Fine Rare Earth

by The Wild Card

In the late '60s and through the '70s, Rare Earth was a musical force to be reckoned with. With a series of classic albums such as ECOLOGY and ONE WORLD (The Wild Card's personal favorite), plus a series of hit songs such as "I Just Want to Celebrate," "(I Know) I'm Losing You" and their immortal LIVE treatment of the Motown standard "Get Ready," the band mixed a unique blend of pure rock and roll soul into the grooves of these classic tracks, and their live shows were legendary for the band's intense fascination with impromptu jamming throughout various numbers, such as "Hey Big Brother."

Says lead vocalist/sax player Gil Bridges, who has been with Rare Earth since the beginning, "We recently played at Cincinnati's 'City of Celebration' (along with REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac, and Orleans) to a capacity crowd."

Lucky ones here in Lansing also got to see Rare Earth in the flesh in June when the boys knocked us out at the North Lansing Heritage Festival. Bridges adds, "Playing at the Heritage Festival in Lansing was lots of fun. We'll definitely have to try to come back next year. Everyone was fantastic to us!"

Rare Earth's latest album, DIFFERENT WORLD, has been officially released throughout Europe on the Koch International label. It's also available around here if you ask your friendly record store to find it for you, and the guys are currently working on demos (including several songs recently submitted to them by ace songwriter Russ Ballard) for their next album, which will be released on Koch International. The band is still playing 75-100 dates per year, keeping themselves extremely busy, but I hope they come back to Lansing again really soon because RARE EARTH RULES!

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