Your Thoughts About Grand Funk Railroad
 

Just wondering what everybody thinks about Grand Funk Railroad. They seem to be in the rock void where nothing much ever gets written about them even though they were one of the most popular bands of the early 70s.:band:

I saw them sometime around 1972. The opening act was Billy Preston and he & his band kicked their ass. BP's bass player was tearing it up. I lost interest in GFR that night. I was about 14. I realized that night that GFR was just a regular, pedestrian band.

I'm probably their biggest fan on the forum and have covered at least four of their albums on my journal.

http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...y-history.html

Maybe they just had an off night, I always heard they were a sound live act. But as I've never seen them I can't personally say.

I can understand somewhat. Billy Preston was a strong showman at that time, always was through The 60's and 70's, and his show can make a lot of other musicians look tame by comparison. From what I think, GFR's best live days were at their earliest, when they seriously had a lot to prove being from other bands that had their day and still having a lot of energy to go out and play, and the first Live Album is serious proof of at least why they were a major attraction at least with the Rock crowd. Also by '72, they split with Terry Knight, their first manager (and leader of Terry Knight and the Pack, the band where two of the members came from) who really was seriously laying the hype on thick for the band, and the feelings must have been bad enough to effect their show at the peak of their fame.

Just some thoughts...

Worth remembering as well, when Paul Smeenus saw them in 72 they were going through a very bad stage album wise and I guess what you said above does indicate that they had gone somewhat stale. It's only when Todd Rundgren took them under his wing that they became the same band again that they were in 1969 and 1970.

I saw Grand Funk on the same show as Ten Years After and Alice Cooper they all put on quality yet vastly different shows.

I remember watching on You Tube a video taken from a public television morning show where they are performing " Looking Inside Out " . It is perhaps one of the best live performances ever caught on tape.

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I've fixed your first post with that video and deleted the other two you made.

Their early 70s live album was the heaviest **** going at the time.

Plus the drum solo was titled T.N.U.C.

How can a 13 year old boy not go ape over that!