Jul 212008
A Townsperson Wants to Know
Following our recent appreciation for the Look of the MC5, a Townsperson wrote me offlist to ask this question:
“I’ve been hearing a lot about the MC5 for years, but beside ‘Kick Out the Jams,’ I can’t say I know a full song by them. What I hear sounds pretty cool and I know a lot of you guys love them, but where do I start? What’s their best album?”
As Moderator of Rock Town Hall, I don’t think I alone should assume the responsibility of steering this Townsperson toward a starting album. Beside, I don’t love the band the way some of you do. I ask you, Townspeople, to suggest the best MC5 album.
Our friend surely looks forward to your responses.
Being that the best MC5 album is required to have “Looking At You” on it, “Back In The U.S.A.”
I’m also a fan of “Back In the USA,” thin, tinny sound and all. Though that first live album is pretty amazing for Sheer Rock Power reasons. I’d say it would depend on what the listener most appreciates: if you typically enjoy things for reasons having to do with style/attitude/dismantlement of old rules/shattering of precedent (as opposed to focusing on the music, mannnnn), then go for the live LP. If you’re more of a “song guy,” then the “Back In the USA” album is for you.
Yeah, but that “back in the USA” album isn’t really representative of what the band did live. It’s a bunch of 2 and a half minute rockers, which is great, but….would give you a false impression of them.
I’m a “High Time” man, myself, if only for “Future Now”. But it’s a bit heavy on concept and may not be a good introduction.
So if you can find “Babes in Arms” (which was originally a ROIR tape, I believe, but which I have on white vinyl), that’s the best place to start. IT has the spunky pop stuff like American Ruse (originally found on “USA”), but it also has the great extended jams like “Sister Anne.”
Here’s the Amazon page for Babes in Arms: http://www.amazon.com/Babes-Arms-MC5/dp/B000001Q46 (only three left in stock!).
Happy noise-ing.
The other plus with “Babes in Arms” is that the songs have been remixed by Wayne Kramer, and it really does make a difference.
There is no best MC5 album. They all kind of suck. You buy them out of historical interst, get out of them what you can, and accept the fact that their essence never made it onto vinyl.
I think the fact the the MC5 never had one good representative album is the reason that they’ve remained ever cultier than most cult bands. Not only do you need to hear all three of the Elektra records but you need to hear post-break-up comps like BABES IN ARMS or ’66 BREAKOUT to get your mind around them. Each album separately is uneven (although I’m too a BACK IN THE USA fan) but together you can piece together how ingenious the whole contraption was. Maybe that recent Rhino comp serves this purpose, I haven’t checked it out.
That video clip is awesome. Is that documentary about them still squashed?
-db
BigSteve wrote:
As one of the Philadelphia 76ers broadcasters is prone to say when a journeyman power forward pulls down an especially tough, crucial rebound, BigSteve does the man’s work! (What a compliment, this once-journeyman high school power forward always thinks to himself.)
I generally agree with this sentiment. I think Back in the USA is their only even “good” album, and that’s because it’s bubblegum approach mostly skirts the band’s shortcomings regarding their ability to translate their live appeal to record.
I always figured MC5 in that category of “Mandatory Greatest Hits” albums. Those bands that cranked out enough incredibly awesome tunes to fill an album but not a single album that you could listen thru.
Steppenwolf may be the quintessential “Mandatory Greatest Hits” artist.
I’m not nearly as much of a fan of MC5’s revolution rock as I am of Teenage Lust and Highschool.
Fortunately we live in the youtube era, when you can actually get a sense of the band that the records cannot account for.
Good point about that benefit of the YouTube era. Are there other bands you (plural) can think of that are better captured on YouTube than through any studio recordings?
“Steppenwolf may be the quintessential “Mandatory Greatest Hits” artist.”
Recent exploration of the Steppenwolf catalog has been surprisingly fruitful, with STEPPENWOLF 2 and STEPPENWOLF 7 being particularly memorable. I have similar reports to make about Black Oak Arkansas.
