Grand Funk - Caught in the Act

Sorry I haven't  been around in awhile, but I've been busy and then when I haven't for some reason this has felt a little like work.  Which is weird, but its had me thinking about some things like music and work and work and music together.  Which you might think I'd be like, "music and work are awesome!" I don't exactly think that, though.  I mean, I like that I'm generally able to listen to music at work, but I don't have music as my job.

There was a time when I thought music would be my job.  I figured I'd be a DJ on the radio, or a music critic.  I really thought those might have been the greatest jobs that ever existed, but I slowly started thinking that there was no way I'd ever want to do either.  I think there were a couple of things around the time I was about 16 that changed my mind.  First was Steely Dan's song, FM (No Static at All).  The line where Donald Fagen sings, Nothing but booze and Elvis and somebody else's favorite songs really went a long way in making me think that a DJ can't possibly love music the way I do.  I don't want to listen to someone else's favorite songs.  Sorry, but you guys really have shitty taste in music.  I suppose I don't really mean that, but can you imagine how utterly detached you must be to sit around and play the same shitty songs over and over all day, every day?  And pretend that you actually like that song by Styx?  Fuck that.  I would hate to make it so that the music I love became actual work.  I told a guy on a message board that was a DJ that he couldn't possibly like music anymore, since he had to play crap like Nickelback and whatever other rock is supposed to pass for "hard" these days (don't the guitars all sound shitty?  Like Grunge tone with the attitude taken out).  He was pissed, but I stand by it.  No way you can be a DJ on a commercial station these days and still love music.  I can't imagine even kind of liking the job, since they want you to essentially shut up and get to commercials.

I remember the local college station used to occasionally use regular citizens (mostly alumni, but not necessarily) to do some shows in the summer.  I was friendly with a few of them, and had conversations about maybe doing a summer show.  I was mostly interested because I wanted to do a Rolling Stones 24 hour marathon show, which would have been pure badassery, believe me!  The thing is, I found out that my other shows would have to follow their playlist.  Now the playlist was pretty good at the time, and there was certainly a lot of leeway, but this wasn't like some college stations where it's pure free form.  They said you actually had to take and play requests once in awhile, and I thought that was just bullshit.  I thought of calling my show The No Request Show as a way to get around it, and then I'd take the calls on the air and it would be like, "Hey man, can you play The Cure?"  and I'd say, "Sure!  Here ya go, all cued up and ready just for you!"  Then I'd play some geezer music like Bob Seger or The Gates of Delirium by Yes.  I wanted people to ask for Led Zeppelin so I could really piss them off and play something like Carole King instead.  I never really followed up on that, though.  I went on the air on a couple of marathons and brought some cool bootlegs to make the show a little better, but I just didn't want to be told what to play, or even have a plan.

Music critic was a bigger letdown.  I didn't know that I was one of the only people that paid attention to who actually wrote the reviews.  I mean, someone that pans a band I really like can be useful to me if I know that they just don't like certain things I like.  So I always thought everyone paid attention to those things.  Maybe people just indulged me for years and let me prattle on about music just to be nice.  But I eventually figured out that getting free records meant you actually had to listen to some of that crap and say what you thought of it.  I would have had so many reviews that just said, "Yuck" that they'd have quit sending me records and I'd have lost my awesome gig at Rolling Stone in two months.  So I don't want this thing to ever feel like work.  Which means I may listen to things by the same bands sometimes.

Besides, I like a lot of stuff like Grand Funk.  I'm so uncool I even think Craig Frost really added a lot to their sound, so if you were listening to my radio show back then, you'd have very likely heard the live version of Inside Looking Out or Black Licorice from the live Caught in the Act album right alongside Radio Clash and I Don't Want to Go to Chelsea.  Because that's what I like.  I don't care that most Grand Funk fans think Elvis Costello blows.  I think it goes the other way, too.  So my radio show would have pretty much only worked for an audience of one, ya know?

Man, I'll tell ya though, I think this Grand Funk album is just fantastic.  Yeah, it's big 70's bloat rock, but it's so good!  Mark Farner and Don Brewer have great voices for this kind of music, and like BTO when they need a shot of Shit Hell, they can just let Don sing a song like We're an American Band and it's time to party!  It's like when CF Turner sings Let It Ride.  Two hours of that would be too much, but Grand Funk plays to their strengths and maybe it's the Midwesterner in me, but I love it.  I especially love side 3 where they play three songs in a row off the We're An American Band album and they just bring the house down.  They really do help you party it down.

I remember a friend back in my late 20's that said he was going to get a Grand Funk album and he wasn't sure which to get and I told him to get this one.  He came in to work the next Monday and just raved about it.  I had been listening to it since I was a kid, and he was just like, "who did you know that turned you on to this stuff when you were a teenager?"  I just said that I thought this was what teenagers listened to, and this was just good enough to stick.  He really liked Shinin' On and Gimme Shelter.  I told him Gimme Shelter was a good Stones cover, but that he really needed to hear Johnny Winter And do Jumpin' Jack Flash.  I don' t know if he ever did.  He got Jesus and married some girl that was deeply religious.  He was pretty lonely and I heard he had a garage sale and sold all his records and cd's because she only likes religious music, and at that pretty much only in church.  Bummer.

