The major labels say they purvey the official merchandise. But if they’re not selling kids wet behind the ears, they’re selling safe shit like "The Entertainer". And suddenly able to have a voice, outsiders insist you listen to them, now they can broadcast their desire to be famous, even though they should be home practicing.
In other words, Billy Joel is fuckingfantastic.
And that’s a surprise three decades on. He was a niche player back then. A journeyman. And his multiple marriages and car wrecks have made him a modern joke. But at least he’s smart enough to stop recording. Oh, he can still play, but he seems to have run out of things to say.
And he used to have plenty he wanted to tell us. Especially when he still hadn’t made it, even after his first hit, when no one seemed to care.
In other words, we’re no longer getting the best and the brightest. They’re going into tech. Where you can operate unfettered and make real money. Shit, you can’t get rich in music, you can’t get enough people to pay attention. It’s not efficient. And maybe it’s this lack of efficiency, the wasted effort, that will finally deliver music worth hearing in the future.
There are no shortcuts. You aren’t born being able to program in C++, nor can a three year old play the piano. And those thirteen or fourteen, even seventeen or eighteen, haven’t lived enough to have anything worth listening to. It’s the rough edges, the hard life, that makes your stories interesting. Billy Joel ran away from his record label and played in a piano bar to survive. Today’s kids quit the soccer team and cut a record on their computer and now they’re ready for world domination. Huh?
They say that these are not the best of times
But they’re the only times I’ve ever known
That’s the problem, we baby boomers lived through the sixties and seventies. And today’s generation, our brethren purveying pabulum, want us to forget this golden age. An alternative take of "Gimmie Shelter" came over my iPod and I got goosebumps. I remembered hearing it for the first time in my buddy’s bedroom and being transfixed. Hate to tell you, nothing Wilco’s ever done is close.
Get pissed off. But as good as Wilco might be, bands of that caliber never made it in years past. Wilco was Poco. A good band that had fans, but not superstars. I’m waiting for superstars to return."
What do you think?
Views: 41
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by mojobone on -
I guess I'll have to investigate further; it's just I haven't heard a Wilco tune yet that inspired me to grab my guitar and go learn it. Subjective, as any discussion about music, it just never lit a fire under me.
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Permalink Reply by DublinBlues on
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>POCO isn't POCO without Richie.br />
I humbly disagree. And, I know we're talking present day. But let's not overlook a very talented musician IMO, who was part of some very good Poco albums.
I admit that I really cannot remember who replaced who , when, or at what time - but Paul Cotton's contributions really can't be overlooked. Great vocalist and guitar player.
Always loved when he sang Ride The Country, and his guitar solo on Good Feeling To Know - with Furay singing by the way. Both off the Good Feeling to Know album - if I remember right.
I refuse to google. It's a memory test!
For me, Poco was far from a blip on the music scene. The energy on Deliverin' was a testimony to that.
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Permalink Reply by David Houldcroft on -
I agree Paul's contributions can't be overlooked but Poco when Richie plays with them occasionally these days is still POCO. Paul can't carry the band and while Rusty is a wonderful musician is not a vocalist that can carry the band. If you get a chance see Richie's solo show. He is currently doing Crazy Eyes live which has not seen the stage in years .
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Permalink Reply by Terry Roland on -
For me, Poco was and remains Richie, Jim Messina and Rusty Young, who recorded Kind Woman under the guise of The Buffalo Springfield on the Last Time Around album on Atco. Don't know if any bands of the last 20 years in alt-country really have earned a comparison to Poco. Wilco is just not the same....IMO, Wilco is better compared with Greatful Dead with the emphasis on the interplay between style, instrumentation/jams and singer-songwriting......Poco were all energy, harmonies, great country-rock songwriting and a performance style second to none in their heyday....
This is a great, provocative thread..thanks for opening it!
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Permalink Reply by Terry Roland on
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Deliverin' for me, is one of the first real alt-country records. Paul Cotton's Bad Weather is one of the best damn country records ever recorded...and holds up live with he and Richie exchanging vocals...some great progressions and chord changes uncommon to the country-rock of the times..
tr
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Permalink Reply by Albert on -
I love both bands. I listen to Poco on sunny afternoons as sort of easy listening. Wilco demands a bit more of my time and I usually play them late at night. Was Gaugin better than van Gogh? Who can judge?
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Hutchinson on -
Geez, just enjoy the music you like. I sometimes like Poco and I sometimes Wilco. Bought most all both bands albums/CDS. Every band deserves their day in the sun. Let them be and get on with you life. Being a critic must blow huh? Try and think positive thoughts.
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Permalink Reply by Timothy Robert Mielke on
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I am a baby boomer and I think Wilco is America's best live band at this time. They just keep getting better. I have seen them three times in the last two years. The third time was the best concert I had ever been to. Their records up until the last one have never sounded the same musically. They remind me of "The Beatles" I will bet you that their next album, which they are suppose to start recording in January, will be their best ever and will finally show what these musicans are really capable of with the current line-up. By the way I find Son Volt extremely boring. All their albums sound exactly alike, You can shuffle them together and not be able to see any musical progression which would not be the same for Wilco.
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Permalink Reply by Terry Roland on
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mmmmtimothy, you make me want to see Wilco live.....what have I been missing? tr
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Permalink Reply by Terry Roland on
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As Lennon would no doubt reply today..."We are the superstars....and We all Shine On..." I love bands because of the lack of superstars and the maxium talent involved like Jeffy Tweedy, Richie Furay and Jim Messina....
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Permalink Reply by Terry Roland on
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I talk with Richie Furay a few times a year on increasing his profile as a major creator of country-rock music...This is the last piece I put out which I put up on my blog here on ND. Thought this might be thought provoking.
http://www.nodepression.com/profiles/blogs/richie-furay-of-the-buffalo
thanks
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Permalink Reply by Jack Williams on -
I thin Poco vs Wilco is to some extent an apples and oranges comparison (or Son Volt vs Wilco, for that matter). I had Poco's first album Picking up the Pieces and the 2 LP Very Best of Poco. Loved both, but didn't really follow them after that (1980 and after). I've have to say that I'm not as keen on Wilco after the departure of Jay Bennett. Some good stuff on A Ghost is Born, but passed on Sky Blue Sky and thinking I could have done without Wilco (the album).
I think Billy Joel's Turnstiles album, released in 1976, is absolutely great. It has the aforementioned "Summer, Highland Falls", which I love. Other great songs on that album are Miami 2017 (one of my favorite NY songs), Prelude/Angry Young Man, Say Goodby to Hollywood, and All You Wanna Do is Dance. I thought there was a lot of soul on that album. But that's pretty much it for me, as far as Billy Joel goes. The Stranger came out the next year, and while it had a few songs that I enjoyed somewhat (I might not change the station if they came on the radio), it was just not for me. A little too much pop and not enough rock and roll. Same with pretty much all of his subsequent work.
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