Thank goodness I live in a neighborhood where I can drop down to the record store and dependably find these records for $3 a pop.
When all is said and done, Babes in Arms is the best recommendation here.
BigSteve, that’s quite a blanket statement, that all of their albums “kind of suck.”
You’ve got pretty high cred around here, so you’re being applauded for it in this forum. In just about any of the the circles I travel, you’d be run out of the room for saying such a thing.
But I know where you’re coming from. All of the MC5’s albums are flawed for one reason or another.
Of all them, though, I think “High Time” is as close as they ever got to an album that is successful all the way through. But that one gets a little too bogged down in making the concept happen, often at the expense of the fun, which is something that the MC5 do quite well on other records.
dbus,
the documentary (quashed by kramer, either because he became uncomfortable with his own candor, or because he didn’t like the final product, or both), is freaking frustrating.
there is alot of footage of great performances interrupted in the middle so that we can see interviews of most of the posse (mostly kramer), which is most revisionist in nature. so you’ll get thirty seconds of a great performance of “Looking at You,” your mouth will start to water, and then you’ll get to see Wayne Kramer ca. 2002, bitching about the band’s lost opportunities and blaming everybody on the planet for his band’s demise, which he clearly still hasn’t gotten over.
Still, if you’re a fanboy like me, you’ll want to have it. If I am able to find a way to reproduce it, I’ll hook you up.
Saturnismine wrote:
Let’s hear it for RTH for having the balls to acknowledge and applaud BigSteve. Certainly such sentiments are not welcome on the ski slopes overrun by The Cool Patrol!
ugh.
my friends aren’t any cooler than yours, mod.
they just don’t think all the MC5 albums “kind of suck”, and they certainly wouldn’t get a boner after hearing someone else say such a thing.
tuck it back in.
Listen, Sat, we’ve done a remarkable job of not turning this into an MC5-Steppenwolf showdown. Let’s keep up the good work!
“We?” I haven’t breathed a peep about Steppenwolf!
ha.
Seriously, though…I’ve had a car ride down Byberry road to think about this some more, and it’s as if you were channeling my thoughts with your last post, mod!
right on!
i want to clarify my reaction to BigSteve’s and your posts regarding the general level of “suck” on the 5’s albums: don’t let’s presume the people I say would “run steve out of town” for saying “they all kind of suck” are hipsters. They’re not. And I was overplaying their reaction. They wouldn’t run Steve out of town, but they would wonder why he chose such hostile language and would probably presume there’s some hipster hatred going on there, which is getting in the way of a fair assessment of the MC5. I know BigSteve’s style well enough to know that this isn’t the case, it’s just a straightforward, blunt approach.
Allow me to take this moment to once again elaborate on my love for Babes in Arms.
Here’s the track listing:
1. Shaking Street
2. American Ruse
3. Skunk (Sonically Speaking)
4. Tuttie Fruttie
5. Poison
6. Gotta Keep Moving
7. Tonite
8. Kick out the Jams
9. Sister Ann
10. Future Now
11. Gold
12. I Can Only Give You Everything
13. One of the Guys
14. I Just Don’t Know
15. Looking at You
As I suggested earlier, but didn’t elaborate, the songs from “USA” that appear here have been remixed, so the tinny sound that is lamented above is gone. The version of “Shakin’ Street” that leads off the album is so much better than the one on USA that you’ll wonder why the hell they didn’t release it. There’s some real tasteful production, believe it or not.
This album shows all sides of the band.
Not only is this a great introduction, it’s all you need to decide whether or not you want to explore further.
No, it’s not an album they went into the studio to record, but if you’re starting out with the MC5, this is the place.
Sat said: “I’ve had a car ride down Byberry road”.
When I was a kid my mom used to often say to one or more of us kids “You’re going to drive me to Byberry!”. It wasn’t until decades later that I learned this was a mental institution.
