"And right now, right now, right now it's time to KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!" —Rob Tyner
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| Fred "Sonic" Smith, Wayne Kramer, Rob Tyner, Wayne Kramer, Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson and Michael Davis. |
The Motor City Five, more commonly known as MC5, was a highly influential American rock band formed in 1963 in Lincoln Park, Michigan. Regarded by many as the "godfathers of punk" who pioneered the "proto-punk" sound through a raw, high-energy fusion of hard rock, blues, and free jazz.
The band was notoriously politically radical, and performed during the 1968 Democratic National Convention riots. They also served as the "ministers of information" and "house band" for the White Panther Party a radical, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist political collective founded in 1968 in Michigan by John Sinclair, Pun Plamondon (Lawrence Robert), and Leni Sinclair.
So for your dinning and dancing pleasure, today's freeload consists of:
'Kick Out the Jams'
(uncensored version)
(uncensored version)
Back in the USA
High Time
These Japanese SHM-CDs remasters from 2009 sound amazing, and make for a very nice upgrade.
For the freeload, let's talk about the roots of Punk Rock, from so-called "proto-punk" bands.
For the freeload, let's talk about the roots of Punk Rock, from so-called "proto-punk" bands.
Gee whiz. I'd go back to at least '65, the first wave of US garage punk inspired by the *cough* British Invasion. Pick any from the hundreds of three chord thrashers with one fantastic single, one Prom Night gig, and the lead singer doing eight to ten at Gubmint College.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's where I'd put it, too. The response to the Beatles/Rolling Stones/Yardbirds was everywhere "the local rock group down the street is trying hard to learn their song." On my street it was the Early Morning Fog. On the other side of this jerkwater burg it was the Frumious Bandersnatch. Bands were everywhere; so were gigs; teen dances hadn't devolved in the drug-fueled "teenage wasteland yet, so dances were at the National Guard armory, V.A. Hall, heck, even churches had dances.
ReplyDeleteThere were local record labels, and with a bit of work you could get on the local AM radio, and if that didn't work you just pressed up the 45 yourself and sold it at gigs. As with 50s doo-wop, there were thousands of records with hometown heroes and wanna-bees. Unlike doo-wop, this wasn't just urban centers; kids in Iowa were doing it, too.
It came, it went, music returned to being made by people who understood syncopation and circles of fifths dropping quotes from the "Hall of the Mountain King" into fifteen-minute-long songs about hobbits and armadillos fighting manticores with drum solo breaks in 11/4 time.
And then Lenny Kaye reminded us of the pleasures of a 2:59 singles made by teenagers with 1972's NUGGETS, which is still an astonishing record: one of the first compilations organized around a theme instead of around hits, with the obscurity of the originals being a selling point: Here's a record that WASN'T on the radio in your market. Nuggets reminded us that you don't have to know very much about music to start a band, and you don't have to be a virtuoso to put out a record. You just have to do it.
There's a case to be made for earlier exemplars based on a punk attitude; Eddie Cochran, Larry Collins, Link Wray....you can apply it everywhere: Stravinsky...PUNK......Brahms....NOT punk... but once you get past the mid-Sixties, whatever it is it is also something else. It's rockabilly, or surf, or instrumental.
One other consideration is that "punk" when it started in the mid-70s wasn't as limited as it because by the end of the decade. There's a thing that happens where gatekeepers want to police purity and throw out the heretics (I'm looking at you, Tim Yohannon): Eddie & the Hot Rods are not punk they're pub rock! Blondie is retro-60s pop! Tom Verlaine plays guitar solos, and guitar solos are elitist! They are BANISHED!
Both seem spot on, though there are elements of punk about, and I don't think I'm just being a geeky academic (well, OK, I am a geeky academic, but still). Marcus ain't wrong--he is about much, though he gets a lot right too--that the opening riff of "Johnny B Goode" has something and there are bits of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard that are as good as it gets and they both had the attitude that seems key...a vote for "Louie Louie"?
ReplyDeleteI would venture to guess, "Louie Louie" was responsible for launching thousands of bands.
Delete100% I've always loved the (putative) Eno riff about how when Lou Reed told him the first Velvet Underground album only sold 30,000 copies in the first 5 years (in some versions it's 5,000 in the first year) he said, "yeah, but everyone who bought one started a band." I feel like that is even more the case for The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" (all due respect to Richard Berry). I'd actually push it a step further: was there anyone who heard "Louie Louie" and wasn't affected? It was a thing. Ask the FBI.
DeleteLong live the Trogs!
ReplyDeleteBlue Cheer? T.Rex? Porter Wagoner? Edgard Varese? Ornette Coleman? Don Van Vliet? I dunno... when I first heard the Pistols my initial thought was "heavy metal" (thanks to Steve Jones). And I recall seeing Tom Petty's first 2 albums packaged together with a "Punk!" sticker on the shrinkwrap.
ReplyDeleteYou can't have a conversation about "proto-punk", without mentioning The Fugs.
ReplyDeleteThe lyrics of the Fug's "Nothing" (1965?) are about as punk as you can get... though, back to Greil Marcus, Bascom Lamar Lunsford's "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" is pretty damn punk and that was 1928...
DeleteDeep cut, that ol' Zimmy lifted the "Just drink up your blood like wine" from.
DeleteBack to the Fugs for a second. "Kill For Peace"
Our Zimmy lifted/borrowed/interpolated a lot, amirite
Delete"Kill For Peace" absolutely
No you can't, Babs. Ed Sanders (former editor of "Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts, and the only surviving original member) still leads an ad hoc version of the band occasionally. He turns 87 this year and is still an activist of sorts, not bad for a peace-creep poet.
