'MC5 has been written up and down, screamed at and laughed at, but never have I seen a relatively accurate account of what they do, which is play simple rock and roll harder than your imagination and louder than your experience'
Let's talk about the day the jive died.
I mean rock and roll jive, which my wise friend Harry says is psychedelic rock and white blues jams. There was a day, one day, when this jive was shoved out the window along with tie-dye shirts and songs about the canyons of your mind and endless remakes of "Crossroads" and "Tied to the Whipping Post," and that was the day in late 1968 or early 1969 that MC5's album, Kick out the Jams, was released. What followed was Iggy, punk and heavy metal, and the arrival of both left me dazed and confused. At that time I didn't fully understand that I was supposed to feel dazed and confused, exhausted, that it was part of the idea. I also noticed tbat most MC5, Iggy, heavy metal, and punk fans looked like they were 15, which I wasn't.
Years later came a friend. I'm calling him Harry. He hates that name.
Harry was 20 years younger than me and had all the credentials to be a believer in the absurd. He was a Scottish Jew from Brooklyn who began his professional life selling hot dogs at Nathan's in Coney Island. He had been a full-throttle, CBGB slam-dancing punker for a decade. We shared an office in which there was a private phone line that only rang with wrong numbers. Harry took to answering it the same way each time --
"Sal's Funeral Home,
You stab 'em, we slab 'em!"
Harry planned to go into software development and, this being about the time I got my first PC, had just explained the concept of hyperlinks to me. If he could make an old, ink-stained print journalist get that, he clearly was the best person to explain punk to me as well. I asked what it was about punk, and what was wrong with the rock that preceded it.
No further explanation was required. Finally I got it. Punk and heavy metal were about smashing all those songs about "canyons of my mind," "liquid crystal memories," flying through the clouds chasing butterflies or whatever it was that the Moody Blues were up to, and kissing the sky. Okay, let's let him off the hook"Hippie drivel," he snarled.
because he had so much else going on. "Hippie drivel" also meant all those blues jams by white boys who couldn't think of what else to do with their expensive Stratocasters than see how many different ways they could bracket ten-minute jams with choruses of "Spoonful" and "Tied to the Hitching Post."
So MC5 came along and kicked out the jams and the hippie drivel, a whole bunch of take-no-prisoners bands such as Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols followed, and from that moment on rock wasn't anywhere near the same. MC5 opened the way for punk and heavy metal and eventually even Ted Nugent, not exactly a wallflower, said that you had to see MC5 live to get the power.
The Year of Dead Flowers
In 1968, the Tet Offensive made it quite clear that America was about to lose its first war; the draft that told young men they would be forced to risk their lives in a doomed attempt to save a faraway country with almost no relevance to American life that didn't want to be saved anyway; the Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations that demonstrated that national leaders who opposed that war were risking their lives as well; antiwar protests at universities (including Columbia, where I was double-parked at the time; and the aforementioned Democratic National Convention.
For a while there in 1968 it was possible to believe that any kid who wasn't being radicalized on the streets of America was being radicalized in Vietnam. Or was in a garage in Detroit or someplace like it devising really loud rock and roll. Thus emerged MC5, which was touted as the soundtrack of "the revolution" that never happened and certainly would have been botched by its perpetrators if it had. Here is an excerpt from a newspaper review of the controversial, withdrawn 2004 documentary about MC5.
"... the proto-punk warriors known as the MC5 left a dent that outlasts their mostly negligible record sales ... delivering body blows to the dozing status quo was as much a part of the motivation than any other impulse ... its gripping tangleof chords and danger, a need to craft art out of the turmoil of the time, makes the music seem far less rusty than other pop of that era ... the band's stance was so revolutionary that the FBI kept files and film on its members and on its wild manager, John Sinclair, who was also a member of the radical White Panthers. Not many other rockumentaries can boast of real government surveillance camera work on their subjects."
--Elvis Mitchel in The New York Times
I didn't see MC5 that way. I saw them as being Chuck Berry on steroids or, as my 30ish friend Brett said when I played Kick Out the Jams for him a couple of years ago, "the American Who." As if to prove it, within a matter of months of the release of their first album, MC5 was Chuck Berry on steroids. Forget the revolution or the bullet bandoliers they wore on stage, which history has shown to have been John Sinclair's vision more than theirs. Not too long into 1969 I was invited to go on "The Dennis Wholey Show," a syndicated TV talk show out of Cincinnati where, by coincidence, I was born. A serious contender for the sort of fame David Letterman got later, Dennis now hosts Public Broadcasting's "This Is America." He asked me to bring a band that was new and exciting; I brought MC5.