I never heard anyone but my mom use that phrase. Any of you other Philly boys ever hear this?
I’ve probably bored you guys with this story before, but I saw the MC5 play on a bill with the Stooges and (pre-fame) Alice Cooper. This would have been maybe 1971. I didn’t get it. Iggy definitely made an impression, but the only thing I remember about the MC5 was the fact that one of the guitarists made obscene gestures to the audience — as a come-on not as a fuck-off.
At the time they didn’t seem noticeably different from Cactus or Black Oak Arkansas or any number of hard rock party bands that came through on the circuit.
Skip forward to the ’00s. The reputation nof the MC5 continues to grow, and their albums become available on CD, so I buy the first one. I still don’t really get it. So I figure the second one must be better. Same result. Then I hear that the third Jon Landau produced album was finally where they nailed it, only to discover that it had such a tinny compressed sound I felt like I could have done a better job as engineer/producer.
Now that I’ve seen some youtubes, I can see better what it was they had and did. But their albums still don’t cut it for me. Strip away the rhetoric, which after all is pretty bogus, and they still don’t seem that much different on record anyway from Bloodrock or any of those other hard rock bands I saw way back when.
Sorry, saturn, I tried.
Before I get pince nez’d, I see that I’ve mixed up the order of the MC5 albums.
Ever heard of Byberry??? I grew up in a house that was about 100 yards from the intersection with it. The hospital was about a mile up from my corner. The first band shots of our high school band were taken in the abandoned lots behind the hospital.
But did you ever hear that phrase used in that way – “You’re driving me to Byberry!” as a substitute for “You’re driving me crazy!”?
I want all RTHers to clip BigSteve’s take on the MC5 and insert “Bob Dylan” in where he says “MC5” — oh, and you could do that with the Velvets as well. Change around a few other things, and voila!
Yes, I’ve heard variations on that phrase. My Mom would say, “They’re going to have to take me to Byberry.”
Hrrundi, your shortcut to criticizing Dylan and the VU fails because those artists had a lot more to offer, even if you didn’t like them. On paper, they had something going for them beside an occasional kick-ass rock anthem and a great collective Look.
By the way, if it took a tinny, compressed sound to make the MC5 sound lively on record it’s too bad they didn’t make more records that sounded that way. Someone mentioned a remixed version of that album that wasn’t so tinny and compressed. Could it really be better? I’d be curious to hear it. I suspect it might expose the band’s many shortcomings.
I forgot all about the pictures at Byberry. Didn’t Townsman Sethro work at Byberry for a while?
I forget if that was another branch at Byberry or another psychiatric hospital. It was also in my neighborhood. I’d forgotten about that stint!
BigSteve, I know you tried! You give everything a fair shake! And I’m with you on the Youtube recommendation (the “Lookin’ at You” video of them playing outdoors right in the wheelhouse of their heyday is about as powerful as a two chord song can get). And I agree about the general spottiness of their albums. I was just questioning the language you used to describe that spottiness. No biggie.
Glad to see my Byberry road comment was not for naught.
Mod, I mentioned that Babes in Arms has remixes (and even different takes) of *some* not all of the “USA” songs, and they really do sound nice.
I’ll have to check those mixes out, Sat. Thanks!
Believe me, for my hard-ass stance on the band, I’m always open to discovering a few more cool recordings by them. When they work for me they’re a whole lot of fun.
There’s also an LP of very early stuff….
Our discussion has made me want to convert this stuff from vinyl to digital before i completely wreck it with multiple playings.
when it’s done, i’ll hook you (and your friend) up, of course.
Thanks. I’m hoping that our anonymous Townsperson, who started this thread, steps forward and deals with the fact that he didn’t know much about this band. That’s right, I’m talking to you!
Hey, Sat — when you’re done pulling your nose out of BigSteve’s ass-cleft, would you please explain why the MC5 are better than Steppenwolf? I’ve been curious for a while.
Thanks —
HVB
Once again I’m late to the discussion.
