How comes nobody ever mentions the MC5 round here?

How come no-one ever mentions Blue Cheer round here?

Ah, but the mix of that on Babes in Arms is great.

I never saw the 5 but I did follow Sonic's Rendezvous Band when I lived in Ann Arbor. Fred Smith was an amazing musician, pushing the envelope of every performance like a jazz saxophonist on a roll. Hearing him play was saturating, like swimming in the ocean: you'd wake up the next day still feeling partially immersed, with your ears ringing and a funny taste in your mouth. Kick Out The Jams!

dave q told me I must listen to 'back in the USA' but you know I keep forgetting! maybe its one for the retirement home.

I'd just like to say that this is shite.

I don't like the 5 much, though. I prefer Grand Funk. Just bought the remasters of their first 3 albums the other week. They sound amazing.

I wish.

(get one copy of "space ritual" or "yeti", heh)

Those are two of my all time faves but not really the same kind of thing are they? Yeti's a great proggy Jefferson Airplane trip and Space Ritual is a transcendently minimal slab of sludge more in the spirit of the Stooges and Blue Cheer. Neither have the hyper ice-pick-in-your-ear goood olde time rock-and-rool teenage lust of the MC5. Plus talking bout the MC5 makes me want to type and spell like a real idiot.

Seriously though, in what way were they pretty ordinary? Please point me to some more songs that sound like Looking at You, Human Being Lawnmower, or Future/Now because I'd really love to hear them. I can't see how anyone would think they're overrated either since they barely seem to be rated at all. They get about 1/20th of the love and acclaim that the Stooges get (for example) and they're at least half as good.

I'd just like to say that this is shite.

Three years later, I'll stand by that claim!

if you're basing this solely on Kick Out The Jams, then yes.. but that doofus Sinclair was out of the mix after that for the most part (thank god), and so their two studio albums have markedly less posturing (if at all). and walter otm as far as comparisons to Amon Duul and Hawkwind. actually walter otm in general.

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.