They flew down from Detroit, and the night before the taping we were drinking sitting in this big, round booth in the hotel bar listening to the house combo play an seemingly never-ending medley of the songs you would expect from a hotel bar band in Ohio in 1969. The singer kept announcing the presence of musical celebrities, getting it wrong each time -- "MC3," "MC4," "MC6" -- and inviting them onstage to jam, which would have been worth the trip by itself. Chuck Berry on steroids, the American Who, the rock band of the revolution, bullet bandoliers and hair the size of small rain clouds, Marshall amps piled way high, sits in with the local combo in Cincinnati for "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head."
So we get on the show. I sit next to Dennis and do my pundit thing. He asks what I think is happening in rock in America, and I tell him about MC5. Who promptly get onstage and jump into coordinated pop rock choreography -- Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith sliding on their knees from back to front of stage, parallel guitars pointing at the ceiling, and rip through "Thunder Express," which ain't exactly straight out of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book --
"I put it in first and then I punch it,A couple of days after I got back to New York I got a note from Dennis. "You were very interesting," it said.
listen to the engine roar
I lay a patch of rubber for a block and a half
when I push it on down to the floor
Do I roll? Well I guess -- Thunder Express."
Here are three stories I wrote about MC5 in 1969. Note the evolution from revolution.
***First MC5 article, published in early 1969***
MC5 Brings Back Body Rock
to Overthrow the Country
By Mike Jahn
Pop Scene Service
NEW YORK (PSS)—-MC5, the Detroit rock band, has released its first album, "Kick Out the Jams." Headquartered in Ann Arbor, near Detroit, MC5 has received nation-wide attention over the past few months as being the first "guerilla" rock group.
They were the only band to play in Chicago during the demonstrations in opposition to the Democratic National Disaster. All other prominent rock groups that had planned to attend didn't show up. MC5 played despite the fact that the group had no money to waste on equipment which stood a good chance of getting wrecked.
The group has a huge following in the Detroit area. "Kick Out the Jams" was recorded live, Halloween weekend, 1968, in Detroit's Grande Ballroom, where the MC5 tries regularly to bring down the walls.
John Sinclair, their manager and a leader of the White Panthers, a militant political group, wrote in the album's liner notes:
CRAZY OUT OF YOUR HEAD
"The MC5 will make you feel it, or leave the room. The MC5 will drive you crazy out of your head, and into your body. The MC5 is rock and roll. Rock and roll is the music of our bodies, of our whole lives... We are free men, and we demand a free music, a free high energy source that will drive us wild into the streets of America yelling and screaming and tearing down everything that would keep people slaves."
Their music is loud; "high-energy," they call it. At first, it sounds like one big roar, with individual parts barely discernible. As a matter of fact, you might as well forget it if you are over 19 or 20. I am 25 and supposedly a specialist at this music, and I am having trouble. The MC5 audience is young, 14 or 15, and politically radical. Very,few Rascal fans are in their crowds.
NOT READY? DON'T TRY IT
If you are not ready for hard, heavy and sensual rock, don't even try listening, particularly live. To the average adult, their sound is the epitome of the complaints parents always have (and always will have) about rock: "It's too loud. It doesn't make any sense."
Now we are back into the original rock context. When it began, its purpose was as a secret code and psychic masseuse for the young, not decipherable by adults.
But for the past few years rock has been getting less loud and more literary, head music for the intellect, not the body.
MORRISON, THE BODY REVOLUTIONARY
MC5 says that rock should be body music, as it was in the beginning. To understand it you have to dance and sweat and scream at a rock concert, and, to do this, you pretty much have to be young. Try it. It will tell you more about politics in the 1970s than all the analysts in Washington.
The Doors did similar things two years ago, before Jim Morrison began singing like Andy Williams and talking like Max Frost, the in "Wild in the Streets."
Now, Miami police are reported to be searching for Morrison for inciting to riot (and a few other things) at a concert last week, and record stores all over are banning or censoring the MC5 album. This is because of the use of a certain 12 letter word alluding to incest on the record and in the liner notes. The record has since been expurgated and one record store owner was seen removing the word from the jacket with a Magic Marker.
