![]() Page’s ‘White Summer’ at every opportunity, whilst the ultra-athletic singer/guitarist took every opportunity to run bare-chested around the arena, randomly flashing peace signs and arbitrarily screaming ‘Brothers and Sisters’ at the audience throughout. Imagine an American band fixated on the raw white soul-blues of the Animals and the sheer raging and seemingly endless tragedy and joy pumping out of the neighbouring Tamla Motown label a band surrounded and inspired by the massive automobile works of Michigan’s Detroit, Pontiac and (their hometown) Flint, and all the attendant blue collar ‘hard-working man’ values that surrounds such a scene a band that fused the vibe of The Spencer Davis Group’s ‘I’m a Man’ with Count Five’s ‘Psychotic Reaction’, then segued directly into riffola somewhat akin to Eddie Floyd’s massive and descending ‘Big Bird’ riff via obvious-to-the-point-of-being-generic heavy soul stomps such as Aretha’s ‘Save Me’, The Supremes’ ‘You Just Keep Me Hanging On’, and Otis’ ‘Respect’ (Deep Purple/Vanilla Fudge-stylee), yet still threw in raging and unaccompanied raga-rock solos in the style of J. But hey, it’s so long ago even I’d forgotten about the monumental vibe on these discs until the past coupla shows at Reading and Brighton playing with Dogntank, whose band members collectively still worship at the shrine of this double-LP. ![]() Moreover, this LIVE ALBUM is the specific record that inspired my forming Brain Donor back in the summer of ’99, not the MC5 or Blue Cheer as everyone has presumed. ![]() So, Ladies’n’gentlemen I now present to you those worthy, journeymen musicians Mark Farner, Don Brewer and Mel Schacher - collectively Grand Funk Railroad. ![]() Well, now that I’ve brung to your attention what you intuitively knew all along, but didn’t wanna address because y’all had so much childhood nostalgia invested in them moptop-a-likes, now what I’m asking is that you please extend a little of that Monkees grace to a hard-working band that never had the luck to be granted their own TV series, got it all together themselves (along with their particularly inspirational manager) and, in their first half decade, pumped out umpteen patchy-but-listenable LPs that would have distilled into five very excellent albums, had their Monkees Release Schedule-style work rate been taken at a more moderate and carefully edited pace. However, you know in your hearts that the seven accompanying (count ‘em 1) LPs they delivered between January ’67 and September ’69 are ultimately nothing more than a patchwork of underachievement (cynically created sessioneering cash-ins, comedy goof-offs, and Hollywood Brill Building hack jobs) constructed specifically to rip off ‘The Kids’ grand stylee. Note: All you compassionate Forward-thinking Motherfuckers dig The Monkees, right? Yeah, me too! Most likely, you dig ‘em for the TV series that premiered in September 1966 and for that superb refusenik movie HEAD that closed their ‘official’ career three years later to the month but probbly most most most of all, you dig ‘em for the seven monster 45s they barfed out in between.
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