At about the midway point of Saturday night’s Grand Funk Railroad show at MGM Northfield, longtime front man Max Carl started to wax poetic about the glue that holds this country together. “Everyone here,” Carl said, “came from somewhere else.”
“And music,” he noted, “is what holds the whole thing together.”
“The Spanish brought the guitar; the French brought with them the piano. Native Americans and Africans had drums and the flute,” Carl said. He then pulled a harmonica out of his pocket, stating that it was the Germans, ironically, that added the unique sound of that small hand-held instrument that would become synonymous with the United States and its brand of popular music.
Then, miraculously around the time of the American Revolution, it all came together in a type of melody the world had never before experienced. The Blues, as an example, evolved from “Mississippi Fife and Drum.”
And here we are, almost 250 years later, celebrating a band that was hugely successful in the 1970s; a culmination of the fife and drum, piano, and guitar, albeit plugged into an amplifier and producing a tone that would’ve mystified the Founding Fathers.
Grand Funk has had a myriad of personnel changes in its 50-plus years of touring. Carl, tackling lead vocal duties since 2000, took over for founding member and lead vocalist Mark Farner, who left in 1998 to pursue other interests.
Don Brewer, founder and original drummer, is the only member to still regularly tour with the band. Mel Schacher, bassist, was notably absent from the lineup, replaced by longtime bassist Stanley Sheldon, who most-famously played on Peter Frampton’s magnus opus Frampton Comes Alive in 1976.
The set was a brisk 90 minutes of Grand Funk’s greatest hits, culminating in a trifecta of their most well-known tunes. “Some Kind of Wonderful” brought Brewer from behind the kit to stand side-by-side with the other four members of the outfit to lead a rousing sing-along with the crowd. Up next was “I’m Your Captain,” followed by the closing number “We’re an American Band,” which pulled the crowd to their feet for the tune’s entirety, which was no easy feat, as the majority of the crowd were definitely a mature bunch.
The highlights of the show were a cover of Carl’s old band .38 Special’s “Second Chance,” showing off Carl’s vocal range which, for a 75-year old man, was pretty damn good.
“Devil’s Daughter,” a late set offering, demonstrated the Mississippi Fife and Drum idea that Carl had elaborated upon. This was a twelve-minute percussion session, with keyboardist Tim Cashion on a bongo, Carl on the bass drum, and Brewer donning the sticks behind his kit.
The show was a celebration of a band that has survived amid both a flurry of personnel changes and cultural shifts in this country; many older rock bands have fallen out of favor over the last twenty years as irrelevant or old-timey. As long as age doesn’t catch up with them, this outfit has a lot of life left in it.
