Matthew Kelly1001 Albums You Must Die Before You Hear
#21: Grand Funk Railroad – All The Girls In The World Beware (1974)
Do you want to hear the singer boast about the dark brown stains on his underwear? MATT KELLY sure as hell does not.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, except when you can. I don’t know about you but I’m judging the shit out of this cover, and so I should because the music contained herein is just as f*cking silly as this image suggests.
And if you don’t believe me then you clearly haven’t heard Mark Farner boast about the dark brown stains in his underwear on the title track, or ‘Look At Granny Run Run’, possibly the best upbeat soul number about a man overdosing on aphrodisiacs and attempting to rape his elderly wife that I’ve ever heard.
Essentially, this is the band reacting to their horrid cover of ‘The Locomotion’ reaching #1 by selling out with a trashy album of cheeky, fairly thoughtless pop.
To be fair, it isn’t all bad – ‘Responsibility’ is a carefree, perky romp and ‘Running’ is solid, a horn-heavy fast-paced number which would be at home on an early Chicago album.
But there’s certainly a lot to dislike. From the harsh, noisy ‘Life’ to the intolerably schmaltzy ‘Memories’, to the absolutely bizarre whispered vocals on the inexplicably seven-minute long ‘Good And Evil’, there’s faux pas everywhere.
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Corny, ephemeral songs like ‘Bad Time’ and ‘Some Kind Of Wonderful’ feel like a total betrayal of what Grand Funk once stood for and the record will certainly leave a bad taste in the mouths of hard rock purists.
I still can’t bring myself to truly hate it as there is a sense of fun and it’s an amusing listen, but it’s certainly not an album anyone needs to own.
