Led Zeppelin: Classic Or Dud?

Haha, I wondered the same thing.

“The free-jazz movement, the music of Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Sun Ra – that's what originally inspired me and the MC5,” Kramer told Rolling Stone in 2014. “What the most advanced jazz musicians were doing was pushing the music forward, and that was my goal as a rock player in the MC5. I needed a source of inspiration that was unorthodox and provocative on every level. I had reached a point where I could play the guitar okay. I could play Chuck Berry solos and Rolling Stones songs. Sun Ra showed me where to go from there.”

In a Red Bull Music Academy piece on Sanders:

Drawing on his travels through Japan with Coltrane’s group, as well as his reading about ancient Egypt, Tauhid balanced the incendiary sax shredding of Sanders’ years with Coltrane with a newfound lyricism and patience, letting each song unfold at a natural pace. And with the guitar of Sonny Sharrock adding both furious noise and nimble R&B chording that gave the sidelong “Upper Egypt & Lower Egypt” its melodic hook, Sanders’ work began to resonate beyond jazz as the Stooges and MC5 incorporated the spirit of Sanders into their proto-punk sound.

From a Spin guide to alternative music of the '60s:

Sanders continued to develop his "spiritual jazz" on albums like 1969's Karma (which features acid-jazz touchstone "The Creator Has a Master Plan"), but Tauhid was a crucial influence on both the MC5 and the Stooges in their initial tickets to sonic reduction.

Of course these are all recent, in hindsight and tinged with maybe a bit of hipster revisionism. Or maybe just focusing on Sonny Sharrock's guitar. Why Bangs mentioned it in his review at the time? Who knows.

Yeah, if Kramer is saying those were his influences now, he probably said it then too. I'm not an expert on the MC5 and honestly didn't know they were talked about in those terms.

John Sinclair was a big Jazz not Rock guy who took the garage band MC5 (who still might have been the Bounty Hunters then) under his wing and introduced them to Coltrane, Sanders etc. which they would fuse into Rock for their "High Energy Sound". Alot of the hype Bangs--himself a Jazz snob of note--was rallied against came directly from Sinclair and his svengali-ing of the band.

Basically what Sinclair was pitching w/the MC5 was Jazz Fusion--not the definitive kind ala Miles or, like say Santana--but a more abstract concept of Rock music played with the hothouse intensity and high improvisation of Free Jazz.

...and, you know, dope guns fucking in the streets.

Yeah, if Kramer is saying those were his influences now, he probably said it then too. I'm not an expert on the MC5 and honestly didn't know they were talked about in those terms.

Final track on "Kick Out the Jams"?

8. "Starship" (MC5, Sun Ra)

Also they used to cover Upper Egypt by Pharoah Sanders

Yeah I dunno, I had read so much about MC5 before I heard them and initially it was just so much more regular rock than I expected

I've come to appreciate them a lot more on their own terms but honestly I don't personally hear the avant garde jazz in them

pretty sure there's an MC5 thread in the archives that does a deep dive into how they are the archetypical "sounds incredible on paper, notsomuch on record" band.

Has another (i.e. not the MC5) band lived up to the MC5’s promise?

What was their promise? A free jazz infused radical politics rock band? The biggest issue is that essentially *none* of the rock bands of the era or beyond had the free chops of Coltrane or Coleman or Sanders or Miles or whomever. It's not particularly political, but the Stooges "Fun House" (the song and album) is jazzier and more dangerous and less conventional than anything I've ever heard from the MC5.

Fun House is one of the GOATs in my book, and I agree, but it's not as improvisationally 'loose' (heh) as I imagine that promise to have been.

Band of Gypsys manages that on occasion but I'm still not sold on the album as a whole (for the usual reasons).

I think the closest you can get to maybe the free/loose/improvised rock thing is, I dunno, some later No Wave stuff? Or Dog Faced Hermans or the Ex? Here are the Hermans covering Ornette:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LBd9SnMn6o

Herman's Hermits were dope it's true

That Dog Faced Hermans track is cool but it's almost too self-consciously (free) jazzy, mostly because of how prominent the brass is.

Basically what I want are recommendations for MC5-alikes without braggadocio (or these other tropes).

It's not particularly political, but the Stooges "Fun House" (the song and album) is jazzier and more dangerous and less conventional than anything I've ever heard from the MC5.

