MC5 - A True Testimonial

Is long-shelved MC5 documentary 'A True Testimonial' finally being released?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCzjo8y7QB4

Hope that doesn't get pulled down. Good doc.

it's such a fantastic doc. i wish wayne could find some way to allow it being released somehow, it's the perfect tribute to his band and i don't see anyone going to such lengths to make another.

Dennis Thompson wasn't happy with the doc, either:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040608070332/http://www.dkt-mc5.com/index.cfm?pg=editorials&SN_id=3

F/N chose to do my personal interviews during the most incredibly painful time of my life. My mother had passed away four days before, and I fell back into drug abuse and alcoholism with a vengeance. I had pleaded with Dave and Laurel to postpone my interviews until I had a chance to bounce back, but was told, “You can do this! You gotta. You must do this now!” I didn’t want to be interviewed until I got a grip on myself. In short, I allowed them into my home.

(You see, it can appear I was singled out to be portrayed in the film as the angry, bitter, resentful, foul mouthed, stoned, and controversial “bad boy” member.)

I had been clean and sober during the whole of 1998. It’s so odd that there were no on-camera interviews then. Not the least bit surprising, in retrospect. After some time elapsed, I called them and asked them to film me again. I knew it didn’t go well. I was apologetic and willing to do right by them and myself. Dave dismissed my plea. He accused me of trying to “screw them over,” and that the footage they had would do. So much for “righteous” behavior.

Wayne Kramer just did a live Q&A online on Facebook. I stumbled on it towards the end.
https://www.facebook.com/waynekramer/videos/250813685949530/?comment_id=250847342612831¬if_id=1585162900092395¬if_t=video_reply&redirect=false
Not sure if that link gets you there. It just finished and i have a playback going on.

Also answered some questions typed into FB>

Looks like he's been looking for studio recorded material from their Elektra days for the last 50 years and still not found it.

Also that there doesn't seem to be a lot of unreleased MC5 footage. I had been told that people were looking through stacks of it when A true Testimonial was being made. BUt heard taht 2nd hand from somebody who said he knew people who were working where it was being edited , if not directly involved. Did hope there might be some more. What there has been has been great.
I thought there was a studio set from Tubeworks but it looks like the Tubeworks footage is that outdoor performance where Wayne starts dancing on one leg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyrcUlX7sPg

😢

RIP Wayne

Wayne S. Kramer
“PEACE BE WITH YOU” 🕊️
April 30, 1948 - February 2, 2024

https://www.instagram.com/p/C23AQzQPeHR/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74jS3dW0DtE

RIP

(Side note, TIL that Spotify excised the opening “kick out the jams motherfucker” line from the song on the album version, what the actual fuck? it’s there on the hits comp version but still…)

RIP

this sucks

OH NO

RIP

seen it a hundred times but still the greatest shit ever:

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

“Brother Wayne Kramer…. Brother Wayne Kramer…”

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/85368290/photo/wayne-kramer.jpg?s=2048x2048&w=gi&k=20&c=pvbh7JCgbRx-HWPDS4tg3gfDXExbkSQfsgjJOuUIhms=

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/25/ae/10/25ae107b34abfb4b6088ee6829bf7ca7.jpg

HOW DARE U

Disco Stu thought it an appropriate tribute to a legend.

the video NickB posted, as well as one I include below, shows a band every bit as good as the Who; I often think that the Five could have been the American Who were it not for such shitty luck; like, they shoulda had the career Grand Funk had, just as I would prefer the Stooges to have had Alice Cooper's trajectory; similarly, you see him truly incarnating the "townshend from the waist up, JB from the waist down" description someone coined many years ago…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74jS3dW0DtE

That Tartar Field footage was what I was referring to (*gasp*) nineteen years ago upthread.

that was sloppy of me, not noticing that Cgrisso already put that up…so I'll just say that that band and the Stooges smoked every other white guy band in America from 1967-1971, except maybe Creedence, VU…and who else? Who else could stand up to the Five? Certainly not the Bay area acts…

The MC5 may be the 60s band most ill-served by their official discography. Live videos are amazing, the semi-bootleg Teen Age Lust (a January 1970 concert in Saginaw) is incredible, but each of their three albums falls short of that mark in one way or another.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend… a true testimonial from Chicago 1968 to jail guitar doors.

thank you for your service to rock n' roll Brother Wayne

i forgot abt Gang War

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On0eqGPSCqk

I didn't realize he befriended Red Rodney in prison and played with him in the prison band. Rodney is a prominent character in Clint Eastwood's Bird...they seem to come from different planets, never mind cultures, so it's strange picturing them jamming together. Then again, the MC5 did have the free jazz element, and if you can be in Charlie Parker's group, you probably have both the chops and sensibility to lock in with the MC5.

