MC5 "Kick Out The Jams" 1970 Live at Wayne State University's Tartar Field in Detroit. Recorded for the Detroit Tube Works TV show. Notice the kids jumping to their feet when the song starts - The MC5 are the real deal! "In 1968 the band release a single on their own label. They are Detroit's premier underground group and have a regular gig at the 1000 capacity Grande Ballroom and in October 68 their performance there is caught for their debut live album 'Kick Out The Jams' on Electra. Playing at the Grande the MC5 would regularly support big name bands and blow them off the stage like Cream, Big Brother and Blood Sweat & Tears. The aggression in the music would be present offstage and backstage. The MC5 would jostle and intimidate the main bands giving them real attitude an as the home town boys milk encores. Their most famous song 'Kick Out The Jams' which started with the cry 'Kick Out The jams' M-f-er! Hard to believe but that alone sung at a gig could get you arrested or club owners throw you out or withhold payment. You would think this would be great for the band but according to manager John Sinclair the band were pissed off." They were dissatisfied about their money, about lack of recognition...they were tired of living with my Trans Love Energies crowd, and demanding that they be allowed to get a house of their own.... While they may not have been hardened revolutionaries, they had the cohones to go and play at the Chicago Democratic Conventioneer of 1968. While Crosby Still Nash & Young sang a song about it and the Doors name checked it in 'Peace Frog' other bands due to play failed to show. One band did and that was the MC5. As agent provocateurs mingled with the crowd and police and troopers massed ready to teargas and beat to a bloody pulp the protestors, the MC5 pumped out their hi energy white noise attuned to the whirring helicopters overhead. The atmosphere must have been incredible. Only the band held the crowd together. Wayne Kramer "...we're talking about the war and the human being lawnmower and everything, and the Chicago police helicopters started buzzing down on us" Dennis Thompson: "...the police troopers came marching in into the park with their three-foot batons As they finish their set and make a run for it violence and rioting erupt. The band make good their escape. This was a bold but dangerous move displaying themselves as hardened revolutionaries. In retrospect they considered this a mistake because they weren't. At the time they seriously considered death in an armed shoot out a possibility. This and the publicised White Panther 10 Point Program couldn't fail to bring them to the attention of the authorities as a danger and their phones were illegally tapped and they were the subject of covert surveillance by the FBI. During the riots their group van was firebombed and their residence invaded by marines checking out reports of a sniper and who addressed Sinclair chillingly by name. They were marked men. 'The important thing in any revolutionary activity' says Fred Smith, 'is the communication of the real values'.'What we're concerned with is not so much a revolutionary consciousness', continues Tyner, 'I think the consciousness that we're concerned with, if you summed it up in a word, would definitively encompass revolutionary in the sense of the change in the sense of values that is needed right now, and that would be something that we would term loving awareness, as opposed to a defensive awareness, which is what most of the world functions in today, and always has. That was a prime example of where John Sinclair's head was at, and that's why we didn't agree with it. We knew it wasn't right, we knew it wasn't gonna change things...''The most important thing for us to do', says Smith, 'is to try to project a loving awareness attitude. If I come to you and I'm projecting a defensive awareness attitude, then I'm totally blocked off to you, and there is no communication. In our situation as a group, in our music, in our stage show, in the things we say on stage, we wish to project this openness, this loving awareness, this sensitivity towards a higher level of communication.' 'Vibrations, the art form we are dealing with is literally vibrations', says Tyner, 'because we produce sound vibrations. These sound vibrations come out of us, through the circuitry of our instruments, out into the air and into you. You don't have to know that rock and roll's being played, you just open the door and walk in and immediately it comes into you. If it says something to you on a vibrational level, you stay and you become more opened up by it.'" Taken from: The story Of The Mighty MC5 - http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/mc5_history_1.htm Liberated video - with no corporate blood suckers tring to ring money out of the Artists who created it! - Stay alive with the MC5 and... KICK OUT THE JAMS BROTHERS AND SISTERS!!!

• published: 29 Aug 2013
• views: 7