The American Band

If you get a minute, you should go to Amazon and search for an album called Good Singin’, Good Playin’ and see the gushing reviews.

Five stars. Five starts. A great Grand Funk album. Best sounding rock album ever. Good Singing Good Playin’…Absolutely!

The accolades for this 1976 release are endless. And, they’re right! I mean, I wouldn’t choose to put this album on over, say, Presence. But it does what it says on the tin. Even the oddly relevant “Don’t Let ’em Take Your Gun” is listenable, and I’m beyond amazed it wasn’t snapped up as an anthem by our friends in the Tea Party.

Thing is, Good Singin’, Good Playin’ is a Frank Zappa project.

Credits:

Produced by: Frank Zappa
Basic Tracks and Re-Mix Engineered by: Frank Zappa
Vocals Engineered by: Michael Braunstein & Davey Moire
Assistant Engineer on Basic Tracks: Mark Stebbeds
Basic Tracks Recorded at: The Swamp
Vocals & Re-Mix Recorded at: The Record Plant, L.A.
Photography: Gary Heery / Norman Seeff · Design: Norman Seeff

Drummer and co-lead Don Brewer had this to say about Zappa’s involvement (full interview here)

The reason we did the Frank Zappa thing was, we saw 2000 Motels and he mentioned Grand Funk Railroad in that film. And we went, ‘Let’s call Frank and see if he wants to produce a record,’ and we did, and he did! Are you kidding?! Frank Zappa wants to produce a Grand Funk record?! I thought he brought a lot of good stuff to the table there. We were going through a lot of problems in the band, and we had kinda gotten off track with what we were trying to do. That whole disco thing was really screwing everything up, and we didn’t know what way to go. When Frank came in he just said, ‘Why don’t you guys just do what you do.” And he came up with the title, Good Singin’ Good Playin’. It was a kick working with him, I loved it. Went over to his house and met his family – Dweezil, and the crazy kids, Moon and all that stuff. It was just a really fun experience.

Hotcha.

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