Grand Funk Railroad – Closer to Home (1971):  For some reason, Grand Funk Railroad (with the name often shortened to Grand Funk, as on the cover of this album) never got much respect from the rock critics, though their music fits in squarely with the other arena rock groups of that era.  Their fans loved Grand Funk, both their albums – their first six albums are all either Gold or Platinum – and live performances.  For instance, in a 1971 concert Grand Funk Railroad matched (or nearly so) the attendance of the legendary Beatles concerts at Shea Stadium in New York City in 1965 and 1966.  It took the Beatles a few weeks to sell their tickets, while Grand Funk sold out the stadium in 72 hours.  The band was formed in Flint, Michigan in 1968.  Closer to Home was Grand Funk Railroad’s third album and also their creative peak, and something of a concept album.  It has long been one of my favorite hard rock albums.  Several of the songs, such as “Sin’s a Good Man’s Brother” and “Mean Mistreater”, depart from their guitar-heavy hard-rock formula, perhaps in an attempt to appease the critics; but it didn’t help in that respect.  The closing track, “I’m Your Captain (Closer to Home)” – over the years, the song title is variously shown as just one of those phrases and with every combination of the two imaginable – clocks in at 10 minutes but was a hit single nevertheless, being played regularly at full length on FM rock radio stations.  Grand Trunk Railway is a sizable rail line that operated on both sides of the Canadian Border and included a subsidiary line that ran through Michigan, Indiana and Illinois called Grand Trunk Western Railroad.  I discovered that quite by accident one day looking at maps; I hadn’t known where the band name Grand Funk Railroad had come from before that.