MAGNET’s Mitch Myers celebrates the celebration of the MC5 in the year 2024
How do we salute the MC5? Let us count the ways. In October, there was a commemorative hometown event at the Lincoln Park Bandshell in Lincoln Park, Mich., and then there was the band’s overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. There was also the release of MC5: An Oral Biography Of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band, assembled by co-authors Jaan Uhelski and Brad Tolinski and based on work by late writer/editor Ben Edmonds (Creem, Mojo, Rolling Stone).
October even saw the unveiling of the legendary band’s first new record in 53 years, Heavy Lifting, guided by MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, who passed away in February. The LP has original MC5 drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson on two tracks (Thompson died just three months after Kramer) and features a swarm of special guests to help Brother Wayne boost the perennial Detroit legend.
With a new record and the book, nothing but accolades could follow—all for a groundbreaking band that had released just three records before disbanding in 1972. Let it be said that the Motor City 5 were one of the few groups that had the nerve to make their first album a live recording, where they kicked out the jams. Hats off to the band’s then-manager, John Sinclair (who passed away in April), for his vision and commitment as well. We’re really missing all of these guys now.
Much has been said about the MC5 of late, and I don’t want to be redundant, but there are some MC5-adjacent highlights well worth remembering. The group’s influences and personalities were diverse, and the sum may have been greater than its composite parts, but the individuals still had their own appeal nonetheless.
First up, this haunting performance by MC5 singer Rob Tyner from 1991, only months before he died. Drawn from some long-forgotten TV program with late Detroit radio legend Dave Dixon, Tyner delivers his bittersweet masterwork of Motor City nostalgia, “Grande Days.” Tyner looks like he’d been through the rock ‘n’ roll wars accompanying himself on Autoharp replete with a shifter. His remembrances of the Grande Ballroom come through like some lost archeological find not seen since Mother Maybelle Carter.
Next, we find Brother Wayne conjuring Chicago’s 20th-century champion of the lowlife: novelist Nelson Algren. A track off Kramer’s Adult World album from 2002, “Nelson Algren Stopped By” features some urgent counterpoint from Chicago musicians XMarsX, including late saxophonist Mars Williams and cellist Fred Longberg-Holm. Alongside his Windy City comrades, Kramer dramatically inhabits Algren’s neon wilderness via some good, old-fashioned spoken-word-meets-punk-jazz. Like, go man, go!
Speaking of spoken word: MC5 manager Sinclair—a radical activist, White Panther, political prisoner, radio DJ, poet, promoter, performer, blues scholar, medicine man and genuine griot—was bold to blend his historical appreciations of baseball and jazz into what he dubbed “a rhythm inning” with his inspired version of Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-A-Ning.” Interpolating 1950s jazz notables into his bruising batting lineup, Sinclair pits the New York Tenors (Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffin, John Coltrane) against the Bebop All Stars (Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker) with superlative results for the great American pastime.
As a bonus track: I’ve loved this low-decibel version of “Shakin’ Street” ever since first hearing it on a ROIR cassette back in the day. There really should have been a Saturday-morning cartoon “where all the kids meet.” I mean, if the Jackson 5 were able do it in ‘71 and ‘72, why didn’t the MC5?
Anyway, long live Skinny Leg Pete!
