Grand Funk Railroad

Just what we needed. Grand Funk Railroad fans have had all the original albums reissued in fine remastered form, there have been greatest-hits comps galore and, well, no more needed to be said, right? Wrong. This 24-bit digitally remastered Greatest Hits contains 14 tracks of Funk. Though there are many who would disagree with the choice of material here, all but one of these cuts are a bona fide Top 60 chart placer. The final cut, "Inside Lookin' Out," never hit the mark at all. OK, to be fair, there are four Top Tens here, including two top placers, "We're An American Band" and the great cover of Goffin & King's "The Loco-Motion," which had been a hit for Little Eva over a decade before. "Some Kind of Wonderful" (another cover) hit number three, and "Bad Time," a track most people don't even remember, hit number four. Add to this "Shinin' On," which scored in the Top 20, and "Footstompin' Music," which hit the Top 40. Pretty impressive for their day. When one considers that these hits were scored over the band's last few records, it's even more of a big deal, except that musically by this time their most adventurous and bone-crunching music was well behind them. Todd Rundgren helped these yobs out a lot. The real story here isn't the CD but the DVD. There is a 13-minute promo film from 1973's "We're an American Band," and a nearly ten-minute television performance of "Inside Lookin' Out," from a PBS TV appearance in Hershey, PA from 1969 (the true jewel in this tawdry crown). Then there's a grand Shea Stadium performance of the amazing "I'm Your Captain" from 1971 when the band sold the sucker out in 72 hours. This was in the days of yore before Ticketmonster, when it took the Beatles seven weeks to sell out the place. Finally, there are two songs form the reunion tour in 1997 at the Palace of Auburn Hills in the band's home state of Michigan. The tracks? "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "We're an American Band" aided by a horn and orchestra section conducted by Paul Shaffer, and special guests Peter Frampton and Alto Reed from Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band. These should have been left off because they are worse than dreadful, and everyone looks like hell and sounds like it, too. Fans will be grabbing this up, but man oh man, the 1997 footage will make the more discriminating of us squeamish. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide