How comes nobody ever mentions the MC5 round here?

I've been elected to rock your asses 'til midnight
This is my term and I've shaved off my perm
but it's alright...

It is perfect. That is all.

Just reading this old Christgau piece on them and check this out:

"The warm-up was the Popcorn Blizzard (good), the Psychedelic Stooges (awful), and some blather about a religion called Zenta (weird)."

Whoa. Christgau saw the Popcorn Blizzard!

People always complain that the MC5 (and the original Raw Power mix) are not "heavy" enough. Sure heavy is great, sludge is cool and Blue Cheer, Sabbath, Hawkwind, Motorhead, etc. did it best. But it's a totally different thing. MC5 weren't trying to be "heavy" by some kind of lame drop-tuned, scooped mids, cookie monster measure of modern heaviness and I think people too often try to judge them by that yardstick.

The reason I mentioned Hawkwind and Amon Duul is that they were both the kind of similar political/underground thing, maybe the pink fairies were a better brit eqiv than hawkwind? (they probably wished! haha) I like them a lot better than the mc5 as well, though. "What a Bunch of Sweeties" is fucking awesome!

In this context I don't really much care about heaviness either, I mean I really like the early seventies heavy sound - sabbath, hawkwind etc, but what I don't dig about the mc5 is that they just don't rock me. The Stooges rocked, Black Sabbath rocked, the mc5 just kind of ... played fast. bleh.

And yeah, innit terrible that some people have the nerve to not like the same music you do!

I couldn't say the same thing about your comments?

Most of the MC5 defenders on this thread made it clear that this is not the album we're talking about.

Do you dig the pink fairies, Scott?

(x-post what I like abt the fairies = raga rock guitar solos, general feel of band, the singer, their vers of "walk don't run" is just about the best thing ever for me today what I like abt the stooges = they rocked) - a bunch of my friends are really into the mc5, but try as I might, I just can't connect w/the music.

i saw that pink faeries record recently and it looked pretty cool. what's it like?

each to his own, but...liking the Pink Fairies but not liking MC5 = liking Badfinger but not liking the Beatles.

+ the Groundhogs "Hoggin' the Stage" that's a fucking lost gem of fucking ROCK if ever there was one, eh? How could 3 people make such a RICH sound?

X-post I've heard them all FFS!

I think the people who thought of the fairies as a brit mc5 most were the fairies themselves, but, y'know, PAUL RUDOLPH, man!!

Yeah, I believe that as it's ths standard critical line on them. The fact that everyone judges them by their worst album is why I think the band is underrated (though I'll concede that one album is overrated). Your statement kind of implies that you haven't really listened to them in years and when you did you were listening with the baggage of "received wisdom." But I guess that's fair enough. MC5 might be one of those bands where if you don't hear it when you're a teenager you'll never hear it.

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/08/the-john-sebast.html

I'm not a huge fan of the ROCK these days but I respectively submit that any fan of 70s guitar music needs to have "I Can Only Give You Everything" and "Looking At You" in their collection. While they may not have actually ever hit that transcendental moment, for me their best tunes always have them striving for it.

i don't know. maybe because i think YES to i can only give you everything (who wrote that?, by the way? i know it's like a nuggets staple you can hear van morrison &c doing), but not necessarily yes to looking at you. but i think their most interesting stuff isn't so rock. even if it's stupid-heavy, things like come together aren't really riff-rockin' classics. and then there's the totally not-rock stuff, revolutionary blues and skunk and stuff. i don't think their best stuff's abides to the form of heavy-ass rock-songs or anything.

I think I Can Only Give You Everything was originally written for the Troggs by one of those songwriting teams, but every garage band and his dog did a version of it.

Yeah, I've got "Trogglodynamite" which is where I know it from.

http://www.youtube.com/v/gyrcUlX7sPg

lyrics are kinda cheese but that electric autoharp sounds amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot_-B-83Lb0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cg0qJ-ieRk&feature=player_embedded#

I didn't know there was another rockin' electric autoharp player. I mean, aside from the guy from Cold Sun.

Also that Ted Taylor tune is fucking boss

Yeah, I was kind of surprised when I first heard it to hear how close the MC5 stayed to the original - obviously they rock it up a bit, but all the good stuff in their version is right there in the Ted Taylor tune.

The comparison between those two videos is like the perfect example why rock music sucks compared to R&B/soul. That MC5 dude can't sing at all, and the awesome groove is lost under guitar theatrics.

awww come on. there's room for awesome R&B grooves and bad singing/guitar theatrics rock music in the world.