The MC5. photo by Charlie Auringer
The legendary Detroit rock ‘n’ roll band MC5 was always a bit of a hard sell for me: You just don’t have the right rock critic and fan credentials if you don’t bow down to the band and well, I frankly didn’t always hear it or have it in me to do that. Showmanship, yes. Sheer raw power, without a doubt. And a story that’s something else: Political to be sure, and sometimes problematic, but it’s fueled by a love of jazz and freedom and well, they kinda had me after that.
Wayne Kramer led the band through the early Detroit scene, back when they could manage mostly blues and R&B-based covers; eventually they graduated to grinding originals (you’ve probably heard their signature song, “Kick Out The Jams”). Kramer loved straight up Chuck Berry as well as Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and other avant garde music and the band attempted to merge roots rock guitar with the freedom of far out jazz. When the band joined forces with a local jazz writer, John Sinclair, things started to stir: “The MC5 grew from a unique period of social, political and musical upheaval and created a sound that reverberated through their city with resonances throughout the counter cultural movement,” is how I put it in Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop. In the course of writing that book, I spoke with Kramer about his life and times with the band and their political involvements, including all that came before and after their appearance at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. Since that interview, he’s written his own memoir, The Hard Stuff, much of it concerning his drug addiction, his prison time behind that addiction, and of course his time with the band (which sounds a little a sentence of its own variety).
Further thoughts on the MC5, Kramer and his work as a contemporary prison activist are what’s on the page in this month’s edition of my column for Tourworthy. I hope you’ll click through and have a look at it, and as ever, thanks for reading.
Filed under: anti-capitalist, anti-war, Archie Shepp, Arts and Culture, Black Power,, Blues, Books, rock 'n' roll, Jail Guitar Doors, MC5, MC5 at 50, The Hard Stuff, Wayne Kramer
Denise Sullivan 