A half century and change down the line, it boggles the imagination to think that Flint, Michigan’s Grand Funk (with or without that “Railroad”) were one of the biggest touring acts of the early Seventies. The proof lies in this shocking factoid—in 1971 (the Chinese “Year of the Funk”) the trio of Mark, Don, and Mel sold out Shea Stadium in 72 hours. It took The Beatles (The Beatles!) several weeks to do the same.
Manager Terry Knight was a key driver of the band’s success, and his messianic belief in their world importance took a hilarious turn in his liner notes (written on parchment scroll!) to the 1972 compilation Mark, Don & Mel. Wherein he compares “the Funk” to Moses, Cleopatra, and Napoleon and writes, “From the dawn of recorded history, stemming through the lifetimes of every man, woman and child who ever walked upon the earth, there have been but a handful whose fate it was to become known as Phenomenon.” It was quite a tribute to a band whose output included songs like “High Falootin’ Woman,” but you have to admire his grandiosity.
Knight’s hype, a manic album release schedule and over-the-top promotion (a huge billboard in NYC’s Times Square) helped fuel the fire, but Grand Funk did it mostly on their own, with nonstop touring and a high-energy, “obnoxiously loud” live show that emphasized shirtless torsos over finesse, subtlety, and great songs. Guitarist Mark Farner, drummer Don Brewer, and bassist Mel Schacher were three groovy dudes fashioning clunky, workmanlike grooves that not only achieved highly amplified mediocrity but came to personify it.
They were rock populists (fans loved ‘em, critics loathed ‘em) playing sledgehammer and potatoes rock for the zonked-out kid brothers of siblings whose musical palettes were more sophisticated, which is to say they were most likely listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. What a horrible time.
But no band stands atop the mountain of plodding proficiency forever. The band glutted the market with seven albums between 1969 and 1972, which pretty much ensured said albums would be subpar, that is unless songs like “T.N.U.C.,” “High Falootin’ Woman,” “Aimless Lady,” and “I Can Feel Him in the Morning” are your cup of F.U.N.K. Creedence Clearwater Revival kept up a similar pace and managed to deliver on some brilliant albums, but let’s face it—Mark Farner was no John Fogerty. The result was a slew of LPs with one or two keepers on them, and that’s if you’re grading on a curve. None have endeared them to posterity.
In 1973 the band shortened their name to Grand Funk and got a revitalizing shot in the arm gratis new producer Todd Rundgren. The Hermit of Mink Hollow polished up their leaden sound, pumped “pop” into their populism, and over the course of two albums helped catapult them to the top of the Billboard singles charts with “We’re an American Band” and a cover of “The Loco-Motion.” Grand Funk had taken another step towards sweetening their footstompin’ cave man sound (see the cover of 1971’s Survival) by bringing keyboardist Mark Frost on board (after making a fruitless bid to enlist one Peter Frampton) for 1972’s Phoenix.
That Grand Funk’s eighth and ninth records should have been their best is a miracle of sorts. It was an even greater miracle that they’d survived long enough to record nine albums. That live show of theirs must have been a real doozy. And what’s even more amazing is that even the critics—beaten down perhaps by Grand Funk’s stubborn refusal to retreat back to their cave—began to come around. Of 1974’s Shinin’ On (Rundgren’s second) the Village Voice’s Robert Christgau wrote, “Now this really is an American band—confident, healthy, schlocky, uncomplicated on the surface and supporting all manner of contradictions underneath.”
I’m not quite as enthusiastic as Christgau. Shinin’ On has its moments, and its moments are better than the moments on their earlier LPs for sure. And its good-to-bad song ratio is strartlingly higher. It’s less cloddish, and there are actual nuances to some of its songs, and for a band like Grand Funk—who when it came to writing songs with melodies made Bachman-Turner Overdrive look like The Beatles—that was a real accomplishment. But side two sputters out, chiefly because the band regresses to lunkheadedness. Still, the title track, “Please Me” and their cover of Little Eva’s 1962 hit “The Loco-Motion” (which being a funky railroad they really should have called “The Loco-Motive”) are winners, and one or two others are above average for the band.
