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.