Grand Funk Railroad
Forgetten Funk
1981

Appears to be alternates and unreleased songs for Grand Funk Lives album.

Alternates
Good Times
Queen Bee
Testify
I Can't Be With You Tonight
No Reason Why
We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
Y.O.U.
Stuck In The Middle
Greed Of Man
Wait For Me

Unreleased Songs
Your Love
(You've Got To Be) Crazy
Little Girl
Carry On
Keep It Moving
Say You Are
I Got To Shout With You
Anytime
I'm Going To Find Someone Else
I Heard It Again

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Oh those sad sad sad Funksters. The early 70's had seen them explode on the rock scene and their musical road lit up brightly by smashing success early of those power trio chords, long solos, and social conscious songs (fuck the critics)    . . but then the bright lights got turned down. The late 70's were littered with forgetable albums, shmaltzy lyrics and near comic book like ablums (and album covers).  Rock died; Pop lived. Who can deny the more universal, commercial appeal of We're An American Band? But pop fans are fickle, aren't they?  Rock fans seem to form a solid fan base that lasts forever but pop is so fleeting-- a what have you sung for me lately mentality. And once you start trying to produce songs for Top 40 radio, you'd better keep the engine running because the pop fan will desert you faster than an escort hooker after the clock has run out. So guess what,  the fans' stopped buying GFR.

So what do the clever 80's Funksters need to do - let's see, let's see, think Don, think Mark, think Craig -- Hey, we've got it - a comeback album and tour. Time heals all wounds. The fans will forget our mistakes and love our glory days. But then they do a most bonehead thing, they decide to do the album and tour w/o Mel on bass.  And guess what? It turns out that Mel did provide a pretty darned good underbelly to that whole GFR sound. He was missed.

The songs on this bootleg are much shorter, less funky, less soulful than on the classics GFR albums.  I call it a soft heavy metal sound.  Like some of those cookie-cutter metal hair bands from the 80's (God I'm glad that's over). Still, it is a good rockin' bootleg if you're a fan of the latter radio-oriented GFR. But for me, it's hard to listen to theses songs without longing for the old, rocking GFR.

The Grand Funk Lives album is not a priority for anyone's collection and this bootleg of Forgotten Funk is in the same category. I wouldn't start a GFR collection with this one. But for latter day fans, it definitely is much more inspired, exciting than the previous Good Singin' Good Playin' or especially any of the mid-70's crap -  which practically killed the pop fan base.  If this is your first GFR boot, quickly close this web page and go get the commerdial Grank Funk Live Alubm - a classic.

There is one more bit of irony here for me - the best rock album from the early GFR years, 1970's Grand Funk Live Album,  generated the rock buzz that every band longs for. So flashforward a decade and the boys decide to name this album Grand Funk Lives.  Whoo - clever marketing or tomfoolary - another great live album, right? You'd think that you were in for more blistering live rock n' roll show but wait a minute, this is not a live album, nor is it a traditional GRR done in the early 70's styles album. The clever Funksters have pulled yet another one the fan base - including me   :-(