Brothers and sisters I want to tell you something. I hear a lot of talk by a lot of honkys, sitting on a lot of money telling me they’re high society! Well I’ll let you know something, if you ask me this is the high society!
Welcome to Halloween 1969 at the Detroit Grande Ballroom. Welcome to the truly high society, welcome to the MC5.
When I was at university my dad stored a bunch of his friend’s records in my room, he was moving into a canal barge and had no room for them. When I came home I pretty much spent the entire summer playing nearly every single one of them, it’s when I discovered Tom Waits, the Raincoats, Dead Kennedys, the Runaways, Rickie Lee Jones* and that I didn’t like lots of stuff too.
Anyway, MC5 Kick Out the Jams was there, a beautifully preserved, censored UK original. It intrigued me, the glitzy chaos of the live shots the heavy looking dudes in the gatefold, the song titles and the fact it was on Elektra. One night I whacked it on.
Reader, it stayed whacked on for about a week afterwards. I was smitten by the speechifyin’ of Rob Tyner, the grinding guitar fuzz and the straight-up heavy tunes of the whole thing.
‘Wow’ I thought, ‘I must buy this’ and leaped into action a mere 26 years later and bought a fancy picture disc version**. That’s how decisive and action hero-y I am.
I played it again this week for the first time in at least a year and it was every bit as electrifying as when I first heard it back when the world was young and I was still a poetically-minded long-haired layabout.
It all begins with clapping, hysteria and some wonderful preaching from the Church of Heavy Drug Noise, courtesy of manager/agitator/future drug bustee/marijuana martyr John Sinclair.
Brothers and Sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are going to be the problem or whether you are going to be the solution! It takes five seconds, five seconds of decision, five seconds to realize your purpose here on the planet!
Then before you have had a second to digest the import of all that the band slam into ‘Rambling Rose’, a Jerry Lee Lewis cut, except the band immediately elevate it into a strangely daubed sonic monstrosity that even the killer would have cowered before. Rob Tyner affecting the most ludicrous, inept and sinister falsetto I have ever heard, over churning righteous NOISE. It’s a liberation and a revolution and we aren’t even through the first minute of the LP yet.
Then it’s time to ‘Kick out the Jams, motherfuckers!’, or on the censored version I was used to ‘Kick out the Jams (click) brothers and sisters (click)‘. This is ham-fisted revolution rock played my men who had smelled the tear gas at the ’68 Democratic convention and who were heavily involved with the White Panthers. The song is a heavy ode to the joys of playing as loud and heavily as you can and every single cover of it ever is shit^, which is truly the mark of a great track. Just over 2 minutes and done, no wonder a generation of young punks were/would be/are still listening.
Kick Out The Jams then contents itself with falling back to Earth and stirring maximum heaviness over the next few cuts, the guitars never less than huge, Dennis ‘Machinegun’ Thompson’s drumming is staggering throughout. The overall noise rocks along in the trough with all manner of proto-punk hogs like Blue Cheer, the Troggs and (later) West Bruce & Laing, but ‘the Five’ frequently hit the afterburners and take it elsewhere.
A great case in point is their borrowing of John Lee Hooker’s ‘Motor City Is Burning’, where they take JLH’s reportage and make it far heavier and more street; no ‘pigs on the street’ for Mr Hooker. They keep the blues form of the original but soon Wayne Kramer and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith warp and weave their barely-corralled magic all over it. This was music made to be played over future documentaries about civil unrest.
Kick Out The Jams finishes with two faves of mine. The MC5 cop a blatant steal from the Troggs ‘Wild Thing’ on the incredible ‘I Want You Back’ where that riff is heavied up to the point of it gaining its own gravitational pull. This really is music for an after-riot bad trip fuck and you can hear whole genres and subgenres of music being birthed right here.
Where do you go after that? why, cosmic of course. ‘Starship’ where the band credit Sun-Ra with a co-write. The music is cussedly heavy, but the band play it hard and fast with enough intent to force their way into space. It all cracks up and breaks down, chants begin and chords begin to swell and build before it all ends atomically. That’s the end, what could follow that?
My ears are old and tired but to me Kick Out The Jams still sounds like a retro future, old forms twisted into new possibilities. Lots of revolutionary music from 54 years ago is only so because you know your history books and has been so thoroughly absorbed by what came later you can trace the echoes. This LP, less so.
This was music played by revolutionaries who had seen first-hand the brutality of straight society’s response to all that highly threatening flowers-in-their-hair shit. These were tunes worked out under the shadow of billy clubs and friends gobbling too many downers, still too heavy in sound and context to be spruced up and packaged as mass nostalgia.
I made my choice and I didn’t need my full 5 seconds to do it.
My copy of Kick Out The Jams is, until I can afford a highly expensive uncensored US original, a 2003 picture disc; God knows what dingy dungeon HMV Chester had it in for 14 years before I bought it there. The sound is excellent for a picture disc, totally adequate for my cranked up needs although I miss the heavy dudes from the gatefold. I would recommend this version because if you’re looking for hi-fidelity niceties hereabouts then you have totally missed the point – of everything.
1201 Down.
PS: This is neat:
PPS: Is the plural of ‘honky’, honkys or honkies? I didn’t learn that in school.
*to name a few, but there was a fair whack of shite in there too.
**In between I had owned at least two taped copies and an MC5 T-shirt, which must count for something.
^although Presidents Of The United States Of America get an honorary mention for changing the lyrics and being amusing with it.
A few nit-picking corrections as i’m a pedantic stickler for detail.
It’s actually ‘Brother’ Wayne Kramer doing the falsetto lead vocal on ‘Ramblin’ Rose’, and all whilst ripping out the best guitar solos that will ever be known to humankind.
The rabble-rousing banter on the introduction was provided by Brother J.C. Crawford, not John Sinclair. Sinclair provided all the psycho-delic bumfodder in the sleevenotes on the inner gatefold instead.
Stand corrected or forever be known as ‘part of the problem’. 😉
Haha, I’ll fiendishly re-edit my post and make you look like a mothernincompooper!
Slight change to your story. It would have been cool to be stuck on that barge at that time with that box of records and a few other condiments.
“Motorcity Is Burning” was something like the essence of MC5. I’ve heard the song for almost thirty years without noticing that it was originally by JLH.
I know! I never knew either.
I’ve still never heard this – feels like a weird gap in my knowledge at this point.
That surprises me. It’s historically and musically great.
Yeah, I was even reading about them recently. No reason not to hear it.
The guitars never less than huge. MC5 summed up in a phrase.
Amen brother.
Right now right now people… love this. Haven’t played it in years. That a beautiful picture disc. Oh I’d say Honkies by the way
Cheers Steve. I missed the day we learned about the plural of honky in school, I’m still playing catch up.
It’s a really decent sounding pic disc too, sometimes the medium suits the message.
I opted for Spanish instead of Jive but I did do some work experience in a 70’s cop show
Brilliant, I couldn’t do jive GCSE because it clashed with LP Alphabetising and Rugby, both of which were compulsory subjects in my part of Wales.
Well those Zygotic Myncies weren’t going to sort themselves.
“Dearly beloved, we gather here today to honour the life of……CAN WE STOP WITH THE BUZZING!!!!….”
If you don’t stop that whacking on, you’ll grow hair on your palms or go blind.
Too late dude, too late. I have to shave my palms hourly.
That must be awkward at work meetings and family gatherings.
Funerals are the worst.