Golden Grass

Do The Grassroots deserve a greatest hits album? More importantly, are The Grassroots even a band? I know that may seem like a weird question, but it's hard to distinguish the so called band from every employee who had nothing better to do than show up to work at Dunhill Records in the 60s.

I mean, it's a producer/songwriter project, like Fever Tree, or the Monkees, or Steely Dan. Steve Barri and P.F Chang, sorry Sloan, aren't ever credited as part of the actual band (they play "various instruments"), it's just a revolving cast of touring musicians who didn't actually make the recordings. Most of their records were actually played by the Wrecking Crew, and at some point every Dunhill staffer got a songwriting credit.

More importantly, i've never heard any of these supposed hits on a radio anywhere ever. I don't disbelieve that they had big hits and gold records, i just wonder how much the notion that it was a fake band played into their obvious loss to the oblivion of time. Quite a lot i suspect.

Believe it or not, the weirdest thing in all of this is that it's freakin' awesome. I'd rather listen to this than The Byrds or the Turtles any day. I'd put them right up with The Association for pure enjoyment. Oooooooooohhh! Live For Today, that's their biggest hit. Yeah, they just graduated from freakin' to fucking awesome. Sing it with me: SHA LA LA LA LA LA LIVE FOR TODAY!

Sucks that they put that song at the end of side B, in the crackly nasty waste of vinyl near the center, but definitely go check them out. I'm glad i didn't write about it yesterday. I might have said crappy things about them.

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