Grand Funk Railroad – "Mean Mistreater" (1970)

Mean mistreater, can't you see I'm real?

Are you satisfied, with the way you feel?

NOTE: It's a Y-U-G-E oversight on my part that the 2 OR 3 LINES "GOLDEN DECADE" ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME doesn't already contain a track (or two tracks, or even three tracks) from Grand Funk Railroad's Closer to Home album.  Other than the title track – which got quite a bit of airplay – the songs from that album are not well known.  In fact, it's something of a fluke that I ever listened to that album – after all, I am almost completely ignorant of the music on Grand Funk's other early albums.  But I would rank Closer to Home right up there with the first Led Zeppelin album, and we all know how in awe of that album I've been for 50-odd years.

*     *     *     *     *

Thomas Hobbes famously described man's life as "nasty, brutish, and short."

I know all too well that I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.  Or struck by lightning.  Or – to be serious for a moment – my wife might murder me in my sleep.  (Or – more likely – when I am awake and have just said something really annoying to her.)  So let me confess my sins right now, before it's too late.  Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

My freshman year at Rice, I lived with two other freshman.  We shared a bathroom with two juniors, one of whom was a very nice guy named David.

David was a big music fan and we spent a fair amount of time that year listening to records while we talked or played spades.  David played in the Rice marching band – trombone, I think  – and was a big fan of jazz-rock groups that featured horns (like Chicago and Blood, Sweat, and Tears) as well as certain progressive rock groups (like Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer).

Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Tarkus" album

Grand Funk Railroad wasn't really David's usual cup of tea, but he did own the Closer to Home album, which was the group's third.  

Grand Funk wasn't really my cup of tea either.  I can't really defend their music intellectually.  The critics almost universally loathed them, although they were very popular during their heyday.  (Kind of like "Two and a Half Men.")

I don't remember hearing any of their other albums, but for some reason I got seriously hooked on this record.

I liked it so much, in fact, that I may have "borrowed" it from David – borrowed it permanently, in fact.  ("Stolen" is such an ugly word.)  

All I can say for certain is that the LP ended up in one of my album jackets.

I thought that it was in my copy of Jethro Tull's Aqualung.  But when I pulled that album out recently, I discovered I had been wrong all these years.  (Not the first time, or even the hundred-and-first time.  Maybe the thousand-and-first.)

It turns out that the Closer to Home LP had somehow ended up inside the jacket of my Savoy Brown Jack the Toad album.  (Perhaps there was some method to my madness.  After all, what were the odds that someone would borrow that lame record and discover the purloined Grand Funk LP?)

*     *     *     *     *     

Jack the Toad?  I can't blame that album on youthful drug consumption, although I wish I could – it would be less embarrassing than admitting that I thought Jack the Toad was a good record at one time:

The title song of that album (and the only song on the album that I remember) was a very long and very odd song about a gunslinger named Coulee Reese, "who they nicknamed Jack the Toad."  Jack the Toad met his match one day when he had been drinking and smoking and was just a little bit high – not a good idea when you're a gunfighter relying on fast reflexes, eagle-like vision, and grace under pressure.

The song contains some very catchy lyrics, including "I knew Coulee/Coulee never lost his cool" and "I'll be blowed!/I'll be blowed!/I'll be blowed!/It's Jack the Toad!"

Needless to say, I am very sorry for borrowing David's record and never returning it.  I'm mystified by my action.  I didn't have a lot of spending money when I was in college, but I certainly had the means to buy my own copy of Closer to Home.  (If necessary, I could have sold Jack the Toad to raise some cash.)

If I knew how to get in touch with David, I would -- I'd 'fess up and send him the 2002 Closer to Home CD (which has four bonus tracks, and so is really better than the LP).  

One odd fact about Grand Funk Railroad.  The band's original lineup consisted of three guys from Flint, Michigan, including bass player Mel Schacher.  Schacher had become the bass player for another Michigan band, ? and the Mysterians, after "96 Tears" had made them one of the greatest one-hit wonders in history.  Schacher was barely 19 when Closer to Home was released.  Can you imagine being part of a hugely popular rock band when you were 19 years old?  (I can, and I often do.)

The Mysterians' front man was known only as "?" -- he never revealed his real name.  He claims, however, to be a Martian who lived with dinosaurs in a previous life and also says he's travelled into the future and visited other planets.

Click here to listen to "Mean Mistreater, " the fourth track on the Closer to Home album.  

Click below to buy Closer to Home from Amazon: