Wednesday 10 August 2016

MC5




















"kick out the jams"
Year:  1969
Country:  US
City:  Detroit
Label:  Warner
Format:  CD , LP
Tracks:  10
Time:  30 min.
Lyrical themes:  social issues, pacifism
Genre:  rock
Style:        Garage Rock















"kick out the jams" is the debut album by proto-punk band MC5 and it was released in February 1969, through Elektra Records (own of Warner Music). Although the album received several unfavorable reviews upon its release, it has gone on to be considered an important forerunner to punk rock music  and in 2003 was ranked number 294 on Rolling Stone magazine "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Despite its superficial non-political appareance, members of the band like Wayne Krammer or Rob Tyner, showed publicly their sympathy for democracy, socialism and activism pacifist. Their behavoir against Vietnam war and all wars in general, was repeated in different live concerts along USA during the first MC5 periode. This album is normally described as "garage rock" but it keeps also many similarities with rhythm'n'blues and classic rock. To mention also a curiosity which happened in 1993, when the spanish band M.C.D recorded a covers collection album, using the same classic MC5 cover, which you can listen to HERE .
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"back in the USA"
Year:  1970
Label:  Warner Music
Format:  CD , LP
Tracks:  10
Time:  32 min.
Lyrical themes:  social issues, pacifism
Genre:  rock
Style:         Garage Rock














Following this is more easy vibe of debut album, the first composition by guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith to appear on record and it differs from all other MC5 recordings past, present and future in a melodic rumination on that eternal teenage strip/hang out where everything’s cool while you get to try out various styles of your own self to see what’s gonna fly with the gang and onlookers and there’s always some action going down somewhere to find and shake up; and therefore (like the rest of the whole shebang) teenage as fuck. And Sonic’s Midwestern drawl-vox is tuff comfort itself. As stripped down and economical as its monochromatic sleeve, “Back In The USA” is a barely-contained flask of combustible material and by my estimation the strongest influence on punk outta The MC5’s three LPs. And although imbalanced by compromise in a couple of respects, all you got to do is put the two cover versions behind you and realise how well the remaining nine hang together: tense, terse and trebly rock’n’roll as performed full throttle, under the gun and on the run. MC5 musicians had sympathy for the "White Panther Party", which was a far-left, anti-racist, white american political collective founded in 1968 by Pun Plamondon, Leni Sinclair, and John Sinclair. It was started in response to an interview where Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was asked what white people could do to support the Black Panthers. Newton replied that they could form a White Panther Party. The counterculture era group took the name and dedicated its energies to "cultural revolution." Sinclair made every effort to ensure that the White Panthers were not mistaken for a white supremacist group, responding to such claims with "quite the contrary." This party was socialist, anti-capitalist inspired and worked with many ethnic minority rights groups in the Rainbow Coalition.