Everyone knows Grand Funk Railroad, right? I mean, it’s one of the better-known bands out there. For whatever reason, I looked them up. Then I opened iTunes and played all of the clips offered there. Almost nothing sounded familiar. There’s The Loco-Motion, Queen Bee, Some Kind Of Wonderful, Stop Lookin’ Back, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, and We’re An American Band.
But those are the only ones I know, which seems strange for such a well-known band.
Footstompin’ Music, I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home), and *Mean Mistreater *are some of my favorites. I caught them at the Del Mar Fair years ago. Mark was really on that night and the crowd was standing and cheering from the first note–a really great show.
Probably a legal issue. Grand Funk’s early work – the songs you remember – were controlled by their manager, the infamous Terry Knight. They fired him after E Pluribus Funk and started managing things themselves. I believe the songs on iTunes date from after the time they fired Knight.
How are you searching for it? I’m seeing everything I remember from back in the day plus some that I know didn’t sell worth a damn. There may be some bootlegs or something like that missing, but the rest of their catalog is pretty much all there.
I’m GETting closer to my hooommmme…
x38
I hear they’re an American band …
I always got them confused with “Grand Funk”, another band of that era.
There are a few bands from the 70’s that fit in the same category - fairly big at the time, but didn’t seem to survive in the public consciousness. Sweet would be another example. If it weren’t for the novelty of “Ballroom Blitz”, they probably would have been completely forgotten by now, but they had a few big hits back in the 70’s, like “Fox on the Run” and “Little Willie”.
I think what kills a band like that over time is artistic inconsistency. The critics don’t like them, because their hits are interspersed with an awful lot of filler. It also means none of their albums are real ‘must haves’, so they drop out of the music stores and until digital music came along, the only way to get these songs would have been on something like a K-Tel records ‘best of the 70’s’ compilation.
Other bands in that category:
Stealer’s Wheel (and Gerry Rafferty solo): (“Stuck in the Middle With You”, “Baker Street”)
Bad Company (“Fee like Makin’ Love”)
Thin Lizzy (“The Boys are Back in Town”)
Deep Purple (“Smoke on the Water”)
They’re in that category where they aren’t one-hit wonders, and had significant success at the time, and then dropped off the radar as a band.
I believe they are one in the same.
Heh. Did’ja ever hear the story 'bout Grand Funk and Eric Clapton? It’s an urban legend that got I heard a few times in high school. Here’s the snopes account.
See? I told you I was confused.
Sweet scored 13 hit songs, ten of them Top Ten hits, between '71 and '78. They were massive in Britain, Germany, Scandinavia et al. Hard-core Sweet fans abound to this day in every European country. Don’t know about the US, though.
I personally think ‘Action’ is one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded (off '76’s Give us a Wink album). Very little filler on the remastered Sweet albums with the edgy B-sides included)
Mark Farner was my Major Teen Crush and I had the album, but they didn’t hold up. I can barely remember why I thought they were awesome.
Oh yeah…Mark Farner.
Thanks, I just had a “say what?” moment.