Grand Funk - Shinin' On

Hot on the heels of We're an American Band, Grand Funk teamed up again with producer Todd Rundgren and released Shinin' On in March of 1974. The album is probably best remembered for the band's cover of "The Loco-motion" that took the Little Eva classic written by Gerald Goffin and Carole King and turned it to eleven and delivered one of the greatest distorted guitar solos of all time.

The album is short, just a little over half an hour, and contained eight songs. Depending on how you look at it, the album is pretty uneven and somewhat generic. However, when they were good, they were next level. The album opens with the title track, and that one is pretty great. The previously mentioned "Loco-motion" was the reason I picked up the album - well, that's not entirely true, it was in the dollar bin and in pretty decent shape - I would have picked it up regardless, but I was stoked to get the choo choo song.

What I wasn't expecting was how unbelievably cool the closing track on side one was. "Carry Me Through" was sung by Don Brewer, and I couldn't help but wonder if Henley and Frey borrowed some of the feel and groove for "King of Hollywood" from the Eagles' '79 release The Long Run. The two songs aren't really all that similar, but there's a little somethin' somethin' that made me think of it. Oh, and Mark Farner killed it on guitar.

Like I said, when they were good they were really good. It makes some of the other songs palatable in the context of the entire album. Oddly, it was the songs sung by Mark Farner this time out that felt more like filler, whereas Don seemed to be driven. While Mark's scorcher "Gettin' Over You" was delivered with gusto, it was a pretty standard Grand Funk effort. It was a good old foot stompin' rocker, but it wasn't a song that would stand on its own legs outside the context of the album.

I suppose it really comes down to where you find happiness. For me, I love a good riff and Grand Funk was a riff factory in the early '70s, and if this was what made you happy then there was more than an even chance Shinin' On would make you happy. There were more than enough moments here to make this worthwhile. The first side in particular stands out, those songs were so strong. The second side was enjoyable, but man, side one killed.

Heck, I have to admit that after spending some time with the album, even the songs I was more dismissive of have gotten under my skin. A grower, not a shower.

My old dollar bin copy was in better than fair shape, and while it didn't have the 3D glasses necessary to make the album cover pop, it did have the original insert that listed the itinerary for Grand Funk's 1974 tour. Pretty cool.

Also for you comic book fans, the cover art was by Neal Adams and Walt Simonson for Shorewood Graphics. Yeah, that Neal Adams and that Walter Simonson. Although I'd have never guessed they were behind the cover. Frankly, it isn't really a masterpiece in graphic arts - it was an interesting concept, and the artists were a big deal (in the comic world they were gods), and seeing their names here was a cool surprise. It didn't help that I couldn't find an old pair of 3D glasses lying around the house.

This was Grand Funk, and when they were good they were amazing.

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Garfield - Strange Streets

I'd seen this before in the bin, but kept flipping through the stacks. I'd see it a few more times, each time stopping to look at it a little more. There was something kind of cool about the cover where the stylized Celtic knot had the dotted yellow line - it was a strange street for sure. I pulled the record out of the jacket and I was struck by the centre image. There was the familiar Mercury label, the same one I'd seen a thousand times on BTO's Head On album. Well, I'd bought things based on odd associations before - like when I had to buy anything that Solid Rock Records released (this was generally a good thing) - so who knows, maybe this was a hidden gem. There weren't any real scratches or rash, just a lot of dirt and dust. It seemed to clean up okay, but we'll see how it goes. The album opens with the title track, and this wasn't straight-ahead pop or rock. It was leaning toward the progressive, but with a pop bent. Oddly enough, the vocals rem...

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