Well there’s just a little bit of magic in the country music we’re singin’
"Pickin’ Up The Pieces"
Poco

It started with the Byrds’ "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo".  Suddenly, country music infected rock and roll.  It was unforeseen.  And largely ignored.

Until Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Suddenly, rock music was smooth where it used to be rough.  It was down home where it used to be citified.  And the public embraced this sound.

Simultaneous with CSN there was another country rock band, which is what we called them back then, Poco.

I’m not going to tell you that Poco’s debut is as good as CSN’s, but it’s still a masterpiece, it’s still perfection.  But it didn’t connect with the audience.  And, after a follow-up, which was an artistic disappointment, Jim Messina, a founder of the group with Richie Furay, decamped.  For the executive suite at CBS Records.  To become a producer.  And that’s when he met Kenny Loggins.

Thirty odd years later, many people have a bad taste in their mouth regarding Loggins & Messina.  After breaking up with his newfound partner, Kenny Loggins became wimpier and wimpier.  And started testifying about his love life in public.  It was so saccharine that you wanted to puke.  And then there was the little matter of L&M’s biggest hit, "Your Mama Don’t Dance".  Made for Top Forty radio in an era when nobody listened to hit radio, the track was embraced by casual fans and played to death and if you play it right now I’m going to leave my house, track the sound down and SLEDGEHAMMER your stereo.

So, L&M’s image has been tarnished.

But hindsight doesn’t give you an accurate picture of what took place as a career developed.

"Sittin’ In" wasn’t quite CSN’s debut, but it was perfectly formed.  In an era when it usually took three albums to get it together, to make a dent in the public consciousness.  Somehow, Jimmy Messina started over and got it right.

>From the opening acoustic guitar notes of "Nobody But You" you were hooked.

Somehow, music has retreated to a no sun affair.  You wear black clothes.  Go to a dingy club at night.  What’s wrong with a little sun?  A little warmth?

The debut was probably the best record, but every album through 1974’s "Mother Lode" contained gems.  And the latter was a minor masterpiece in its own right.  Hunkering down to get it right, being minor and personal, not swinging for the fences, Loggins & Messina generated an INTIMACY that is at the heart of great records.

They made one more studio album and broke up.

But last year they got back together.

Ten years too late if you ask me.  Everybody else reunited in the nineties and took as much money off the table as they could.  To get a boomer audience to go to a concert in the twenty first century you had to be a SUPERSTAR, like the Stones or McCartney…

But, L&M hit the boards anyway.

And not every gig sold out.

But the show was pure magic.

And a live album was released.  On Rhino.  And THEREFORE, I can play it on my podcast.

I won’t say that every track on the new live CD, "Live: Sittin’ in Again at Santa Barbara Bowl", cuts the original.  Still, there’s magic.  In "Angry Eyes".  And, especially, "Same Old Wine".

Don’t listen if you still have that bad taste in your mouth.  But, if you still harbor some warmth for that era, when country infiltrated rock, before Garth Brooks came along and the scenario flipped, and there was a little bit of rock and roll in the country, listen to this.  Not for me.  But for the music.

You can listen to or download the podcast from Rhino’s site: http://rhino.com/rzine/rhinocasts/index.lasso.

Or you can subscribe in the iTunes Music Store.  Just search for "Lefsetz" and the Rhinocast will come up.