The Strange, Beautiful Case of the MC5
Every music collection must include some MC5. In addition to being one of the greatest bands ever, they also happen to be one of the most important bands America has produced. Second only to the Velvet Underground—and quite possibly the MC5's "little brother band," the Stooges—the 5 are America's seminal punk band. Before it was commercially viable, or aesthetically smart to do so, the MC5 mixed their influences, put content above form, speed above beauty, laid some stank on it, and turned up to eleven. To put it bluntly, without the MC5 there's no Sex Pistols, Clash, Damned, or quite possibly the whole damn "punk" movement...okay, maybe you get Devo, but my point is made. We most assuredly would go without the politically furious punk/funk/metal of Rage Against the Machine. Did you just hear the collective gasp of 15 million 12-year-old, baggy-pantsed American white boys? With FutureNow Films currently editing a documentary about them, the 5 will no doubt be, gulp, rediscovered. This is your last chance to buy some good, old, scratched MC5 LPs before the cheap repackaging of their albums commences.
Start with Babes in Arms—the album put out by the fantastic, formerly cassette-only ROIR label. It's on CD now for all you candy-ass analog haters. It's a good starting point, being that it spans their whole career from an early cover of I Can Only Give You Everything to a late-era track for an unproduced film, Poison. Sadly missing is Black to Comm, their free-jazz freak-out, but with Babes you'll discover if you want to follow them as far as that. Assuming you do, get their first album, Kick Out The Jams.
Kick Out the Jams is a live album that is an accurate document of a typical MC5 concert. Again, no Black to Comm but their jazz influence is represented in the shape of Starship, a hyper-kinetic free-jazz workout named after its inserted poem by Sun Ra. This album is of course known mainly for its title track's "Kick out the jams, motherfucker!!!" intro, which is sad because the rest of the album more than fulfills its title track's promise. Think about it: a major label putting out a concert recording as a band's debut album simply because it had no idea how to capture the fire of the band's live performance in a studio setting. That does not happen today, and it didn't usually happen back then either. The 5 were such a revelation then, though, that no one knew what rules to lay down for them.
Jams begins like no other album, with rhythmic handclaps from excited concertgoers. Then J.C. Crawford, Religious Leader and Spiritual Advisor (remember—this is the sixties), takes the stage first to make his opening statement and invocation. He asks the audience if they're ready to testify, and the testimonial that's offered after the crowd's eager affirmation is the breath-sucking performance of the MC5.
Ramblin' Rose is the first song, and is the perfect choice to tear things up. Then Rob Tyner grabs the mike and implores the four-piece metal machine behind him to… "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!!!" That they do, with a fiery, tight—but not too tight—version of the title track. They usually started concerts off with Kick Out the Jams, but this album was cut together for maximum intensity, not accuracy. Come Together, Rocket Reducer No. 62, and Motor City's Burnin', were songs that originated onstage with the band riffing on a groove and vocalist, Rob Tyner, improvising lyrics. That's where a lot of MC5 songs found their feet, and by the time of this album's recording they were honed to a razor's edge. The album culminates in Starship. A track that was different each time the 5 played it, this version of Starship clocked in at about eight and a half minutes. It's the inevitable end to an LP this power-packed.
From here you are ready for Back in the USA, which is, sadly, covered here. They do a great version of course, as they do with Tutti Frutti, but it's just not relevant any more. They don't so much show their collective age, as they do the age of their influences. Listening to those two tracks, I feel the frustration the Toronto crowd must have felt listening to John Lennon and Eric Clapton's Plastic Ono Band cover Blue Suede Shoes. "We came to see you, not Chuck Fuckin' Berry!!!" Oh, well, I suppose without their influences the MC5 wouldn't be the band I love.
Back in the USA is seen as their flawed masterpiece, and rightly so. In my opinion, the best songs on the album are Looking at You, and Human Being Lawnmower. The band is known for its twin-guitar attack of Fred "Sonic" Smith, and "Brother" Wayne Kramer; however, it's worth mentioning that this album features excellent drumming by the band's best true musician, Dennis Thompson. 
Singer, Rob Tyner, worked his voice and Caucasian afro to perfection on this album as well. And bass player, Mike Davis, holds each track down so that the guitars can stretch out and scream. This album is a classic in every sense of the word.
Teenage Lust has some of their best harmony and riff work, and Let Me Try is a lesson in understated beauty. Now then, if you actually follow the above path of albums, you'll arrive at High Time, oddly enough the album critics like best. Odd, because those same critics' earlier negative reviews left the MC5 a mere shell of its former self by then. There are great songs here such as, Poison, Baby Won't Ya, Future/Now, and Miss X; and their brass reworking of Sister Anne beat Fleetwood Mac's Buckingham-produced, USC-Marching-Band-heavy Tusk to the punch by eight long years.
The problem with this album might be overproduction, including the increased use of piano and harmonica, or the tell-tale fact that individual member song credits replace the earlier albums' "all songs written by MC5" credit—the same signals that alerted folks to chinks in Iggy & the Stooges' armor. Whatever the problem, this album sold no better than their earlier ones and, a few dates in Europe aside, the band died.
Speaking of their live dates, there are some good bootlegs out there, such as the EP, Ice Pick Slim—three songs recorded in 1968 on their home court—Detroit's Grande Ballroom. The fact that there are only three songs on the album yet the EP still runs over 40 minutes, tells you this is worth having. It showcases the under-appreciated improvisation skills the band possessed. They stepped in the pocket longer and harder than most. Another bootleg worth getting is the full-length Starship, with production credited to the 5's former manager/guru John Sinclair. It was taped live at Detroit's Sturgis Armory, and also dates from 1968. It's worth having mainly for its eclectic set list, featuring covers of Albert King's Born Under a Bad Sign, The Troggs' I Want You, a three-song James Brown medley, and the 5's three greatest jazz tributes: Starship, Black to Comm and a great version of the Pharaoh Sanders tune, Upper Egypt.
Since the demise of the MC5, there have been quite a few recycled compilations and most of them can and should be avoided. If you begin with the original albums I've mentioned, though, I promise you won't be disappointed. All bootleg and compilation choices should then become much easier to make. I hope I've helped the MC5 move some merchandise. Keep an eye out for the MC5 documentary, and buy Wayne Kramer's albums. It's not the same—but after all, he's still "Brother" Wayne Kramer.
—James J. Smith
