One Liner: Homer Simpson's favorite American band jamming out since 1969.
Poster Position: 13
Weekend Two Only.
Saturday at 6:20.
Tito's Tent.
Thoughts: Huh. I have a memory of them playing a live show in some town where I was and thinking what an excellent band name they have. But if you had asked me before just now what they sing, I would have had no clue - some kind of Parliament/Funkadelic/Gap Band/Kool & the Gang-type funky stuff? Nope - despite the name, this is a 70's rock and roll group with several songs that you probably know really well. And some sound super familiar, but I don't think I actually know them. BUT, today I learned that this is Homer Simpson's favorite band.
Homer knows more about this band than I ever will.
They are a funny band, in that some sounds like a tune that would have belonged on the Forrest Gump soundtrack ("Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)"), and then others would have been more at home with Dazed & Confused (We're An American Band"), and each of those soundtracks captured a very different view of an era of rock and roll. Interesting to listen through. Definitely love that Wikipedia calls them hard rock when this is not hard at all.
Originally, the band was named Grand Trunk Railroad, which is apparently a well-known rail line in Michigan. The railroad objected to the use of their name, and so Grand Funk was born. This bit is probably too long, but I enjoyed it, so here is the singer's story of the formation of the band:
"We were actually a five-piece, I was the singer, there were four other musicians (including Brewer), but I wasn't playing anything in that band, the Fabulous Pack (so renamed after Knight had gone). I just stood up front and sang. We got waylaid; we were out in Cape Cod in a summer beach house, a little cabin, and it was winter. We had the worst snowstorm in the history of the world and we got stranded there for weeks in February of 1969. We were melting down snow to have water to drink and mix with our oatmeal that didn't have any butter or sugar and that's all we were living on. These two other players were married. When we got home (to Flint), the two guys that were married, their wives were gonna divorce them and the band broke up. We got all these gigs coming up and now we don't have a band. I said, 'We ought just do a three-piece' and Don said, 'Do you think we can?' And I said, 'If we get the right bass player we can.' We started looking and went out to Delta Promotions in Bay City where this company that sent us out to the Boston area to do these gigs [was located] and we were going to give them a piece of our minds. But while we were sitting in the outer office waiting to get in, there was somebody in their rehearsal hall playing. You couldn't hear it very good, but you could feel the bass coming through the wall and I said, 'Ooh, listen to that bass player, that guy's getting down under that. We gotta see who that is.'
So, they took a break and it was ? and the Mysterians and Mel Schacher was playing bass. Mel and I had grown up together, rode dirt bikes, hung out together and I said, 'Mel, are you playing with him now?' and he said, 'Yeah, but I'm not liking it.' I said, 'Brewer and I were talking about putting together a three-piece. Would you be interested in being the bass player?' He said, 'Hell, yeah, when are you gonna do it?' and I said, 'Next week we're gonna start.'"
They have a lot of music - being that they got their start in 1969, that should make sense. From 1969 to 1976 they were tossing out at least an album a year. And among those six went platinum and seven went gold. But then they broke up in 1976. According to a few things I have read, the critics hated them at every turn, but they were able to crush it anyway by selling out arenas around the world. Which is odd. You'd think that wouldn't work if the critics hated them, but who knows!
Let's get to the tunes. Three of their biggest songs are covers - "Some Kind of Wonderful," "The Loco-Motion," and "Inside Looking Out" - and so even though those may be top streamers, I want you to hear the originals. That leads us to two songs. "We're An American Band," with 76.2 million streams, is from the 1973 album of the same name.
The other big one is "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)" with 21.8 million streams. Because it is ten freaking minutes long, my assumption is that the radio must play an edit, because some of it doesn't ring a bell, but the back half is a classic flute jam from the 70's.
Now, the question is, these dudes are 75-ish years old right? Do they still have the old fastball, or is this going to be like watching the desiccated corpse of a classic rock band still trying to hold on? The lead singer is long gone but the drummer and bassist are still here to jam with some other randos. Okay, maybe not randos, the new lead singer used the be the guy for 38 Special. But their lead guitarist joined the band eight minutes ago and has no Wikipedia entry. I watched a few songs worth of them playing the Foxwoods Casino in January, and I will say the gray-haired people in the audience were major fans. I will also say that from that exemplar, they are loud AF.
I wish I could have seen them 30 years ago instead of now. We'll see how the schedule shakes out, but more than likely, I'll leave this one to Homer.
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