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Loggins & Messina
Soft-rock superstars
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Nostalgia’s a funny thing: it can make you look forward to seeing a band your critical faculties warn you against. So it was that I found myself at Bank of America Pavilion a week ago Monday for the Loggins & Messina reunion tour, even though I’d have a problem giving an objective rave to anything they ever did (except maybe their first single, "Nobody But You"). As it happens, I was in high school during L&M’s four-year heyday (1971–’75). And like everyone else who swears he was listening to the Stooges and the Dolls back then, I spent much of those years immersed in my Elton John, CSN, and L&M albums. Loggins & Messina, however, have largely been wiped from the collective memory banks. Yeah, a couple of the syrupy Kenny Loggins ballads ("Danny’s Song" and "House at Pooh Corner") get played as oldies, but those were no more typical of his L&M output than his later, slicker solo work. In fact, the act was largely singer/guitarist Jim Messina’s baby, expanding the country/rock outline he’d drawn up with Buffalo Springfield and Poco. So it’s ironic that Loggins went on to have the solo hits whereas Messina’s done virtually nothing of note for 29 years. Playing before two-thirds of a house at the Pavilion, the duo’s appearance reflected the turns their lives have taken, with Loggins’s hair coiffed and styled and Messina’s all but gone. Otherwise, their ’70s set was reprised with no updates, few diversions (one Loggins solo song, one each from the Springfield and Poco), and, really, no need for either. Unlike Simon and Garfunkel at their most recent reunion, these two seem to like each other, and they got a buzz from revisiting their catalogue. Yes, there were plenty of soft-rock ballads, but the set proved surprisingly eclectic, with the quasi-prog "Be Free," the already-retro-in-’71 "Your Mama Don’t Dance," and the breezy, nautical "Vahevala," which does in four minutes what Jimmy Buffett has done in his entire career. "Nobody But You" was the encore, still as deliciously tuneful as soft rock gets. Despite an all-new band (with the requisite horns and violin), very little had changed: the harmonies were spot on, and Messina remains an underrated guitarist. And some of the dated ’70s-sensitive lyrics were charming: "Tell her she’s the kind of a woman who can send you home, knowing that you’ve really been loved" is the kind of romantic advice you just don’t get in a contemporary pop song.
By Brett Milano
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