Remembering The MC50: When Wayne Kramer enlisted Soundgarden, Fugazi and Faith No More to celebrate ‘Kick Out the Jams’
The MC5 are best known for the immortal line – “kick out the jams, motherfucker!” – a call to rid the world of its many ills. However, I’d argue the lyric that best encapsulates their spirit is found in ‘Come Together’, with late frontman Rob Tyner defiantly yelling: “Together in the darkness come with me”.
That was the MC5 to a tee. Their anarchic music was fused with a vital political message, an ostensibly countercultural one that was more furious than anything anyone in the flower-power movement produced. Characterised by their origins in the depths of the industrial hub of America – Michigan – there’s an authentically gritty essence to all of The MC5’s music. It was just what fans needed during the era of civil rights abuses, the Vietnam War, and the spectre of nuclear annihilation. The time for airy-fairy Californian nonsense was over. The time for action had come.
Guitarist and band leader Wayne Kramer told The Guardian in 2018 that San Francisco’s “summer of love never made a stop to Detroit”. “Bell bottoms and beads may have come,” he reflected. “But the MC5 and Detroit always had a hard, working-class approach to music. What we sensed coming from San Francisco was too lightweight.”
One of the most interesting aspects of the band is that they only released two studio albums in their time – 1970s Back in the USA and 1971s High Time. Despite both being coveted, the 1969 live album Kick Out the Jams is hailed as their masterpiece. It captured the band at their peak, with the excitement surrounding them tangible and their raw power clear for all to hear. Popularising the tracks’ Kick Out the Jams’ and ‘Come Together’, soon after its release, the quartet were catapulted to stardom. This was the sound of a generation with its back up against the wall, and they were to be taken very seriously.
The band’s first chapter ended in 1972, but there would be many different re-emergences over the years. Unfortunately, frontman Tyner died in 1991, and then guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith in 1994. This meant that as the years flew by, the chances of seeing the classic lineup of The MC5 became increasingly impossible, compounded by bassist Michael Davis passing in 2012.
However, Kramer and drummer Dennis Thompson are still around, and although they are both now in the band, for a time, Kramer was left to steer the ship on his own, supported by different casts of band members. The most exciting iteration of the new-look MC5 came in 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kick Out the Jams.
In May of that year, Kramer announced the ‘MC50’ tour in honour of their timeless record. However, this was not an ordinary run of dates. To the delight of fans, the guitarist also revealed that he had enlisted some of the most celebrated musicians The MC5 have influenced to help him.
Guitarist Kim Thayil and drummer Matt Cameron of Soundgarden were entering the fold, as was Brendan Canty of Fugazi, Doug Pinnick of King’s X, as well as vocalist Marcus Durant and bassist Don Was. Ultimately, Pinnick was replaced by Billy Gould of Faith No More, and fans could not believe the treat Kramer was giving them, with many viewing Gould’s entrance as an upgrade.
“This band will rip your head off,” Kramer explained in a statement. “It’s real, raw, sweaty, total energy rock and roll, like a bunch of 40-to-70-year-old ‘punks on a meth power trip.’ I’m not interested in a note-for-note reproduction of a record you’ve known your entire life. The world has lived with these songs burned in amber for half a century, so we’re going for an energy blast to end all. Let’s bring the monster back to life with supremely talented musicians who will interpret it in their own unique ways.”
“The message of the MC5 has always been the sense of possibilities: a new music, a new politics, a new lifestyle,” he continued. “Today, there is a corrupt regime in power, an endless war thousands of miles away, uncontrollable violence wracking my country — it’s becoming less and less clear if we’re talking about 1968 or 2018”.
Adding: “I’m compelled to share this music I created with my brothers 50 years ago. My goal is that the audience leaves these shows mesmerised by the positive power of rock music. I’ve come to accept that we were a dangerous band. The music we made at that time represented something that said – we are part of a tribe, we are part of a bigger movement – and apparently, it still represents that.”
In December 2018, the MC50 dropped into the KEXP studios to play a short set of ‘Future/Now’, ‘Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)’, ‘High School’ and ‘Come Together’. Unsurprisingly, this lineup, boasting Thayil, Canty, Gould, and Durant, delivered a stellar set, leaving fans begging Kramer to make it permanent. We’re still waiting for it to happen.
Watch the MC50 in action below.
