I'm goin' to see one of my favorite bands tonight. A band I've been wantin' to see for nearly 20 years but never saw 'em yet! They're playin the Pittsburgh Rib Cook-Off down at Heinz field. Grand Funk Railroad! Tickets are only $10.00. I gotta get down to the beer distributor...
Took a case 'a' beer an' 3 joints. Found out in the parking lot from some kids next to us that Mark wasn't playin in the band. I knew he left the band for a while to do some Christian music but I thought that was somethin' he came back from. I guess not though. So we didn't find out till we got down there to the venue about that! At first I was real dissapointed, but then I got over it.
The first band to play was a band called No Bad Ju Ju and they were pretty funky. They covered "Hard To Handle" and "Brown Sugar". They had a couple 'a' horns and a woman singin' and closed with Grandmaster Flash_"Wondermike"
So Grand Funk without Mark Farner was still o.k., but it took 2 guys to replace him. One guy to be the frontman/singer of the band, a guy who looked suspisciously like Mark and deceptively declined to introduce himself when the rest of the band was introduced, leaving it up to the audience to either figure it out if they didn't already know, or assume by his silence that he was Mark Farner, and another guy to lay down all the bad-ass heavy electric guitar stuff that the other Mark replacement wasn't capable of. I guess all that talent and energy is hard to find in one man. The original drummer and bass player were there playin' in the band and the keyboardist might 'a' been original too, not quite sure about him.
Their best tune of the night was "Inside Looking Out" which has this really groovy instrumental jam in the middle of it. The frontman/singin' Mark replacement mumbled his way through the part of the tune were Mark used to sing about spendin' all day "...Makin' up 'nickel bags...'". What a pussy. Good thing we didn't have to pay the $10.00.
First time I'd ever been to Heinz Field, home of the Champion, Pittsburgh Steelers. The rib cook-off was actually in the parking lot but they had the ground level of the stadium open so people could use the bathrooms an' such. All 5 Vince Lombardi trophies owned by the Steelers are on display in the hall. A little further away is a "Walk of Fame" where the baddest Steelers in history are enshrined as Gods among men. I'm a life-long Steelers fan and never yet even been to a game. I was standin' there in front of Jack Lamberts' locker, lookin' at his helmet and his boots and other gear. A rush of pride and respect and great humility came over me. A little girl, about 7 or 8 was standin' to my side, sorta behind me. She read Jack Lamberts' name out loud. All I could do was look at her and silently acknowledge her, with a nod.
So even though Mark Farner didn't play it was still real cool checkin' out Heinz Field and the Steelers history.
Spent 18.oo on ribs. Man, were they good!!