{"id":486,"date":"2010-03-07T21:43:28","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T04:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=486"},"modified":"2010-03-07T21:46:56","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T04:46:56","slug":"song-of-the-day-please-dont-worry-by-grand-funk-railroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/?p=486","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Day – “Please Don’t Worry” by Grand Funk Railroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now this<\/a> is some pure, uncut rock.\u00a0 No, not crack cocaine.\u00a0 I’d even say it’s some excellent 70s rock, but it’s actually from a 1969 album called “Grand Funk”<\/p>\n

Now, some of you might have heard some Grand Funk Railroad on the radio.\u00a0 They did have some hits.\u00a0 If you have heard those hits, then please forget all about them.\u00a0 Forget “We’re an American Band”, even though it’s a killer tune.\u00a0 Forget “Shinin’ On”, even though it was on The Simpsons and is a good tune.\u00a0 And for god’s sake forget “Bad Time” and even “Rock and Roll Soul”.<\/p>\n

This band was the best when they started.\u00a0 They hit their peak on their second album, 1969’s “Grand Funk”\u00a0 Then it was sketchy… then after 1974 it was just awful.<\/p>\n

They were a phenomenon, these GFR boys.\u00a0 They were the most popular band in America in the late 60s\/early 70s.\u00a0 And the critics hated them too.\u00a0 They specialized in raw, energetic guitar\/bass\/drums rock and roll, and when they tried to fuck with that formula, things got bad.<\/p>\n

But to listen to this second album is to listen to a start-to-finish masterpiece.\u00a0 Never mind the lyrics.\u00a0 The band tends to make about as much sense as that dumbass who’s been drinking all day and then smokes a joint and suddenly thinks he’s become some kind of teacher and leader of men.<\/p>\n

Good god, their lyrics could be nastybad.\u00a0 Sometimes they tried to have a “message”, and they sounded even dumber.\u00a0 But man, they could sound awesome when they wanted to.<\/p>\n

This song in particular is a good example of how their “message” lyrics are just kind of funny at best and wicked lame at worst.\u00a0 It’s about how you shouldn’t worry about getting a drug conviction because there’s lots of fellow hippies around, and they’ll be on the jury.<\/p>\n

Come on.\u00a0 We all know how THAT theory panned out.\u00a0 But the words rhyme.\u00a0 Yes they do.\u00a0 And there’s an extremely funny line in the song:<\/p>\n

If somebody says you look funny
\n‘Cause the way you dress to them ain’t right
\nSay “Hey can’t you see, you look funny to me?”
\n“But I’m just tryin’ to be polite.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Gold.\u00a0 Actually, Red.\u00a0 That’s the colour of the album sleeve.\u00a0 The “gold” album was 4 years later.<\/p>\n

Well, here I am again, out of things to say.\u00a0 Buy this album!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now this is some pure, uncut rock.\u00a0 No, not crack cocaine.\u00a0 I’d even say it’s some excellent 70s rock, but it’s actually from a 1969 album called “Grand Funk” Now, some of you might have heard some Grand Funk Railroad on the radio.\u00a0 They did have some hits.\u00a0 If you have heard those hits, then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[69,101,221],"class_list":["post-486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-day","tag-60s","tag-70s","tag-grand-funk-railroad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}