Coming off the success of the very good Closer To Home <\/i>and Live <\/i>album, Grand Funk Railroad entered the studio without a plan and without much new material. The result is a dull mess of an album that ranks as the weakest of the original trio\u2019s output.<\/p>\n
Exhaustion was surely a factor, but so was the death of the hippie dream and the need for something new. As such, the seven songs here are as follows: two covers, two songs about God, two yearning for simple comforts and a grumpy song of betrayal and fake people. It\u2019s the most personal Mark Farner had ever been on record to that point, which is about the only thing that makes the record interesting.<\/p>\n
The covers of Traffic\u2019s \u201cFeelin\u2019 Alright\u201d and the Stones\u2019 \u201cGimme Shelter\u201d are fine, never touching the originals but filling the space. Tellingly, these are the only two songs that ever make hits compilations, even if they never rise above bar band cover status. There is nothing dramatic like \u201cCloser To Home,\u201d nothing along the lines of \u201cInside Looking Out\u201d or \u201cMean Mistreater,\u201d and nothing resembling later rock stomps like \u201cFootstompin\u2019 Music\u201d or \u201cSome Kind Of Wonderful.\u201d <\/p>\n
The other five songs are padded with extended, simple jams and other ephemera to fill the space. \u201cI Can Feel Him In The Morning,\u201d one of the religious paeans, starts with a minute and a half of little kids talking about their views on God, while \u201cI Want Freedom\u201d begins with almost two minutes of false starts and studio chatter. The closing section of \u201cAll You\u2019ve Got Is Money\u201d is a slow bluesy jam with some decent soloing and, for no reason, background screaming that goes on and on and ruins your mood. It fits the theme of the song, though, which rails against those who only pretend to be your friend or care about you as a person just so they can consistently ask for money.<\/p>\n
Being blue-collar Flint boys from the same mold as MC5 and the Stooges, if hardly as revolutionary or shocking, Grand Funk can bring the hard rock as well as anyone. Yet the simple riff of \u201cCountry Road,\u201d the forgettable \u201cI Want Freedom\u201d and \u201cComfort Me\u201d never rise to the occasion of past or future heights, seeming instead like simple studio jams concocted to fill time and meet a recording obligation. Sure, it\u2019s played well and the recording is slightly better than the waterlogged first three albums, but it\u2019s in service of mostly plodding, repetitive music. <\/p>\n
Farner\u2019s lyrics, aside from \u201cMoney,\u201d seem to focus less on the universal (stop the war, love your brother) and more on the personal, whether he is yearning for God or asking for simple creature comforts like country life, freedom and peace. It\u2019s legitimate fodder for a thoughtful album and a lyrical bent that artists like the Eagles, Jackson Browne and James Taylor would take up in the next couple of years. But the music does not keep pace, so it\u2019s difficult to recommend to all but the most ardent Grand Funk fans.<\/p>\n
This is one of those forgotten albums between Closer To Home <\/i>and We\u2019re An American Band, <\/i>and with good reason. The two covers are available on a decent hits collection, so there\u2019s really no reason to revisit this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":31853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5688],"rating":[11205],"class_list":["post-43575","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-grand-funk-railroad","rating-rating-d-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43575"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43575"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}