Posts Tagged ‘MC5’

  
Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Lo-Fi Mojo: Gang War

by Ed Murray

Lo-Fi Mojo

When Detroit proto-punk rockers the MC5 broke up in 1972, the five original band members went their separate ways. Bassist Michael Davis left first – he went on to form Destroy All Monsters with ex-Stooge Ron Asheton. Drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson attempted a handful of unsuccessful solo ventures. Singer Rob Tyner made some post-MC5 progress, as a producer, songwriter, bandleader and photographer, before his untimely death in 1991.

Guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith formed the excellent Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, a Detroit rawk supergroup of sorts, featuring Scott Morgan of the Rationals, Gary Rasmussen of the Up! and Scott Asheton of the Stooges. Unfortunately, SRB only released one “official” single in the late ’70s, though UK label Easy Action released an excellent six-disc box set of live and studio material that fans of high-energy ’70s rock will love. “Sonic” Smith met and married singer Patti Smith (coincidentally they had the same last name), retired from music to raise a family, and died tragically in 1994.

Gang War, featuring Johnny Thunders and Wayne Kramer

MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer went to prison, after getting caught selling coke to an undercover federal agent. Upon release after a couple years in the joint, Kramer formed a short partnership with ex-New York Doll and ex-Heartbreaker Johnny Thunders called Gang War.

Two ’70s rock and drug casualties do not a lasting group make, and Gang War was no exception. They had about a year in ‘em, they didn’t release any official recordings, they barely cut some demo material in the studio. But over the years, some documentation of several live sets have been unearthed, one of the best being the Gang War! import on the UK Jungle-Freud label (why is it the Brits who are always unearthing this stuff?), taken from a couple of shows recorded live in Toronto and Boston in 1980. (more…)

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Friday, July 31st, 2009

Bootleg City: Marshall Crenshaw

by Robert Cass

When the economy’s bad, crime get worse. That’s why I decided to hire a new lawman to clean up this one-horse-because-of-all-the-horse-thieves town.

I know what you’re thinking: “It’s called Bootleg City. If you outlaw the outlaws and start doing everything by the book, aren’t you defeating the purpose of the place? Isn’t there some sort of town charter you’d be violating? Seriously, Mr. Mayor, how stupid can you be?” The thing is, I agree with you. (Well, except for that rude rhetorical question you tacked onto the end of your thought. That seemed unnecessary.) After all, the welcome sign at the edge of town says the following: BOOTLEG CITY — A PLACE FOR BOOTLEGGERS AND SCOUNDRELS AND EVEN RAPISTS, AS LONG AS IT’S JUST THE VIKING KIND OF RAPE WHERE YOU WANTONLY DESTROY THE LAND, BUT BE A DEAR AND JUST DESTROY THE POOR SIDE OF TOWN, OKAY? WE’VE BEEN MEANING TO LAY WASTE TO THAT EYESORE FOR YEARS NOW. THANKS, AND ENJOY YOUR STAY!

Even so, crime is out of control here, so I’ve started interviewing candidates for the job of police chief (and judge, jury, and executioner if they have a talent for multitasking). Unfortunately, due to a nearsighted oversight on my part, I misread the caption on one particular photograph attached to a candidate’s resumé and ended up scheduling an interview with a guy named Marshall Crenshaw. See, I didn’t notice that second L at the end of his first name — it turns out he’s a musician, not the former marshal of Jaggedland. The imagined typo didn’t come up for the first 20 minutes of the interview, though, so I sat there wondering how this bespectacled Columbo-type character was going to strike fear into the hearts of criminals, and he was wondering why he had to meet a town’s mayor before playing a club gig.

Eventually we got the whole thing sorted out and had a few laughs about it. He told me I was his new favorite waste of time, so I told him rape was my favorite waste of time but go-nowhere interviews were a close second. At that point he started looking for the door and said he had to get to the hotel and take a shower before his show.

Musicians are so hard to read. Maybe I just need new glasses.

(more…)

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Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Lo-Fi Mojo: MC5 to the Rock Hall, brothers and sisters!

by Mojo Flucke

Seeing the nominees for this year’s Rock Hall class, I’m starting to feel like the writers who, year after year, banged on the “Get Art Monk into the Pro Football Hall of Fame!” drums until it finally came to fruition last August. Or the disgusted Red Sox fans who want their beloved Jim Rice in Cooperstown — and have half a shot next year because steroids are making currently eligible sluggers look mighty artificial.

At the risk of sounding like a tired old dork even before I start, here we go: There is no reason on earth the MC5 should be held out of the Rock Hall one more year! These guys pretty much took the pieces of protopunk lying around the gritty Detroit garage scene in the mid-’60s–attitude, look, volume, aggressive playing, hardcore screaming, devil-may-care attitude toward political authorities–and fused them into actual punk. Heavy, 1960s Blue Cheer/Deep Purple-ish punk, but punk nonetheless. The MC5 influenced so many early (and late and even current) punks that it’s just too ridiculous to begin counting.

Why is the Rock Hall ignoring them? One writer with whom I frequently exchange emails (and who occasionally comments on my posts as MojoHater) has floated out the conspiracy theory that the Rock Hall is what he refers to as “a Jann Wenner circle jerk,” and because Rolling Stone whomped on the band back in the day, they’ve been unofficially blacklisted. I can see that happening, but I can also see how the MC5’s radical politics — which some might say were kind of a marketing scheme that backfired — might also be something the Rock Hall is ‘fraid to endorse. Oh wait. This is rock. Forget the political discussion. The more outrageous you are, the more beloved you become — whether you’re right or not. (more…)

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