![]() ![]() Also, later in the album, Mark Farner explains to the audience why the people in the front rows shouldn’t stand up so that the people behind can see better. I’ve heard things like this on a number of live albums of this era, but it kind of went out of fashion. Introduction: The first track of the album mostly consists of the announcer asking people in the aisles to move to their seats, followed by some last-minute setup from the road crew. I can deal with it, but thought I should make a note. Those days are gone now, and we’re left with out-of-order sides. This was so you could put it on your fancy record player that would automatically drop the next record onto the platter when the previous ended, and you could hear half the double album before having to turn them over. Sides 1 and 4 share a disc, as do sides 2 and 3. ![]() One more note before getting to the highlights: The version I have of this record, which I presume was a first or second pressing, has a feature that I find annoying in 2021 but was certainly useful in 1970. I’ve seen live shows that sound exactly like the studio album. I intend to talk about this a lot more in future content, but inaccuracies, mistakes, spontaneous moments – these are what we go see live shows for. There has been no technical assistance added to this recording such as echo and all events are presented here exactly as they occurred.” The musical content of all selections has been left totally unchanged from the original tapes. “In order to present a true historical documentation of this group in person, editing of any nature has been avoided. There are moments when you can hear the crowd being asked to move back so the show can continue.Īfter I wrote the previous paragraph, I noticed this on the back of the album cover: It almost sounds like a bootleg with the random voices appearing near the mic between songs, and the rumbling of the crowd throughout. Later live albums of the 1970s like Frampton Comes Alive, KISS Alive!, UFO’s Strangers in the Night, and others, were very produced, slick, polished versions of what a live show might be like from those albums. They hold the fascinating claim to being the band who sold out Shea Stadium faster than the Beatles (Grand Funk’s opener for that show was Humble Pie. At times I can hear bits of both of those bands here, though it must be said that Grand Funk was as big or bigger than both of those bands at the time. You’d do better to compare the band to some of their contemporaries like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. I wouldn’t compare Grand Funk to Metallica like my Dad did, except perhaps in their ability to put on a spectacular live show. From a relative novice’s perspective to Grand Funk, here are some impressions: I know they’re important to the history of rock. I, of course, know the hits that are played over and over on classic rock radio like We’re an American Band (released 3 years after this album), but I’m in no way an expert on the history of this band like I am with some others. ![]() I have heard the album oncer or twice over the years, but I’ve never really sat down with it and actively listened to it until today. I’ll be the first to admit that Grand Funk is not a band with whom I’m intimately familiar. 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”. 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. ![]()
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