The Joys of Grand Funk Railroad

In the early seventies Grand Funk Railroad was one of the most successful bands in American music. While not calling myself a diehard fan there are certainly a group of songs performed by the band that have a permanent place in the American Rock Catalog.

Some Kind of Wonderful is one of their most known songs, and is a great one, but in our house it comes down to just one song and it is polarizing in the extreme.

I'm Your Captain/Closer to Home was one of those self indulgent, overblown, songs that became iconic in the seventies. Years ago at my work I had a gentleman who was about twenty years older working for me in our department. He had brought in a picture of himself from the early seventies, with long hair, looking like a child of Aquarius. His coworkers were shocked. He said are you surprised and I told him no, that my guess was that the day that picture was taken he was tooling around in his Camaro listening to Grand Funk Railroad. He was surprised and acknowledged that I was dead on.

Grand Funk Railroad was a polarizing band, they were considered overblown, copycat and not as talented as their pretensions would have one think. One can never doubt thier success however.

I have always enjoyed I'm Your Captain and my oldest son has followed suit, when we hear Grand Funk upstairs at loud decibels we know my son is getting ready for something. My daughter however has, with me, had a running joke that this is the worst song in the world. For her the second half with the repetitive " I'm getting closer to my home " is torture. She comments on what kind of Captain is this guy if he has been lost at sea forever and he is about to lose his ship. It is one of our more reliable conversations. These are what memories are made of. My co worker still remembered his Camaro and long hair and sunny summer days from the early seventies.

In twenty or thirty years my daughter will hear this song and think of her Dad and how we used to debate the merits of Grand Funk Railroad. Few things besides music can create such easily accessed long standing memories of time and place.