One price of democracy is police and record store owners, and MC5 will be glad to discuss this with you, I'm sure.
(Pop Scene Service by Bell-McClure Syndicate) 20JI3690
***Second MC5 article, published in 1969***
The following article was one of my column "New York Current," circulated by Pop Scene Service/Bell McClure Newspaper Syndicate to 119 newspapers in most major markets. I don't know the original title.
By Mike Jahn
Pop Scene Service
NEW YORK (PSS)--MC5, just one year ago called by everyone from Newsweek to the Brewers Gazette the "guerrilla rock band," is now only slightly more politically outspoken than a tree.
A year ago the underground and music press was filled with reports of the "rock group of the revolution," citing the fact that they were the only band to entertain the troops during the Democratic National Convention.
Now MC5, the name stands for Motor City Five (they're from the Detroit area), avoids politics and is having a hard time living down their reputation as radical slogan-hurlers. Sometime over the past year they decided that all they want to be is a rock 'n' roll band; that they are entertainers and not politicians.
BROKEN TIES
Their previous manager, John Sinclair, is now in a Michigan penitentiary serving a nine-and-a-half-year term for possession of marijuana. Since then, the group has broken its ties with the White Panther Party, the militant radical group that Sinclair headed, and has concentrated on playing rock 'n' roll. And they are faced with having to live down a reputation as being radical politicians that they never created. Sinclair was the politician, and he used MC5 as a springboard to fame.
The members themselves didn't indulge very much in Sinclair's politics, and at one point last December were physically attacked by a militant radical group when they announced from a New York stage that "there is only one reason we're here, and that's to play rock 'n' roll."
Over the summer the group has been working on new material at their home in Ann Arbor, Mich., and recording their new album. The album, "Back in the USA" (after the title of an old Chuck Berry song), is on the Atlantic label. MC5 was thrown off the Elektra label several months ago, largely because of Sinclair's politics.
The first single, "Tonight," was just released by Atlantic. It's a short, driving song with lyrics about kids sitting in school and wishing they were at a rock dance. The group has sharpened their style, tightened up and been professionalized over the past several months. They now sound more than ever like the early Beatles, with the same raw enthusiasm and joy.
Mostly, they have become professional entertainers. They show up on time for concerts. They don't pretend to be sensitive artists who turn their backs on the audience. They play loud and exciting rock 'n' roll.
The comparison with the early Beatles is very fair. Their original material isn't as good but in terms of energy, ability and eagerness to entertain, they are right up there.
***Third MC5 article, published later in 1969 in the magazine Changes***
Changes Magazine, Vol 1, No 5, 1969
MC5
by Mike Jahn
MC5 plays belly rock, body rock. This is important and you will have to listen carefully, because reports of their activities in various elements of the weekly press have been so accurate they could have been written by Strom Thurmond.
MC5 has been written up and down, screamed at and laughed at, but never have I seen a relatively accurate account of what they do, which is play simple rock and roll harder than your imagination and louder than your experience.
Consider MC5. They were at Ungano's, which seems to be the only club in New York with the nerve to book them. Ungano's is an average size club with a big back room checked off by four mirrored pillars. The stage is along one wall. Opposite it is a small raised gallery for the press. It takes a club with imagination to put the press in a raised gallery with a Dayglo light that makes their underwear show through their clothes.
The stage is covered with eight-foot amplifiers. Two are draped with a 50-star American flag; one with a 13-star flag; two others with a huge confederate flag. Strange that a band that wouldn't dare play in Mississippi is flying its colors. Another amp is draped with a huge skull-and-crossbones. MC5's stagehands are adjusting the equipment. A pile of drumsticks goes on the floor. A hammer nails the drums down. If this wasn't done the drummer would put his equipment right through somebody's Yippie Sundae. The drums are miked. In the old days the boys in the band would scream at the drummer to play quiet. Now he needs amplification to be heard.
MC5 is probably the world's loudest rock and roll band. The equipment man who nailed the drums down now is sitting at them, touching a tom-tom, tapping a cymbal; half testing, half dreaming. It takes half an hour to make up the stage.
