A Streaming Pile of Hit: Ric Cua

A Streaming Pile of Hit: Ric Cua - Koo'-ah

Time for another edition of A Streaming Pile of Hit - where you put the "s" in hit is up to you.

Not sure why I've been going back to the old CCM stuff that I was particularly enamoured with back in the day. Rick Cua had been playing bass in The Outlaws, most notably on a couple of their later albums: Ghost Riders (1980) and Los Hombres Malo (1982), and when he dropped his first solo album, Koo'-ah, in 1982 I found myself really looking forward to hearing it. It's weird that this is listed as being from 1985 on iTunes ... I can't make heads or tails out of where the dates come from.

After all, Hughie Thomasson, Billy Jones, as well as Freddie Salem from The Outlaws were playing guitar on the album (and killing it, by the way), and former Wings drummer Joe English was featured on several tracks. If nothing else, there was some pedigree on the album.

The songs, though, were mostly middle of the road, with a little extra punch here and there. I remember wanting to like this more than I did. The songs were decent for all that, and lyrically a little heavy-handed and trite at the same time. Considering this was 1982, it was weird that he felt the need to write a song like "You Can Still Rock 'N Roll" that was essentially a weaker reworking of Larry Norman's "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music" from a decade earlier. This was still a thing?

Oh well, while I'd pick up the occasional CD later by Rick, I was never really that big a fan. Going back to the beginning with Koo'-ah was an interesting trip down memory lane, but aside from the tracks that featured members from The Outlaws on guitar, there really wasn't a lot here I feel any need to revisit anytime soon.

It's hard to put my finger on this one. You can tell that there was a decent rock record here waiting to be unleashed with some southern rock overtones, but it's like Rick was trying to be all things to all people and please everyone, and oddly enough, despite saying he could still rock 'n' roll, he wasn't really allowed to rock and roll after all.

Oddly, after this I did try to find some of Joe English's early stuff, as I had his debut, but it was nowhere to be found. Maybe it's better that way.

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