Grand Funk, the self proclaimed American Band, was pure rock band. In 1974 as they were working on their album Shinin’ On and was thinking that they may need one more song to complete it. Mark Farner as a lark began singing ‘Everybody’s doing a brand new dance now’, which with standard reaction other members of the band thought, ‘Yeah, Grand Funk doing the Locomotion’. After thought they said Why not and turned out this version of the ’60′s pop classic.

The Locomotion became the group’s 2nd Number 1 single and their biggest selling single.

The original version was done in 1962 by Little Eva, the 13 year old baby sitter of the song’s writers Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

In the 1980′s the song became a hit again this time by Australian Kylie Minogue.

Carole King has performed the song many time in her live shows. This version was from the Coming Home Concert in the early 1990′s.

Trumpeter Bill Chase form his band in 1970. They took the last name of their leader. Get it On was the hit from their first album. In all the group would release three albums. With a number of changes in the members of the band they were working on their 4th when Bill Chase and three other members died in a plane crash on August 9, 1974. This 1974 video of Chase was recorded a few months before the accident.

At the time that this song was on the charts in America, T-Rex had a European song that was also titled Get It On. When they released that song in America it was retitled, Bang-a-Gong (Get It On).

T-Rex led by Mac Bolan was a popular group in England, but relatively unknown in America. Bang a Gong was their only US hit. It did hit the Top 10, but just barely topping out at Number 10.

Under the title Get It On, it was a big hit in 1971 in England reaching the Number 1 spot there. The title was changed to Bang A Gong (Get It One) due to Chase’s song Get It On which was released in America during the summer of 1971.

In July of 1973 Grand Funk Railroad released their 7th album We’re An American Band.  This was also the first of three Albums where the group was simply call Grand Funk.  The first single released from the album was the title song We’re An American Band.

The song was their first Number 1 single.  It was written by Don Brewer and produced by Todd Rundgren  and brought the group to the larger, pop audience.  Prior to this the group was more Heavy Rock, the term Heavy Metal was not used until the 1980s.

Many of Grand Funk Railroad songs were sung by Mark Farner, but this one was sung by Brewer, the group drummer.

In the first pressing, all the copies of the 45 RPM records were pressed on gold vinyl.

Over the years there have been a few artist who have gone just by one name. The 60′s artist Donavan and from the 80′s Madonna and Prince. Beginning in the late 1960′s and even into today, Melanie is one of those one name artist.

She was just a young singer when she was invited to perform at the Woodstock festival in 1969 but by the end of it she was better known.

The song Lay Down (Candles In The Rain) which she recorded in 1970 with the Edwin Hawkins Singers was inspired by the events at Woodstock. It reached a top spot of Number 6 on the charts.

And as an added bonus Melanie performing the same song 20 years later.

In 1971 in Netherland the duo Mouth and MacNeil (Big Mouth (born Willem Duyn, March 31, 1937) and Maggie MacNeal (born Sjoukje van’t Spijker, May 5, 1950) came together. They recorded a few songs and were more popular in Europe, especially Germany, than they were in the United States. How Do You Do, released in 1972 was their biggest US hit, reaching as high as Number 8 in July. It’s reported that Willem Duyn died on December 4, 2004,

Note:The following was originally published at 6 Things To Consider. We thank Steve Atkinson for allowing us to republish this.

It was on Friday the 13th, February 1970 that the album that many consider the first Heavy Metal album was released. It was released in the United Kingdom. The debut album of a band from Birmingham England. The band and the album shared the name Black Sabbath.

The album had seven tracks. Five were original songs written by the group and two covers.

Black Sabbath consisted of Tony Iommi on guitar, Ozzy Osbourne sang lead, Terry “Geezer” Butler was the bassman, and Bill Ward at drums.

The album was a commercial success reaching number 8 on the UK Albums Chart, and following its US release in May 1970 reached number 23 on the Billboard 200 staying on the charts for over a year. It was widely panned by critics partly because it was so much different than what had been heard before.

A few months later the band would record their second album. From that recording came two of the most popular and most familiar songs done by the group. The album’s title song, Paranoid and the album’s second single Iron Man.

The term Heavy Metal wasn’t used until a number of years after the album’s released. Once it did become a term for music with a heavy rock beat, it was determined that this album was the first.

Baba O’Riley

Who Are You

See Me, Feel Me

Won’t get Fooled Again

As far as I am concerned this is the best song that Rod Stewart has recorded. It was written by him and Ron Wood while they were both members of Faces.

The song originally appeared on their 1971 album A Nod Is as Good as a Wink…To a Blind Horse

Have you seen the CVS commercial. The one about receiving Double Bucks. The song that they are using is Double Lovin’ by the Osmonds.

After their big success with their self titled Osmonds album and their single from it One Bad Apple they recorded a follow-up album. The album was called Homemade and the first single release from it was the song Double Lovin’.

The song wasn’t as successful as One Bad Apple nor the song that followed Yo-Yo. While both of these reached the Top 5, with One Bad Apple reaching the top spot, Double Lovin’ would peak at 14.