I forget what interview it was, it may have been a reddit AMA? But Wayne was asked something about any tunes of his that he felt didn't get the shine they deserved, and he mentioned Skunk (Sonically Speaking)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLhe5n4RQYM

along with a brilliant anecdote about how you have to know the rules before you can break them, anyways just tremendous, if someone told me the MC5 was the greatest rock and roll band ever I wouldn't argue about it RIP

Just the absolute greatest. Played High Time very loud at breakfast this morning. The soundtrack to that Bremen footage above is one of my very favourite bootlegs. MC5 ruled so very hard. Not that you ever had to take sides but I definitely preferred them to teh Stooges. RIP Wayne. A hard life with a happy ending, I hope.

FWIW, that 1970 New Year's Day Saginaw show streams on Wolfgang's, presumably from the first-generation masters, so if you want that in the best quality, that's the place to hear it.

https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/mc5/audio/20053722-4580.html

I've still got the Gang Wars EP somewhere; think it was rehearsals, but OK by me.
(I met Red Rodney when he suddenly added a local [boondocks] show to his tour: smoldering agility ov flugelhorn, and he sold me an autographed copy of his then-current Chesky CD!)
Leave us not forget the 5's normal-bias ROIR tape!

Babes in Arms [ROIR, 1983]
Despite all the rare mixes and original versions adduced in the notes, the only great track totally unfamiliar to this proud (and lucky) owner of the 5's three albums is a cover of Them's "I Can Only Give You Everything." The rest of the obscure stuff merely augments a superbly paced compilation. The raw songcraft and new-thing chaos of Detroit's other great protopunk band were further ahead of their time than it seemed five years ago. And drummer Dennis Thompson was a motherfucker. A-

Is there any backstory to the KOtJ testimonial? That's bar none my favorite intro to any album ever.

The song title comes from the response of one of the 5 to I think a San Francisco band that didn't rock convincingly. I think bit was Fred Sonic Smith shouted it at the stage.
Detroit seemed to have a high bar for its reception of bands.or that's what I read a while back.
So it's the first line of a song the band did regularly about enjoying rocking out.

They had an mc they used a lot at the Grande Ballroom where the MC5 were pretty much the house band.

yeah for real who was the mc? did he just invent that? "are you ready to testify?! I give you a testimonial, the MC5!!!" takes five seconds, one guitar, two guitars, explosion, I would have died if I was in that audience, in '68! nobody was heavier or gnarlier

The spoken bit at the beginning is by John Sinclair, the White Panthers guy... I used to have a pack of US flag rolling papers with that speech on the inside cover...

imagine that exact testimonial being given before the grateful dead lead into "turn on your love light"

Brothers and sisters, the announcer is Brother JC Jesse Crawford. Crawford replaced Iggy (I mean Jim Osterberg) in the Prime Movers before becoming a DJ on underground FM station WKNR in Detroit as well as the MC for the Grande

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOD9e7I6bHs

More photos, etc. here:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/jan/28/rock-photographer-leni-sinclair-kresge-eminent-artist-2016-in-pictures
http://secondarysound.blogspot.com/2010/01/brother-jc-crawford.html

!!
I always thought it was Sinclair...

That "five seconds" bit is one of the all-time great band intros. I'm not even sure what comes close.

I'll just say that that band and the Stooges smoked every other white guy band in America from 1967-1971, except maybe Creedence, VU…and who else?

MC5 were more ballistic at times, but Teenage Head era Flamin Groovies, Brownsville Station, probably Amboy Dukes sometimes…

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/brian-mccollum/2024/02/04/wayne-kramer-ted-nugent-friendship-detroit-music/72466031007/

Nugent rattled off some of the A-list names he has shared bills with through the years.

