MC5 - Rock's Black Panthers

Among the many bands that, over the years, have become true legends, MC5 undoubtedly hold a place of honor. Their revolutionary message, heavily influenced by White Panther Party leader John Sinclair, collided head-on with the all-too-accommodating ideology of "hippie" culture, a world away from the deafening bacchanals the Detroit band had on offer. As the story goes, the Motor City Five formed in 1964 in Lincoln Park, Michigan, with a line-up made up of singer Rob Tyner, guitarists Fred "Sonic" Smith (future husband of Patti Smith) and Wayne Kramer, bassist Pat Burrows and drummer Bob Gaspar. It only took a few gigs for Smith and Kramer to start experimenting with distortion and feedback, stuff that gave Burrows and Gaspar such headaches that they ended up quitting. They were replaced by drummer Dennis Thompson and bassist Michael Davis.

Throughout 1966, the band built up a solid following on the local scene, helped by a steady string of live dates at the Grande Ballroom. They quickly caught the attention of John Sinclair, an English teacher who also happened to lead the Black Panthers, a party with strongly revolutionary leanings that preached "total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock & roll, dope, and fucking in the streets." Once he became the band's manager, Sinclair oversaw the making of their first single, "I Can Only Give You Everything," which was well received.

After appearing at Chicago's "Yippies' Festival Of Life," the band signed with Elektra, paving the way for the release of their debut album. Recorded live at the Grande Ballroom on October 30-31, 1968, Kick Out The Jams is one of the most devastating, explosive debuts ever made, a true landmark of the hardest and most outrageous rock around. Elektra had its hands full trying to distribute the album, thanks to Tyner's explicit lyrics.

The idea of recording the album live came from Sinclair, who was convinced it was the only way to capture the true spirit of MC5. And indeed, that Halloween night had everything in place for the Detroit band to walk straight into legend. First on stage were Iggy Pop's Stooges. The air was almost unbreathable, thick with the soporific scent of incense and marijuana. Iggy & co.'s set was, as usual, exceptional: punk before the letter like nothing ever seen before. Strobe lights slid insidiously across the faces of the crowd: the Grande Ballroom looked like a pit of screams and irreparable silences. Fanning the flames further was a fiery address from J.C. Crawford, the band's "Brother" and "Spiritual Advisor": ⟦Q1⟧

Sure, today his message might seem dated, but that night it really felt like revolution was about to come crashing down on the States, sweeping away the whole load of criminal idiocy that came with it. And the violence and rage that open "Ramblin' Rose," with Tyner's falsetto riding masterfully atop the organized chaos conjured up by Kramer, Smith and the rest of the gang, is the violent, boundless rage of everyone present at that great event, and, by extension, of an entire generation sick and tired of abuse and third-rate politicians. Just a brief pause, and then comes one of the essential moments in rock history, the one where Tyner shouts, without hesitation, ⟦Q2⟧ What follows is one of the most seizure-inducing tracks ever recorded, with the drums thundering and pounding away, the six strings unleashing incendiary machine-gun bursts, and the bass, seemingly swallowed by the deafening noise, flashing menacing, fierce glimmers. This was about as iconoclastic as puritanical America could possibly brace itself for!

Without pausing for breath, the MC5 battleship tears further into the underlying blues vein with "Come Together," a sonic rot that periodically plunges into abysses of noise and Dionysian delirium. There's a mood of feverish excitement among the crowd as they watch, stunned, these modern bacchanals, these dizzying apocalypses of sex, drugs and rock & roll. And the concert, then, becomes a genuine happening, where everyone feels like a protagonist, because everyone has a role to play: simply being here, now.

"Rocket Reducer No. 62" keeps grinding out feedback and distortion, and you can almost picture those towers of amplifiers shaking, as if afraid of having to withstand so much violence. But there's no room for hesitation, as the filthy, unbridled punk of "Borderline" seems to suggest, with its napalm sparks of guitar. A moment of release comes with the exuberant blues of "Motor City Is Burning," with Smith and Kramer sketching out sublime triangulations of venomous chords. "I Want You Right Now" has a solemn gait, with the rhythm section left to its own fate amid those furious, diseased guitars.

Just enough time to let Tyner's voice, more sensual here than ever, take center stage, and then the chaos explodes again, uncompromising. At this point, the final blow comes courtesy of an incredible reworking of "Starship" by Sun Ra, prophet of cosmic jazz. The imperious build launches the noise out among the stars, letting it drown amid black holes and distant galaxies. Cosmic silence is pierced by imperceptible flashes, primordial vocalizations and psychic fragments. Everything takes on dark, indefinable shapes. Far behind now are the deafening sarabands and magmatic distortions, as a voice emerges sending messages from some scattered point in the universe. The crowd seems hypnotized: everyone standing close to everyone else, yet, inside, impossibly far from everything and everyone. Final liberation, the return to the source, to that intangible rustle that was once our curiosity for a world not yet reduced to pure image, feels close at hand. This is what the instrumental wreckage that closes Kick Out the Jams seems to foreshadow.

