Summary:
MC5, led by White Panther's leader John Sinclair and guitarist Wayne Kramer,
represented the revolutionary wing of
the student riots and used rock and roll as a powerful agit-prop device.
Their sound embodied the rage and the sarcasm of the extremists, their lyrics
defied all moral standards.
Their live shows were wild, collective orgasms in which the band unleashed
a monster and chaotic fury on the audience.
Kick Out The Jams (1969) remains
one of the most orgiastic, terrifying and visceral album ever released,
a grotesque bacchanal of atrocious, primitive musical skills,
a formidable assault on reality,
the rock'n'roll equivalent of a nuclear explosion, sounding
as if free-jazz and acid-rock had been savagely mauled inside a particle
accelerator. The fact that its follow-up, Back In The USA (1970),
was so inferior is proof that the masterpiece was due to the spirit of an
entire era and not to a particular group of musicians.
(Translated from my original Italian text by DommeDamian)
MC5 were born in Detroit in 1964 as a direct
emanation of John Sinclair's White Panther ("rock and roll is the great
liberating force of our age"). They played at the groundbreaking
rallies of the Trans Love Energies commune and even in the midst of the Chicago
riots. They represented the class of white immigrant workers from the
South and Beatnik students who gravitated around the Mayne
State University. Their "revolutionary" rock was based on the
unbridled violence of the instruments and on a powerful
amplification. Their performances were collective orgasms, wild
intoxications, and avalanches of sound dumped in bulk on the audience,
overflowing with obscenities and slogans.
The first singles were released by small local labels, and would be collected, posthumously, on Babes In Arms (ROIR, 1983 - Danceteria, 1990). '66 Breakout (Total Energy, 1999) documents the group's
first recordings (including a Black To Comm17
minutes). The five members of the band, led by the first great heavy
guitarist, Wayne Kramer, as well as his worthy shoulder Fred Smith, and a mad
and ferocious singer like Rob Tyner, plunged headlong into the elementary riffs
of their songs, vomiting screams (instrumental and vocal) at full blast and at
full volume, strong in their musical-political belief: "brothers and
sisters, I want each of you to make noise ... I want to hear the
revolution!”. The opposite of being incompetent, they were actually aware
of the other revolution, the one brought to Western music
by Coltrane and Coleman's free-jazz. Their main influence, however, was
Chuck Berry, followed by Tamla Motown, while their
kinship with other "heavy" groups of the psychedelic season, such
as Blue Cheer,
and with other politicized groups, such as the Fugs,
were casual.
Kick Out The Jams (Elektra, 1969) is one of the most important, influential and creative albums in rock music, although it was born as an anti-artistic and deliberately poorly played product. Recorded live at the end of the year, it is indeed a grotesque
riot of musical atrocity and primitivism, but also a formidable example of
devastating power and music of the heart. Few bands can boast a commando
attack of atomic tunes like Kick Out The Jams, Come Together , Rocket Reducer No. 62 , I Want You Right Now. The blues matrix is disintegrated by the disruptive energy in an agitated sabbah of abominable sounds. Unrestrained percussion creates spasmodic tensions which then explode loudly in chaotic instrumental sarrabands. The baroque solos of the psychedelic suites have been annihilated by the devastating fury of collective improvisation.
However, metaphysical digressions are also mixed with many incitements to
violence, when one professes faith in a cosmic religion that gathers the
meaning of all revolutions, within itself. Then, the record ends with
a scary version of Starship (Sun Ra), spasmodically stretched
towards infinity, an eight-minute schizophrenic delirium, a hallucinating orgy
of galactic explosions, paranoid chants, hisses, lost voices, deafening
silences, cosmic madness.
Ten other sonic epilepses whiz on Back In The USA (Atlantic, 1970). This time there is less experimentation. The songs oscillate
between the depraved anthems of the Stones and the continuing distortions of
the psychedelics, some lashing enough to be a worthy corollary to the
apocalyptic rock on the first album, Looking At
You in particular. But above all the MC5 discover that they are
close relatives, waving machine guns and hand grenades, of the most naive and anthemic Mersey-beat (Teenage Lust , High School , Call Me Animal).
Involved in the general crisis of the Movement, after High Time (Atlantic, 1971), a bizarre rhythm and blues album (horns, choir, Salvation Army band, Sister Anne ),
MC5 disbanded, some ending up in prison (Sinclair in 1969 , for drug
possession, Kramer in 1976 for a bad story of drugs and the mafia), some
turning to journalism, some joining the ranks of the Movement veterans (John
Sinclair directing a jazz center, Wayne Kramer making ends meet in matches “combined"
against
Ted Nugent.
Fred Smith would marry punk diva Patti Smith and later, in 1994, die of a heart attack.
The Big Bang (Rhino, 1999) is an excellent anthology of the three discs and the first singles. After the rediscovery of the group, a stream of unreleased and
live albums will be released.
Wayne Kramer briefly played with Johnny Thunders
and wrote a musical
Mick Farren of the Deviants,
Who Shot You Dutch (Specter,
1987), a continuing collaboration on Death Tongue (Curio,
1991). Wayne Kramer was resurrected in the 90s from The Hard Stuff (Epitaph,
1995), a limping album that also includes existential songs such as Edge
of The Switchblade , Hope For Sale , Crack In
The Universe , Realm of The Pirate Kings and Sharkskin
Suit . The Clawhammer accompanied him on
the next Dangerous Madness(Epitaph, 1996), but the Detroit
terrorist ended up playing a melodic rock and roll more suited perhaps to a
dominator of the sales charts (Bob Seger and John Mellencamp often come to mind) than his past ( Rats of Illusion ). Both records are further sabotaged by spoken-work pieces which only serve to demonstrate how Kramer was more than just a spokesperson for Sinclair.
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