You wonder how much people plan things. The sound system is playing a record, The Doors' "When the Music's Over." Just as MC5 walks on stage Jim Morrison, the Ralph Ginzburg of rock and roll, is singing "we're getting tired of waiting around..." You decide that it was an accident. J. C. Crawford, who is billed as MC5's Religious Leader and Spiritual Advisor, introduces the group. They play Chuck Berry's "Back In the U.S.A."
They play this basic rock and roll very hard and clean, and very loud. There is no fooling around, no extra weight, nothing but good old rock and roll amplified way beyond most everyone's experience. The first thing you notice about them is that they are very professional. There is none of this ten minutes messing around between songs. When they do take a minute tuning later in the set they apologize profusely for the inconvenience. They are tight and together. So together you think they must ball together, which according to the liner notes on their first album is just what they do.
The first thing you notice is the professionalism. The second is the lack of revolutionary dogma. Isn't MC5 the guerilla rock band? Aren't they supposed to get on stage and talk about kicking down the walls? From their advance publicity you would think SDS is their booking agent. On stage they aren't this way. Publicity aside, on stage they just play rock and roll. In the five times I have seen them the strongest thing I heard about revolution was one remark made when an amp broke down. "Pig technology can't keep up with the avant-garde," guitarist Wayne Kramer remarked. When you get into it you find that MC5's idea of revolution is digging rock and roll and screwing when and where you feel like it. "The MC5 will make you feel it or leave the room," the liner notes say. "The MC5 is rock and roll. Rock and roll is the music of our bodies, of our whole lives. The reasonsifier, Rob Tyner calls it. We have to come together, people, 'build a gathering,' or else. Or else you are dead and gone." MC5 isn't against shooting back when assaulted, they will tell you. But most of their shooting is done from the hip.
Wayne Kramer sights along his guitar into the audience's body. MC5 has borrowed heavily from The Who: Pete Townshend ass flip and arm swing, Roger Daltry's mike-whirling. Rob Tyner jumps and shakes, Robbie the Robot in electric orgasm. Each member has his special posture, but the band moves very tightly as one. It has to. When you are playing at the volume these guys play at you can't fool around.
They play "Motor City is Burning," a blues about the Detroit riots. In the middle of it Rob Tyner changes the lyrics somewhat: "Yoko Ono don't know what the problem is," he groans, "stayin' in bed she won't find out. I said John Lennon don't know what the problem is no more...ought to get out in the world and find out."
Revolution...MC5 is THE most exotic rock band a kid can dig, because they are the bad guys. They try to be and they are. They are. White revolutionary Rolling Stones, playing hard-core rock and roll with a lean, snappy feel. It is body music, sounds that you can hear in the belly and not in the head. The Stones at their best moments did this, and MC5 does it all the time, through sheer energy. I can't match the group's usual reviewers for the heavy cosmic-psychedelic fantasy prose they turn out.
Really now, the distinction between head music and body music must be made. Oversimplified: The Beatles play head music, the Stones body music. Gracie Slick sings for the head, Janis Joplin for the body. Music can be rock, folk, blues, jazz, classical, anything. It either goes one place or the other. Richie Havens is body music, Leonard Cohen is head music. Dylan was head music for the longest time, but recently he seems to have lowered his sights, and that is a good sign.
I'm not saying that one is good and one is bad (though I lean toward body music myself). Just that they are very different, and the ability to make the distinction is perhaps one of the most important keys to appreciating music. Like many good people from Wagner to Jagger, MC5 is body music, and can be appreciated only if you listen with your body.
Do not approach them expecting anything but hard rock and roll, played very loud. Listen with your belly and dance to the music. Excitement can be found anywhere, even in a guitar.
They play "Shakin' All Over" a Who standard; "High Heel Sneakers," and two MC5 songs, "Call Me Animal" which is about mankind's forgetting its relationship to other living things, and "Human Being Lawn Mower," a bloody thought about police power. They do not play "Kick Out the Jams," their trademark song. Jams, somebody says, means both jam sessions and is an old spade R&B term meaning Jive-Ass Motherf*****s. The Five's fans used to yell "kick out the jams" at the ongoing blues jam sessions that were holding up MC5's performance at their home quarters, Detroit's Grande Ballroom.
Further MC5 minutia: "Rocket Reducer 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)" is one of their usual songs. "Rocket Reducer 62" is a brand of airplane glue. You say you want a revolution ...
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