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Some called the MC5 (for "Motor City Five," after their home base) the first Seventies band of the Sixties. The group’s loud, hard, fast sound and violently antiestablishment ideology almost precisely prefigured much of punk rock. There was, however, one crucial difference: the MC5 truly believed in the power of rock & roll to change the world.Read about MC5 at Amazon.comThe band first formed in high school and came to prominence in 1967-68 as the figureheads (or "house band") of John Sinclair’s radical White Panther Party. At concerts and happenings they caused a sensation by wearing American flags and screaming revolutionary slogans laced with profanities. In 1968 the MC5 went with Sinclair to Chicago to play while the Democratic Convention was underway. Its debut LP (#30, 1969), recorded live in 1968, captured the band in typical raw, revved-up, radical form, and embroiled Elektra Records in controversy over the title tune’s loud-and-clear shout "Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!" Some stores refused to stock the album; in response, the MC5 took out strongly worded ads in underground papers and, to Elektra’s further distress, plastered one offending store’s windows with Elektra stationery on which was scrawled, "Fuck you." Elektra and the MC5 parted cormpany shortly thereafter, but not before the band had cut another version of "Kick Out the Jams," with "brothers and sisters" substituted for the offending expletive. (It was available as a single and on some subsequent issues of the album, against the band’s wishes.)
When Sinclair went to jail on a marijuana charge, the MC5 was left with neither a manager nor a label. Atlantic signed the group, and its debut was produced by rock critic Jon Landau. Back in the USA was hailed by critics as one of the greatest hard-rock albums of all time. Record sales were almost nil, however, and never improved. Dropped by Atlantic, the band went to England but soon fell apart, with Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson the first to leave.
Thereafter, Rob Tyner had modest success as a songwriter and photographer; he died of a heart attack in 1991. Davis was last heard from in an Ann Arbor band called Destroy All Monsters, with ex-Stooge Ron Ashton; Thompson struggled with abortive solo ventures; and Smith formed a late-Seventies band, Sonics Rendezvous, that toured Europe with Iggy Pop and recorded one single. He married Patti Smith in 1980 in Detroit, where he died in 1994 from heart failure. Kramer, after pleading guilty to a cocaine-dealing charge and spending two years in prison, returned to music. He formed a short partnership with ex-New York Doll and ex-Heartbreaker Johnny Thunders (Gang War), was featured guitarist with Motor City funksters Was (Not Was) (Kramer played the psychedelic guitar on their single "Wheel Me Out"), released two singles, and led his own band, Air Raid. In 1995 he released a solo album, The Hard Stuff, on the punk indie label Epitaph. Guests included members of such alt-rock bands as the Muffs and Bad Religion.
The MC5’s first two LPs were reissued in England in 1977 to meet the popular demand of the first punk wave, and Elektra quietly restored Kick Out the Jams to its U.S. catalogue in the early Eighties. A 1983 release, Babes in Arms, contained MC5 rarities.
Formed 1965, Lincoln Park, MichiganRob Tyner (b. Robert Derminer, Dec. 12, 1944; d. Sep. 17, 1991, Royal Oak, Mich.), voc.;
1969 -- Kick Out the Jams (Elektra)
Wayne Kramer (b. Apr. 30, 1948, Detroit, Mich.), gtr.;
Fred "Sonic" Smith (b. W.Va.; d. Nov. 4, 1994, Detroit, Mich.), gtr.;
Michael Davis, bass;
Dennis Thompson, drums.
1970 -- Back in the USA (Atlantic)
1971 -- High Time
1983 -- Babes in Arms cassette (ROIR)
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