Today would have been his 71st birthday, so I thought it would be a good time to put that record on the turntable and give it a spin. A little over 7 years ago Dad passed away, and all of his old records from the 60s and early 70s found their way to me, including that record I never played as a teenager: Grand Funk Railroad’s “Live Album”. It sat in my record crate for years, unplayed by me, until several years later when I moved out and my dad came in and reclaimed everything that was his. I think I was polite about it but 15-year-old Mark was having none of it. He brought in a record, and told me I should give it a try as they were “kind of like Metallica”. The best part about coming across a Grand Funk “Live” album is that while they were one of the largest bands of the Seventies, hardly anyone needs to go spelunking for this hard rock stuff anymore on vinyl, so you can find it pretty cheap! Also, in the space between songs, Mark Farner says some pretty funny stuff.Somewhere in my teenage years – let’s put me at age 15, my dad came into my room, where I was almost certainly blasting metal on my stereo at a volume that was much too high for that 10’x12′ space. Side four is taken up completely by the triumphant “Into The Sun.” Can you make it this far? In our YouTube/Blogger/Spotify addled universe you probably can’t realistically sit through a live double LP in one sitting and give it the proper attention you believe it might deserve, but the audience here seems like they didn’t mind standing in whatever stadium this was recorded in (it’s under dispute as to where exactly this recording came from, despite what it says on the back cover) for more than an hour of pretty solid rockin’. On side three, after the ballad of “Mean Mistreater,” the drums get a real showcase, heading off the great track “Mark Say’s Alright” and getting a very long solo session workout on “T.N.U.C.” Things are looking pretty self indulgent on this side, but once again it’s the audience reaction that saves them during these extended live renditions (not jams).
I actually prefer the nine minute or so live video that turned me on to them in the first place, it’s a bit more compact just because it lacks the repetition of this version, but since you can hear the ecstatic cheers from the audience during this exercise, it comes across as, well, grand. It’s a rocker! On the flip side (still disc one of this double LP), the Animals’ cover makes its appearance, and it’s long, thirteen minutes or so, but it never lets up or comes across as self indulgent.
The track “Paranoid” has one of the best bass-lines to ever reach these ears in a rock context, and the guitar here just rips all over it in a way their studio re-creation just couldn’t allow. Here, the drums punch, the bass is REALLY high up there, and Mark’s guitar has more of that practical noise I was talking about, and it’s put to great use. The “Live” album on the other hand doesn’t hold back.
Grand Funk’s first three albums, which are fine, have the majority of the cuts you’ll hear on “Live,” but those albums have a democratic mixing that I find never really captured what made them stadium-toppling performers. It also led me to their “Live Album” before checking out their debut or any other output, and I’m glad thats how I went about it. That video has since got plenty of repeat viewings. The drums brought on by ex-Question Mark and the Mysterians member Don Brewer keep time in a heavy manner and make themselves heard alongside a fat and heavy bass sound distinct only to Mel Schacher, while Mark Farner’s guitar scratches out a practical noise that at that point was already becoming a form distanced from the blues of which it had derived. The Grand Funk Railroad song that really caught my attention was their cover of The Animals’ “Inside Looking Out.” The interplay between this power-trio that I caught in a live video showed that this was a hard rock band with their shit together while the group takes you on a journey, there are no pastoral meanderings.
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