Anyway, obviously I didn't spend too much time talking about my record, here.  Suffice to say that it's pretty kick ass, but there are two things I'd have changed.  Drum solo - I'd have edited the hell out of it.  They just aren't that cool, ya know?  And what is up with side one going into side two?  Why does Closer to Home fade out, then you flip the record over and it fades up for a few seconds and then goes in to Heartbreaker.  Which by they way, isn't Heartbreaker just too fucking cool?  I saw these guys once, and believe me, that one brought the house down.  It's just everything big 70's Rawk should be. Anyway, the intro is twenty fucking minutes long, so they could have cut some of that and done a better job with the songs.  I think that as far as the 1970's double live album goes though, this is definitely one of the best.  It's what concerts really used to be like, and they were fun.

I think I've got an early pressing.  It just says Grand Funk on the cover instead of Grand Funk Railroad.  The records are cool and have neato custom labels and they're pretty quiet and play nicely.  I don't know if any versions of this would actually be collectible because if the generations that have followed us find out about music by reading the music critics that I never could have been (partly because my reviews are awful, which is why I write about other stuff more) all seem to have hated Grand Funk.  Let it be known here and now though, that these guys were HUGE and deserved  being huge.

Grand Funk - We're an American Band

I think this is the first time I ever saw a record on colored vinyl.  I was 11 and it was summer time and you know they played We’re an American Band at the Longbrooke pool where I could pretty much always be found, even though I didn’t live there, on an almost constant basis.  I think I had a Berea News paper route so I finally had some money and had started buying albums.  My friend Stub (that’s what we called him) had just bought it and we listened to it on his dad’s old AR mono rig.  That thing was hi as fi could go, if you asked me.  Anyway, Stub had just got it and was telling me it was a gold record.  I probably called him a liar!  Everyone knew records were black!

It was such a cool thing, though!  That record came in a shiny gold laminate kind of cover and it came with four stickers that looked sort of like the label, a finger pointing right at you in a very 70’s bit of design style.  I had to have one.  Even if I only liked one song on the album I had to have it.  So I collected a few houses and went to either Daisy Music or The Shoppe (maybe even Grant’s?) and bought myself a copy.  I couldn’t wait to get home and check it out.

When I go there, I went in my room and opened it up, sliding out the cool stickers and immediately sticking one on the first of four stupid places to waste my stickers on (I don’t know what it was, probably my brother).  Then I slid the record out, and…and…THE DAMNED THING WAS BLACK VINYL!  Man, was I pissed!  I remember talking to some record store owner shortly thereafter (probably the Daisy Music guy, he taught me a lot about how to behave in a record store and such) and that’s when I found out what limited editions were.  It took me decades to come across one that looked like Stub’s, but I finally found one, with all four stickers.  I think it ended up being free because I bought a stack of used records all at once and  I got a break on the price at Jerry’s in Pittsburgh.  This one plays nicely, but it has some crackles in between songs I could do without but it’s better than it would have been if I had gotten a gold one in 73, that’s for sure!

So as far as the music goes, I still think it’s a pretty terrific album.  I think Don Brewer and Mark Farner both have great voices for big, lunkheaded 70’s Rawk, and they wrote some catchy stuff that a kid could always get behind.  Mom and dad hated it, and this album has Craig Frost adding some half decent keyboards so even my inner Yes fan was treated to some cool solo’s on songs like Black Licorice.  Which back then I thought was probably kind of a socially unacceptable thing, but I wasn’t sure why.

I think Creepin’ kind of helped shape a lot of my views about music at that time.  I didn’t mind long songs, in fact I think I kind of liked them better than short radio hits.  It was really cool to hear WMMS or WNCR play Creepin’ or the even better side two opener The Railroad late at night when I was supposed to be asleep.  Those songs sounded like what I thought older kids would listen to.  At least the ones that I thought would be cool.  I may have been wrong.  I don’t know.  I know it seemed like no one read Creem anymore when I got older, and Rolling Stone hated these guys, so I was probably wrong.  I know that when Punk was blowing my mind I still liked Grand Funk, and the people I met that liked Punk hated Grand Funk.  So I don’t know where they really stand on the Rock N’ Roll scrapheap, but I think they were pretty swell.

I always thought Walk Like a Man should have been the second single from this album.  It may have been for all I know, but I always thought Don Brewer just sang his ass off on that one.  He sounds like a MAN.  No prissy little rocker, he sounded like a dude that your old man would call mister.  At least he did to me.

So my vinyl could be a little less noisy, but it’s not irritating and I’m really glad to have a gold one, finally.  I’m also just going to leave the stickers be this time.  Now that I think about it, those things used to be everywhere.  They were on school lockers, inside bathroom stalls, on stop signs and metal doors – they were ubiquitous.  I bet if I think about it, I’ll notice one, or at least its remnants, somewhere around here before too long.  I actually got to see these guys eventually, and they were great.