Opener “Shinin’ On” is practically glam rock by Grand Funk standards—it opens with a guitar riff that brings Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” to mind, a funky organ riff comes in, then Don Brewer (who began to assume more vocal duties under Rundgren) goes manly man on vocals about our all being space-age sailors, which is pretty damn Ziggy Stardust of him. The song is rocket-booster fast, the backing vocals are nicely layered and Farner plays some nice shirtless guitar. The damn song’s downright sophisticated by GFR’s usual clodhopper standards, and aside from “We’re an American Band” the only song in their repertoire I ever seek out.
“To Get Back In” is pure J. Geils Band R&B with Chicago horns, Mark Farner actually sounds funky, and plays a rip-roaring ax solo to boot. And the instrumental breakdown that takes it out is bona fide inspirational. A miracle. “The Loco-Motion” is footstompin’ neat right down to Farner’s molten lava guitar solo, and I can guaranfuckingtee no one saw this one coming. It speaks well of the band that they even thought to take it on, much less actually went through with it, and there’s a reason you still hear it on the radio—it’s so dumb it’s smart, and remarkably funky for the least funky band to ever put funk in their name.
The very moody “Carry Me Through” is mid-tempo so-so—Brewer’s vocals are drenched in reverb but very much in your face, Farner’s organ (where’s Frost?) is up-front, while Brewer plays a martial drum shuffle. Doesn’t really do much for me, although the choruses catch hold and Farner plays some stinging guitar. Very molasses-like, this one, but try as they (and particularly Brewer) may it simply doesn’t stick in your memory like molasses. It ends, I can’t remember how it goes, I play it again, I can’t remember how it goes, and so on ad infinitum.
“Please Me” different story. It’s a hard-rocking, straight-to-the-solar-plexus mover and shaker with some really kickin’ organ and a fancy little guitar flourish thrown in. Brewer is well-endowed in the vocal cord department (they’re the size of Farner’s biceps!) and he really lets loose, and the vocal harmonies work as well. Smarter than your average Grand Funk number by half, but they do it while still managing to sound like Neanderthals. Nice.
After that things go downhill. “Mr. Pretty Boy” is an ill-advised slow (no make that dragging) blues on which Farner proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has no business singing any kind of music with a color in its name. It’s an embarrassment right down to the steroid-oversized vocal harmonies, and the lyrics are sub-sub-sub Ronnie Van Zant.
The prevailing mood of the high-energy “Getting Over You” is Santana-gone-to-Flint but the song gallops straight into forgettable—Brewer oversings it, Frost goes mad on the mellotron like he’s, well, the prog-addled Todd Rundgren, and have I mentioned the song sounds like Xeroxed Santana? That said, it has its dumb charm, and the bridge ain’t half bad.
“Little Johnny Hooker” is a stump-dumb embarrassment of a heavy, heavy rocker and a regression to the lumpenfunk of GFR’s earlier days. Opens with Farner singing “Oh, I’m gonna tell you a story ’bout a little boy/Oh, a sad little boy.” Seems “Little Johnny Hooker was a sissy on the street all his life” until his daddy gave him a switchblade which he uses on some kid named Freddie Miller during school lunch and the next thing you know he’s in the penitentiary, and the way Farner keeps repeating “he ain’t a bad looker” doesn’t bode well for poor Johnny’s anal health.
The song itself is an organ-driven chug-a-lug with some fierce guitar but the scared-straight message is risible, although who knows? It’s possible one or two eighth graders listened to the song, trembled, and dropped their knives down sewer grates. Still, the whole sissy thing doesn’t sit well, and the song itself is forgettable and makes for a sorry end to a shockingly decent outing by a band that dedicated most of their energies to playing live—studio albums all-too-often seemed to be afterthoughts to these guys.
In some ways Shinin’ On was Grand Funk’s last stand. 1976’s Frank Zappa-produced Good Singin’, Good Playin’ is surprisingly strong, but relatively poor sales made it the last Grand Funk album to matter—1981’s Grand Funk Lives was wishful thinking, and 1983’s What’s Funk may as well have been called Grand Who Now? Homer Simpson’s plaintive “Nobody knows the band Grand Funk?” could be Grand Funk’s epitaph. The band that sold out Shea Stadium in 72 hours has become a punch line to everyone but listeners to Homer’s favorite radio station, KFSL Fossil 103. “The wild shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner” notwithstanding.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B-
