Grand Funk Railroad - Grand Funk Lives
#233
June 15 1981
Grand Funk Railroad
Grand Funk Lives
Genre: Rock with a taste of…prog?
3.75 out of 5
Highlights:
Queen Bee
No Reason Why
Requisite 80s cover: “We Gotta Get Outta This Place”. Is this song unkillable? I wonder what it would sound like if Billy Eilish covered it. Or Cardi B.
This falls into the middling well, because it’s faithful but Mark Farner is no Eric Burdon. And it shows. This sounds more like a bubblegum pop version of that track. Too bad, really.
When I was a kid I thought this was a funk band and being a “rock” kid I avoided anything with the word “funk” or “jazz” in the name, except for Queen’s Jazz and that had no jazz on it. Sorry Jazz/Funk fans.
But this isn’t that, is it? It’s…Aerosmith lite. That opener, “Good Times”…that’s basically “Walk this Way”, no?
Why didn’t they open this thing with “Queen Bee”? That thing punches you in the face with it’s rifftastic guitar onslaught, glam harmonies and metal lead solo. It’s screams late 70s/early 80s.
Tracks like “Testify” and “Y.O.U.” seem like they should be great but they just fall short but then “No Reason Why”, which should crumble upon it’s own weight of self-indulgence, actually comes across like a triumph. Or like Triumph. I can’t be sure.
It ends on what could and should be the final act for GFR, “Wait for Me” sounds like GNR Lite and that’s a harbinger of what’s to come, in a good way.
Sadly Grand Funk sputters on the next one and then goes away completely.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/grand-funk-lives/1041716139
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