Hum Along And Dance

Stereo/Mono promo copy. It was (and remains, I think) easy to dismiss Rare Earth as a band worth collecting, because at the time they were hitting the Top 40, it was very uncool for white guys to be "pretending" to be black. There was so much "real" funk to be had, why bother with these fake plastic trees? It's similar to the attitude a lot of listeners had to Badfinger (just a clone of the Beatles) and the Raspberries (just a bubblegum band). The early 1970s were not kind to bands that appeared to lack for integrity, and rock fans (at least) were still way too serious about Rock Music.\r\n

All this is a long-winded way of saying I really love some of Rare Earth's big hits, and was shocked to discover this nugget that I assumed would be some awful throwaway. Its heavy-metal funk groove echoes the kind of sound Rap bands like Run-DMC and Public Enemy were headed to in the 1990s. Clearly, I'm not immune to the lingering uncertainties about this group's place in the long-run pantheon of Rock'n'Soul. :-)