Or is it just that the Stooges added some honking free jazz sax to the mix? I'm not especially an MC5 fan but I believe they may have stretched out more live.

Well, Kick Out the Jams is a live album…

Yes, but there's a lot of other live MC5 stuff out there (that I've never heard).

I always found the MC5 hugely disappointing for exactly the reasons described above. They were supposed to be The End Of The Fucking World...and they were basically a hard 'n' heavy garage rock band with the occasional "out" guitar solo. I mean, their Sun Ra cover is just a chant with some big riffing.

That said, toward the very end of their career, they achieved their true final form as an awesome biker rock force, which you can hear on the live bootleg Teen Age Lust, recorded in January 1970. It totally smokes, and if they'd sounded like that all along they would have been amazing.

what promise, kick out the jams is awesome

Ban pomenitul

lol we naysayers are legion, you have no power here!

For real tho, I actually enjoy Kick Out the Jams now that I've accepted it'll never live up to the ancestral hype.

yeah i'll add my name to the list of folks spending all this time reading the MC5 hype and being really disappointed when i finally heard "kick out the jams"

as i've gotten older i've learned to love them tho

Maybe they achieved their *final* final form when they jammed with Primal Scream in London back in 2008.

Watch it.

Seriously tempted tbh.

Zen Guerilla is the closest to MC5 as I can think of

https://youtu.be/LpsvGZ7iUHU

Haha, clearly I didn't read that much about them. What I heard sounded like garage rock and I thought that's what people liked about them.

what did you all expect, bitchez brew or something?? Was it too heavy and rockin for ya??

I am so crabby today lol sorry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtvGR8UX1L0

what did you all expect, bitchez brew or something?? Was it too heavy and rockin for ya??

Honestly, I didn't know it at the time (because it was the early '90s and they didn't exist yet), but I was kind of expecting/hoping for...Earthless, basically.

“Kick out the jams” - great title, average tune

The biggest issue is that essentially *none* of the rock bands of the era or beyond had the free chops of Coltrane or Coleman or Sanders or Miles or whomever.

I could see people saying that about Ornette but hadn't Coltrane and Miles demonstrated ample chops by then, even by traditional standards?

Yeah I'm going to see the citation on Coltrane didn't have chops

People were critical of Coltrane’s multiphonics, among other aspects (another criticism was, “oh, he’s just running scales”), and Miles was unfavorably compared to Dizzy Gillespie and, particularly, Clifford Brown in some quarters.

I’ve heard the Miles criticism quite a few times, yeah. He was no Maynard Ferguson (O Canada!) either, apparently.

Yeah Miles I could see but I don't get not being impressed by Coltrane

But jazz beef is the bitchiest beef

Seems like there were various strains of Moldy Figs such as, say, Kingsley Amis, just to shoot one fish in one barrel, who didn’t ever get it

Never forget Philip Larkin calling Coltrane "anti-jazz."

The thing is, even the most strenuous — and, in many instances, racist — detractors of the new music of the ‘60s conceded that this was the next major development in the music after Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Clarke, Roach, et al. The tone in contemporary Down Beat writing is generally, “Yeah, I know this is the ‘new thing’ — that doesn’t mean I have to like it! I’m going to go listen to my Benny Goodman Trio records!”

Right, and someone — Ira Gitler, maybe? — characterized a Coltrane/Dolphy set as “hate music.”

xp

Those aren't necessarily the same as "have no chops", though. Obv lots of people hate and hated free jazz.

While we are at it, Slonimsky was some kind of Old World Wit who wrote all kinds of well-regarded Biographical Dictionaries and Compendiums of Anecdotes and Invective, but in one of his memoirs I came across some hateful bemusement on his part about the bump in sales of his Thesaurus due to purchases by “Ignorant Jazz Musicians” - I am mentally blocking on the the exact hateful wording- that made me see Redd.

Some people get overly attached to a particular aspect or quality of a music, and that aspect or quality also forms part of their identity and sensibility, and then when that genre of music departs from that quality, it offends their identity and sensibility. It creates a kind of narcissistic wound, almost like seeing a parent enter a midlife crisis while still a young child. Jazz critics dismissed Miles's psychedelic explorations because Miles's prior cool/cerebral approach flattered the cool cerebralness they wanted to see in themselves, and the psychedelic stuff shattered their little refuge from crass hippie culture, letting in exactly what they were trying to use jazz to keep out.

Wow