Delete"Fuck You - A Magazine Of The Arts" was available on the Isle O' Foam© a while back. It may still reside on an external hard drive.
DeleteHasil Adkins, but no one really knew how much of a punk he was until much later on...an unknown root!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasil_Adkins
Fair, though "She Said" was 1965 or 1966, I think. The idea that she looked like a "dying can of commodity meat" certainly helped launch the Cramps...
DeleteOne of the issues I have with that academic approach is who the heck was listening to Bascom Lamar Lunsford in the years preceding the '75-'77 emergence of the style? I can see the case for the Fugs; I knew people who had a record or two. And I can see that someone like Dylan might know Lunsford, that's the sort of arcane references that led to the Basement Tapes.
ReplyDeleteBut Johnny Ramone, Stiv Bators, David Byrne, Richard Hell....those guys over here....and the guys in the Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks over there....my guess is they'd go, "who?"
If a punk record dropped in the 1920s, did it make a noise that lasted until the Class of '77 showed up? I get that it's a steppingstone on a path that led to what happened, but hey, Stravinsky was a punk, too, then.
And yes, the Troggs were a British band that had the same sound as the American garage bands.
Fair enough...but they heard Chuck Berry, Little Richard & Jerry Lee Lewis, no?
ReplyDeleteBird was a Punk.
ReplyDeleteyou're not wrong...I think Richard Hell once said Bird and some others coulda shown Johnny Thunders a thing or two...
DeletePeter Brotzmann was a punk.
DeleteIf Charlie Parker was a punk, so was The Singing Nun.
Deleteif her giant pockets were full of bindles & bags, sure.
DeleteBird had much more in common with the "Flying Nun"
Delete@ Bombshelter Slim — I'll do a Peter Brötzmann feature here.
DeleteAll of the above have some merit, depending on one's perspective, but when I had my radio show back in the 90s, I played Love's '7 & 7 Is' as my choice for the first punk song. It's fast, furious and done in under 2.5 minutes. I love the catholic nature of early punk, before the rules set in, but '7 & 7 Is' would be recognized as a punk song whether it came out in 1977 or 1987 or 1997....you get the idea. I couldn't say that about 'Wild Thing' or 'Louie x 2' or the MC5 or the Dolls or Eddie Cochran or Bascom Lunsford or Stravinsky or....you get the idea.
ReplyDeleteC in California
Charlie Brown is about to play a Van Halen album. Somebody in a Waffle House is shouting "Van Halen were the first punks, man!" right now.
ReplyDeleteWaffle House.
DeleteCount Five's 'Psychotic Reaction' is a glorious gem of garage punk
ReplyDeleteSo many bands:
ReplyDeleteQuestion Mark & The Mysterians '96 Tears'. The Seeds 'Pushin' Too Hard', Love's '7 & 7 is', Chocolate Watchband, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Paul Revere & The Raiders, Blues Magoos, Electric Prunes, Paul Revere & The Raiders, Shadows Of Knight, Music Machine etc etc etc all of whom were inspired by the Stones, Who, Kinks, Yardbirds, Pretty Things, The Birds, The Eyes, The Creation, The Game and a host of bands that produced a harder R&B based sound than the standard beat bands.
As mentioned above the original Nuggets compilation on Elektra in 1972 is a perfect sampler of American Garage Punk. It was the first retrospective that inspired literally hundreds if not thousands of later compilations
Then of course along came the next wave with MC5, The Stooges, New York Dolls, Alice Cooper and the Velvet Underground in the US bands such as Hawkwind in the UK ('Urban Guerilla') and so on feeding into the Mid 1970's bands whether it be the likes of the Dr Feelgood, Pink Fairies in the UK or Television, The Ramones, The Dictators or Patti Smith in the US.
There ya go a potted history of proto punk.Great stuff all of it. My favourite genre of music....
Looking at the above version of my NIC it looks like my keyboard is broke!
ReplyDeleteYes to Peter Brötzmann! check out Machine Gun:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXN4JgsWcwI
Jeffrey Lewis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnmrAthgi8g
ReplyDeleteAmazing, thanks for sharing!
DeleteFrom all these gathered here, the only pre-punk were the dAdA. All others were young and snotty and became old and dried-up. Elvis was a punk before he joined the army, super-so when he almost got cancelled for his hips on tv.
ReplyDeleteAre there punks, not as a fashion statement or a musical choice, urgent punks? Oh yes, Greta was a punk, coming of age, she's an activist
Apropos of nowt, John Sinclair was on the jazz scene before his infamy, and knew Johnny Griffin. Griffin coined the acronym JAMF for the fairly obvious, and I reckon that's where Kick Out The Jams originates.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCJj5qzFuio
Sinclair lived in New Orleans for awhile, and used to host a radio show. Got to meet him a few times, courtesy of a mutual friend. Really interesting guy.
DeleteJohn Lennon wrote a song about John ("John Sinclair") for his 'Some Time in New York' album.
DeleteWent to a Sinclair poetry reading once, and he recited the lyrics to that song, with a blues band backing him. Was a weird event in large part due to it being held at a grunge/death metal bar in NO (place was owned by q now defunct band, Eye Hate God). The clientele were not fans of Sinclair, poetry, blues bands or hygiene.
DeleteLink
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/AaeHnDC5pu6
I’d like to suggest Jimmy Cross’s “I Want My Baby Back”— or is that more of a novelty song? After all, there’s a cover version by the Downliners Sect, who could certainly pass for a punk band themselves.
ReplyDelete