Music videos featuring Fat-Bottom Girls (Rippers, Victories, etc)

[westen44]

"Inside Looking Out" was another cover that GFR did brilliantly. 

[uwe]

I didn't even know that one was a cover!

I was late to the party: The first Grand Funk song that caught my ear was Bad Time



and I worked my way back from there. I had of course a cassette of their iconic 1970 LIVE ALBUM, but that hadn't done much for me, I found their music too raw and unmelodic on that. But Bad Time was a brilliant number.

[Rob]

Thry were great live!

[westen44]

The most fun songs to play in a cover band were Inside Looking Out and I'm Your Captain/Closer to Home.  I was in a band with a lead guitarist whose favorite band was GFR.  He was close to being obsessed with them.  He definitely nailed Mark Farner's guitar parts.  BTW, our keyboard player looked so much like Mark Farner they could easily have passed as brothers. 

I believe this has been posted before somewhere, but here it is again. 

[uwe]

That is already the Craig Frost line up doing it, he really added to the band with his Hammond and piano parts - as he does here.

Or maybe that is just the DP guy clawing to get out in me again!



But looking back at it: General absence of keyboards is a reason why both Punk

(The Stranglers were the only band labelled as Punk - when in fact they had been around for ages and their keyboard player was a Jon Lord fan, but he wasn't allowed to say that in 1976 - with dominant keyboards though what followed as New Wave had a stronger keyboard influence due to the rise of more cheaply available synths and German Electronica leaving its mark)

and Grunge

(was there ever even a single Grunge band with noticeable keyboards?)

didn't do much for me. Stringed instruments are of course (and will forever be) at the core of rock'n'roll, but keyboards open other avenues. It's just more musical to me.

[westen44]

I hadn't thought about keyboards being a factor.  But maybe it was one factor.  Mostly, though, punk and grunge vocals weren't really what I was looking for in music.  Mark Farner was certainly a good singer.  That was one of the best things in GFR's music to me.  Some people were critical of his guitar playing, but I thought that was pretty good, too.  Speaking of which, in coming across a recent interview with Gene Simmons, I noticed he defended Mark Farner's guitar playing--something I really wasn't expecting to see in that article. 

[uwe]

Farner had strong pipes (bit on the dramatic-intense side sometimes, Brewer's singing was more laid back) and an earthy, more rhythmically-oriented approach to guitar rather than just providing a flurry of notes at high speed à la Alvin Lee, but saying he wasn't a good guitarist is like saying Keith Richards or John Fogerty can't play. He also left room for his band-buddies Mel and Don. If you believe that Farner is a grooveless, unmusical guitarist, you're deaf. He was even sparse, but since when is that a bad thing? Free and Bad Company were always lauded for it by critics.



I believe critics had foremost issues with Farner's bare-chested and chest-beating macho approach, but hell, GFR came from a blue-collar, industry town after all. If you were from Flint, you weren't going to read poems on stage.

Speaking of "GFR without Farner", I thought the post-GFR-split spin-off without him monikered Flint didn't sound bad at all - it sure lacked Farner's overt drama, but the typical GFR groove remained very much intact (no wonder with the rest of GFR in Flint), their music had even more an RnB influence.

[gearHed289]

Stringed instruments are of course (and will forever be) at the core of rock'n'roll, but keyboards open other avenues. It's just more musical to me.

I REALLY miss keyboards and keyboard players in popular music. And 75% of cover bands doing songs with keys just have them on backing tracks, which is super lame.

[westen44]

Farner had strong pipes (bit on the dramatic-intense side sometimes, Brewer's singing was more laid back) and an earthy, more rhythmically-oriented approach to guitar rather than just providing a flurry of notes at high speed à la Alvin Lee, but saying he wasn't a good guitarist is like saying Keith Richards or John Fogerty can't play. He also left room for his band-buddies Mel and Don. If you believe that Farner is a grooveless, unmusical guitarist, you're deaf. He was even sparse, but since when is that a bad thing? Free and Bad Company were always lauded for it by critics.



I believe critics had foremost issues with Farner's bare-chested and chest-beating macho approach, but hell, GFR came from a blue-collar, industry town after all. If you were from Flint, you weren't going to read poems on stage.

Speaking of "GFR without Farner", I thought the post-GFR-split spin-off without him monikered Flint didn't sound bad at all - it sure lacked Farner's overt drama, but the typical GFR groove remained very much intact (no wonder with the rest of GFR in Flint), their music had even more an RnB influence.

More often than not, when a guy goes bare-chested on stage, it actually gets on my nerves.  But there are exceptions to the rules.  Both Mark Farner and Iggy Pop, for instance, made it a normal part of their stage acts.  That became part of their on-stage personas and I see nothing wrong with that.  Females going bare-chested on stage, I might add, never got on my nerves, either.  But this is almost missing the point.  Critics went way overboard in their criticism of GFR.  The way Mark Farner looked on stage had very little to do with the music itself. 

[uwe]

I REALLY miss keyboards and keyboard players in popular music. And 75% of cover bands doing songs with keys just have them on backing tracks, which is super lame.

We're constantly coercing our keyboardsmith into playing more solos, he's good at it, but not really accustomed to it. He always thinks we're taking the piss, but we're dead serious. Our guitarist is happy when he DOESN'T have to do a solo.

Live keyboards played with reasonable skill give music so much more depth.

[gearHed289]

Keyboardists that can SOLO are even more rare. I always loved the Jeff Back/Jan Hammer dueling solos. I've purposely integrated that sort of thing into my own band, except it's guitar and electric violin. 

[uwe]

[Basvarken]

Heck, with a good keyboard player you don"t even need a bass player!



Edit: the most important word was missing. Sorry

[uwe]

My long-legged and quick-stepping countrywoman Barbara would attest to that.

[Basvarken]

She's amazing