Grand Funk Railroad
Grand Funk

THE REVIEW

Something like this will be attempted none other than by the Flaming Lips' "Hell's Angels' Cracker Factory" in the year of grace 1989: background voices, changing radio stations, brief snippets of classical music, telephone calls, an alarm siren, the cry of a newborn.

No, this is not a freak psychedelia band: they are Mark, Don, and Mel, the quintessential rock power trio in the United States (...and in Italy) in 1970. And this is the intro to "Paranoid": the phobias of the twentieth-century man drowning in thousands of watts of wawawawawawa guitar effects dissolved in acid.

The self-titled album (aka Red Album for its flashy red cover) by Grand Funk Railroad almost closes with this gem that every creamily triangular formation should memorize. The perfect rocker’s manual: the piercing solo of Mark Farner's Sears Country Gentleman and the bass scales of Mel Schacher's terrifying Fender will make the good lounge's crystal pieces jingle and the downstairs tenants hit the ceiling with the broom handle.

An album that converts you to the righteous cause of rock as soon as the needle touches the first grooves. It forces you to immediately abandon whatever you're doing, whether it's legal or illegal, difficult or routine, pleasant or painful. Because "Got this thing on the move" instills an uncontrollable urge to go out on the street, heading to a music store to buy an electric guitar, or a bass, or a drum set. However "Please don't worry" almost makes you think of selling them right after because these three are unreachable monsters: Mel's terrifying bass is like Ulysses' bow, we couldn't even tighten one string while he is able to lay waste to the usurping suitors with those powerful notes that hit right in the pit of the stomach.

Electricly growing blues like "High Falootin' Woman" make your head spin imagining you have even longer hair than Farner who strains his vocal cords; it's a mirage, but it works! Just like a damned well-working blood-pumping boogie like "In Need," with a seismic Schacher taking the needle off the chart on the seismograph measuring the rolling and shaking of our room's floor.

Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Jimi, Detroit's MC5 of the great hard rock made in America of "High Time," are tied along the railroad tracks where the Grand Funk locomotive will pass at full speed, shredding them into a thousand pieces.

And how to finish one of the greatest rock records if not with the ten minutes that assault "Inside Lookin Out"? The Animals' cover takes a bit to take off, but when it hooks the groove it becomes an unstoppable diesel fueled by pulsating bass riffs, clattering hot guitar solos, and a drumming that is a metronome.

After the Red Album, Grand Funk will lose part of that wildly naive spontaneity to establish themselves on a superb trade rock that will make them billionaires, but the damage was already done. Dressed like Mark, hair well over the shoulders, leather vest on bare torso, bicep bracelet, and the curses of the neighborhood forced to spend the rest of the day with their hands on their ears...how many bands would never have been born without Mark, Don, and Mel!

PLAY LOUD!!!