“So I've been to the mountaintop. And I'm sorry, man, nothing comes close to the Five at their peak, and what Wayne brought with his James Brown dance and dynamic fury,” he said. “When you can inject a genuine James Brown-Motown dynamic to that voluminous R&B-driven rock ‘n' roll … my God, the, soulfulness of that band and Wayne Kramer. And not only musically, but as a man.”

Yeah, something like Looking at You is kind of in its own realm. But if we’re asking who was as rocking as the VU or CCR, that’s a different story.

I'll just say that that band and the Stooges smoked every other white guy band in America from 1967-1971, except maybe Creedence, VU…and who else?

Buffalo Springfield in a live setting (I think Neil said in Shakey their recordings never matched their live sound) and 13th floor elevators

I'd like to hear live Springfield for sure, but judging by their studio albums, it's hard to imagine how their sound could with the MC5/Deeetroit is Burning aesthetic---roots rock, r&b, free jazz, chaos, flying garages---as well as the VU, 13th Floor Elevators and even live Creedence could do---also some outrageous Janis-era Big Brother & The Holding Company shows on YouTube from tyme to tyme---

Moby Grape.

The Sonics

this is up there...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_nRmX0ZGvo

Tony Orlando

Tony Williams Lifetime

"High Time" is such a fucking great record

I'll just say that that band and the Stooges smoked every other white guy band in America from 1967-1971, except maybe Creedence, VU…and who else?

Buffalo Springfield in a live setting (I think Neil said in Shakey their recordings never matched their live sound) and 13th floor elevators

― jbn, Sunday, February 4, 2024 3:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

alice cooper band

Yeah, the original Alice Cooper band were part of the Detroit scene, man, although I think I reed in Michigan's own Creem that they lived on a farm, came into town for shows. Hot as hell live, augmented on record by Detroit guitars of Dick Wagner ( who led the also hot live Frost; his later Ursa Major I've only heard in studio, think Billy Joel left before they started making albs), and Steve Hunter. Alice/Vince hired Wagner and Hunter and I think the rest of Reed's Rock and Roll Animal line-up(arranged and led by Wagner) for Welcome To My Nightmare, and that was it for the originals, although they later recorded as Billion Dollar Babies, never heard that.

O wait, forgot: they started in Phoenix, moved to L.A., then Michigan---wiki:

Slow sales of the band's first two albums, as well as Californians' indifference to their act, led the band to relocate again in 1970, this time to Pontiac, Michigan near Furnier's original home town of Detroit. Here, their bizarre stage act was much better received by Midwestern crowds accustomed to the proto punk styles of local bands such as the Stooges and the MC5. "L.A. just didn't get it," Furnier stated. "They were all on the wrong drug for us. They were on acid and we were basically drinking beer. We fit much more in Detroit than we did anywhere else."[24]

Hooking up with young producer Bob Ezrin, Alice Cooper released the single "I'm Eighteen" in November 1970, and it became a surprise Top 40 hit by early 1971.

Picking up from C.G/McC's post in the obit thread I noticed that many of the links upthread have expired, but this Chicago Reader story on the documentary from 2004 is still alive and goes over in detail how it all came apart. In short, get it from archive.org if you want to see it - it'll never come out. Also if you're a filmmaker, don't ever assume that goodwill and a good movie will magically fix your rights issues.

Thanks for that!

In other news, the final MC5 album (Wayne & numerous guests, including two tracks with Dennis Thompson) is still coming according to producer Bob Ezrin

https://www.loudersound.com/news/mc5-album-update-bob-ezrin

It's too bad there wasn't a CD companion to that vinyl set, with each album augmented with bonus material, or at least spiffing up Babes In Arms as a 4th disc.

I don't think there is any (unreleased) bonus material. When Rhino looked into a releasing a 50th anniversary KOTJ, it seems that all the original Grande Ballroom tapes are lost - all that's available is the final two-track master and a folded down mono master. All of the masters from the two Atlantic albums were lost when the Atlantic tape warehouse burned up in the 1978 Long Branch fire :(

Good to know. So pretty much the best they could have done was remaster the three albums, clean up the Babes In Arms stuff as best they could*, and add in "Thunder Express".

*Does anyone know how/where those Atlantic-era alternates on it were sourced from?

Fresh Air replayed the 2002 interview w Wayne (28 minutes---can also read, download, as well as stream)
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/09/1230071788/remembering-guitarist-wayne-kramer-founder-of-the-mc5