FURAY'S POGO AT TROUBADOUR

By Michael Etchison

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

Pogo is not quite the house band of the Troubadour; it only seems that way. Most clubs should have a house band that good.

Not, unfortunately, that their opening night this time around was the best they have been. More than once, they seemed to be straining to keep it together. Since I have never seen a hint of this before, I take it that it will not happen often.

Their material (all written by Richie Furay) remains divided between rock and country, neither pure. "How Many More" for example, begins in an easy lope and unobtrusively but rapidly becomes very powerful, only to back off, then do it again.

The high point of the set I saw was bassist Randy Meisner's singing of "Anyway Bye Bye," in which he started out sounding something like Rusty Draper in "Night Life" and rising to a falsetto climax that sparked cheers from the partisan audience.

As I listened to them, I found myself thinking that there are two singer-songwriters whom Furay should get to know. EAch of them writes something like the others, but not so much that no cross-pollination would be possible. Then I realized I was thinking of Steve Stills and Neil Young, and the Buffalo Springfield is already dead.

ROOT MUSIC

By Pete Senoff

Open City

Roots music invaded the City of Angels in a big way last week as the Troubadour, Whisky, and UCLA's Royce Hall presented programs of country-western, rustic-folk, Irish-folk and Judy Collins.

In the river of promotion that receded the arrival of Pogo and the Burritos, the most oft-used words flying through the flack were "country-western." Of the two groups, the Burritos were clearly (in performance) more in the C&W mainstream.

In comparision, Pogo's opening night performance at the Troubadour illustrated that the group is a great rock unit employing country-western influences. After being introducted as "Doug 'Weston's Version of the Rodeo," Pogo, led by Richie Furay and Randy Meisner ran up to the stage, yipping and yelling their Minnie Pearl-like "Howdies" and proceded to do a set of material that perhaps could best be labled: uptempo Buffalo Springfield (they even included one Springfield standard, Furay's "A Child's Claim to Fame." The makeup of Pogo, four guitars and a drummer, produced a lot of volume...perhaps too much for the usually folk-oriented Troubadour. Their flowing harmonies, however, came over perfectly. I'm in no way condemning the group - their fast-paced beat is infectious and you can easily sense their inherent enthusiasm for the music. But they just aren't, despite claims to the contrary, a country-western band. For instance, after doing a series of four or five C&W tunes in their uptempo style, they announced that they were going to do a rock number called "My Kind of Love." To the average listener (and the Troubadour audience was made up of what might be called "average Pogo listeners"...many teenyboppers and a smattering of the Hollywood set, including Laugh-In's Goldie Hawn), you just couldn't tell it apart from the other numbers.

Also Pogo's steel guitarist does some unique things with his instrument...varying degrees of distortion and feedback, for instance. But distortion and feedback doesn't belong in the C&W genre - they're tools of rock. Anyway, the group is fun to watch and they'll probably make Epic very happy with their future record sales.