MC5 - A True Testimonial

Tony Orlando

Tony Williams Lifetime

Hendrix but that's probably obvious.
James Brown and a few other soul types but they're not white guy bands and are probably what's being differentiated from. Same with energy jazz players I guess. & were consciously being drawn from as influences.

The Who seemed to be a bit of a template too but the 5 added a 2nd guitar. & a few inches if what I heard/read Danny Fields say about the 5s height is true which i never fully confirmed but have seen a couple of images suggesting to be true. That like the Coachmen they were all 6ft something. Had assumed they were medium height until I heard that.

When is somebody going to compile a photo book of their sartorial greatness as made by wives and girlfriends. I think it's one outstanding feature and I'd assumed they were jeans and t-shirt oriented until I started seeing photos of the band.

I thought the high bar for audience reception in Detroit or Michigan meant that bands needed to deliver. So we're likely to behigh octane and intense live.
But not sure what there is to show that outside of the Stooges and the 5 cos not sure what live footage video or audio survives. There is Midsummer Rock from the 1970 Cincinnati Pop festival with some Alice Cooper and GFR but not sure what else. Some Tubeworks episodes too. & i cant remember what the SRC live audio i had sounded like apart from not like the stun guitar of the first l.p.

One band that does sound like it did deliver far better than one might have thought is the Electric Prunes. Their Stockholm 67 set sounds pretty proto Detroit but I think they had split by the time the 5 were widely known outside Detroit. Gradually replaced and their name recycled. The 5 have some great recordings from 66 too Total Energy compiled 1/2 hr of as 66 Breakout.

Not unlike the Stooges who I was not impressed with on first brush (I had already heard the Birthday Party at that point), the MC5 were a bit...disappointing initially, I wanted the punk/free jazz/soul collision to hit me harder, and frankly they probably weren't well served by the BMG music club CD copy of "Kick Out the Jams" I first heard them on but so I hung with the records and thanks to some boots & cruddy VHS tapes I eventually I got it (it took more than 5 seconds, sorry brothers)

Wayne's then recent solo records on Epitaph & the Dodge Main LP with Denis Tek & Scott Morgan were crucial to me in the 90s, the Dodge Main take on "They Harder They Come" is a million times better than it has any right to be, I got to see him play a couple times and it was always an honor to be in the same room with him, RIP to a great one

They've never been served well on reissued CD's. I used Rhino's Big Bang! compilation to fix the sloppy edit that restored "motherfucker" on that CD of Kick Out the Jams. I kept it because I was glad to have the original cover - albeit on the back of the booklet - that was submitted to and rejected by Elektra, but the CD's been switched out with my CD-R. Also threw the original 45-only releases as bonus tracks.

Babes In Arms (the ROIR tape/CD) is pretty damn good, I just listened to it a couple weeks ago

Supposedly there was a "Complete Sessions" set for KOTJ being worked on over at Rhino Handmade that ultimately never happened.

The Total Energy vinyl set Rhino did was nice. I got a barely used copy on eBay a few years back for like $30.

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.

FWIW, you can fit everything released during the original group's lifetime on to a two CD's without splitting any of the LP's, so it wouldn't have been a bad idea to release a "complete" set on a nicely-packaged two-CD set just as Rhino had done with other great groups of similar stature (in terms of sales and critical reception). Kick Out the Jams and singles plus other bonuses on disc one, the two studio albums plus other bonuses on disc two.

Well, yeah. But by then Rhino was leaning into the mini-LP reproductions for things like that so what would make the most sense would not necessarily been the route they would have taken.

"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

RIP Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson

https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/music/brian-mccollum/2024/05/09/dennis-thompson-mc5-drummer-obituary/73629138007/

The last of the gang. Dammit.

Aw, man. RIP. Kind of crazy that Thompson, Kramer and Sinclair all died within three months.

Hey, reaper, take a rest for a bit, okay?

WE MUST PROTECT DAVID JOHANSEN AT ALL COSTS!

^^ this is urgent & key

RIP Dennis. He wrote this one and it's a fuckin' banger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WBjuKH1ZqI

and so he was the American Keith Moon. Came up around the same time, and while he might have heard Moon in 65 and was duly influenced enuff to up his game, he's for sure his own man. I welcome anyone to give me an example of an American white guy drummer in an American white guy rock and roll band during the years that MC5 were most active who could match him in intensity, sheer kineticism… but if he ever drove a limo into a pool, he would have gone to jail or would have to deal with the headache of having done so for a very very long time…

He was my favorite guy in the band, and I hope he had a fairly good life beyond the few times in 50 years that he got to play at a level he deserved and enjoy the fruits of his innovation, which others harvested to greater benefit than he ever could. He was real funny in the doc from which this thread is named. and even though I wish the RRHoF never existed, and the Five will now only be getting in though the bullshit back door, he apparently was happy about it and was psyched to attend. And now he's dead, and I guess only family members will be able to show up for the one time any of the members of what I consider to be the best American rock and roll band of the late 60s would receive any significant recognition.

Nice post.

and so he was the American Keith Moon. Came up around the same time, and while he might have heard Moon in 65 and was duly influenced enuff to up his game, he's for sure his own man.

As Dave Marsh (and Tarfumes too, if he still posted) would tell you, Detroit was one of the first markets to embrace The Who when their records initially hit the states, so he was probably pretty aware of Moon in '65.

Also worth noting that The Who played Ann Arbor on their first US tour in 1967 and this '68 show took place before Kick Out The Jams was even released

https://recordmecca.com/wp-content/uploads/mqc/1052_large_1.jpg

Did anyone in the group ever confirm or discuss how "Come Together" is based on "I Can See for Miles"? Given their knowledge of jazz (and how they clearly drew from it), I imagine they figured it was obvious what they were doing, similar to the way original jazz compositions can be rewrites old standards.

I do not envy the Troggs having to follow the MC5 on that show

good lord that bill

I Want You (Right Now) was a rewrite of the Troggs song I Want You apparently. Shows the process just mentioned.

from several good posts, incl. links, on Rolling Obit:

I worked for BOMP/Alive Records in the mid-1990s when they were releasing that series of sourced-from-bad-tapes MC5 and MC5-adjacent stuff. Much of material came from John Sinclair but Kramer would come by the offices to tacitly sign-off. Really nice guy - intense and super-driven. He had just moved to LA, re-connected with Mick Farren, and was playing gigs all over Los Angeles while working on what would be his first album for Epitaph, The Hard Stuff. Most often, the gigs would just be him and a drummer. Sometimes a sax player. Occasionally Farren would come up for a ten minute ramble while they backed him up. Every gig, regardless of how decrepit the punk bar was, was the Grande Ballroom in '68 - an all-out *performance*. LA in the 90s was awash in unemployed guitarists and a middle-age bald dude was wiping the floor with them with shows that were actually thrilling.

The MC5: A True Testimonial documentary is a must watch. I was lucky to be at the premiere for it at the Arclight. Back then most folks had never seen the Wayne State footage before, and on a giant screen at full volume it was as life-changing as Star Wars.

― Elvis Telecom, Friday, February 2, 2024