Unyielding and fiercely politicized, MC5 are a cancer America has never managed to shake off. After the album's release, the band couldn't enjoy their moment of glory for long, since Sinclair was arrested on a shady drug charge. Without their manager, MC5 also lost Elektra's backing. No great loss, though: Atlantic was already waiting on their doorstep with a new contract. But without Sinclair, the explosive force and political commitment of the debut album vanished without a trace.

Produced by Jon Landau, Back In The Usa was released in 1970, and also features two keyboardists, Pete Kelly and Dan Jordan. Many critics consider it "the definitive proto-punk album." Hard to say for certain, but tracks like "Looking At You" and "Human Being Lawnmover" certainly back up that claim.

That said, with the expressive urgency and the will to experiment, elevating noise to "sonic poetry," now gone, the album inevitably comes across as inferior to its monumental predecessor. While "Tutti Frutti" and the title track (placed at the beginning and the end of the album) are powerful reworkings of songs by Little Richard and Chuck Berry, the supersonic anthems that follow one another in between do nothing but stir up an exhausting, menacing racket, lacking, however, the enormously "creative" quality that characterized the songs on the first album. Fans were split over the band's new approach; many, among other things, had a hard time swallowing the "de-politicization" that had taken place.

In 1971, after a year of touring across the States, came High Times, their third and final official album, and also their most accessible. The hard-rock foundation of the previous record is here overloaded with an eccentric rhythm & blues streak. Tracks like "Sister Anne," "Skunk (Sonicly Speaking)" or "Baby Won't Ya," while decently crafted, can do nothing but confirm that the Detroit band's journey had, unfortunately, reached its end.

In 2024, what was shaping up to be a celebration for the band's stunning return after more than fifty years was plunged into mourning by the death of Wayne Kramer, who passed away in Los Angeles on February 2 of that year. Kramer was the last surviving member of MC5, and so this new album ends up delivering the definitive legacy of one of rock's greatest subversives. But if you go looking in Heavy Lifting (2024) for the spirit of the curse ⟦Q3⟧, you'll be disappointed. If, more realistically, you expect a tough, generous record, brimming with the urge to play and, in its own way, fresh - the way energy always is when craftsmanship lends the whole thing the necessary dignity without smothering spontaneity - then this is a listen that can brighten your days. Whether you're 14 or 74. You'll find the militant energy of the exchange between Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine and the planet's most horribly famous sovereigntist billionaire of double standards, the wry, seasoned touch of Bob Ezrin, producer of latter-day Deep Purple, and, for those who love a certain brand of American cultural craft, the melodic, singer-songwriter pathos made in Oakland by Brad Brooks.

Essentially, this is a Wayne Kramer solo record, featuring contributions from Morello and Brooks, born out of an idea by Ezrin. The reference to MC5, however, is anything but unfounded. Setting aside every artist's right to position themselves in continuity with their own past whenever they see fit, there are plenty of good reasons, in a period like the one we're living through, to seek out old friends who never gave up, who never sold out.

Sure, if you've fed on the myth of Wayne Kramer as a forerunner of the self-destructive nihilism of the '75/'77 generation, or if you can't forgive Tom Morello for no longer being 20 years old, you might even find an album like this irritating. But part of the strength of a figure like Kramer lies precisely in his naivety. The unbridled intellectual honesty of tracks like "Blessed Release" or "Barbarians At The Gate" (about the trumpiani assault on the White House) transcends genres and eras. A record like this is one you only listen to if you're in the mood for it. That's all an old rocker like Wayne Kramer - part punk, part hippy, part debauched, part great sage - asks from up there. And Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson, the outsider drummer and last member of the original MC5 lineup to pass away, this past May, who is also occasionally involved here, would ask for even less.

On these tracks, Wayne simply had a great urge to play. His last word is a fine, passionate and muscular classic rock album, best heard at high volume without indulging in comparisons that would spoil the party. It's better to just let yourself be swept along by the grand-scale opening of the title track, with Tom Morello in great form, sounding very close to his recent solo shows. The party continues with strong moments like "Can't Be Found", featuring Vernon Reid (one of the tracks on which Dennis Thompson plays), or "The Edge Of The Switchblade" with William Duvall and Slash, right through to the grand finale of "Hit It Hard".

It's been one hell of a journey. And now, "kick out the jams, motherfuckers!".

Contributions by Piergiorgio Pardo ("Heavy Lifting")

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