I like High Times the best. It’s the best sounding album by far and I think the songs are a bit more consistent than the other two.
Kick Out the Jams runs out of steam for me during Motor City’s Burning but is really pretty cool until then and is worth the price of admission just for the first two songs alone. When I recently bought someone an MC5 album for his birthday, this is the one I got because I think it best represents the band.
I’m slowly, slowly warming to Back In the USA. The sound is pretty bad, there are only about 4 good songs on it and their versions of Back In the USA and Tutti Fruity are a disgrace. That being said, those 4 songs are pretty goddamn good, though.
I liked the movie a lot, by the way. And I didn’t think Wayne was bitter. That drummer on the other hand… Yikes!
Hi, HVB, glad to see you’re in such a convivial mood.
I happen to like the MC5 better than Steppenwolf, for reasons I’d be happy to go into.
But honestly, it’s a real apples and oranges comparison that I never really understood. I never would have thought to compare those two bands. The first time the mod mentioned it, I howled in protest, because I thought the notion of comparing the two was completely cockamamie.
to discover why I like the MC5 better, just watch the Youtube of “Looking at You.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEi1-FSec24
I rarely get to see bands bring it with this much passion and abandon. And that’s the kind of live performance I crave.
Steppenwolf are a great pop band. And I like their songs just fine. But they were never about the kind of unleashed animal delivery in that video. As I say, if I have my druthers, I’d much rather watch bands make something moving out of two chords, really wring them dry, than watch Steppenwolf do what they do.
But that’s just me…I imagine you’d beg to differ.
And I look forward to you doing so with your usual grace.
Be strong, Saturnismine! I don’t want to see Hrrundi bait you into this no-win debate. No-win for your point of view that is:) I’m going to do my damndest to see that I don’t get sucked into it as well. I’ve gotta run, gotta crank up Steppenwolf’s “Hey Lawdy Mama”!
that High Time album sounds like a sh-tty early kiss album. and I mean that in a good way, but the songs are not memorable.
my 4 year old daughter has more balls than the production on the Back in the USA album. but it has some cool tunes…
Kick Out the Jams has the attitude and the playing, but is short on songs, too many freakouts.
SO. I surmise and offer up that the best MC5 album was never recorded, it would have the production of the last album, the songs of the second album, and the intensity and playing of the first album.
CDM, didn’t it bug you every time a performance was interrupted for an interview? I’d rather just see the footage of them jamming.
But you’re right: the drummer IS WAY bitter. Wayne comes off rather balanced by comparison! But he is definitely revisionist…he’s definitely still unhappy about the way things turned out. My comments are colored by some personal experiences, having done sound for him a few times and having to hear his half-jokes all night long about how his band got screwed. at a certain point, it started to sound like a fixation and he started to look like a guy who was gigging for the sole purpose of chasing whatever it is he thinks he should have gotten but didn’t get back in the day. then when i watched the film, i felt like i was hearing some of that. but i was probably reading into it a little too much.
the stories he tells at the beginning are great, especially the one about the fight outside the bar.
mod…you’re both wrong and right. btw: blanton tonight. heaven help us.
poindexter!!! well said!!!!
i’m tellin ya; babes in arms is the way to go.
but poindexter…waitaminute!! “a shitty early kiss album”?
sorry. no way. i don’t buy that for a second. when did kiss ever sing about the stuff in *those* lyrics?
I pulled that out of my ass….
hey I see emusic has Babes in Arms, I just added it to my save for later list.
kpdexter says it all! On that we agree, Sat.
I’ve been down with the Blanton, by the way. We’ll see how he pans out. He’s only the first step, though. We need to inject an offensive sparkplug or two. So Must Go! It’s time for Jenkins to put up or pack up. I continue to have very little faith in Brett Myers. Pitchers need poise. Unless Rex Harrison is called in as his personal pitching coach, I don’t see Myers learning any poise anytime soon.
Blanton makes me proud to be a big man! I think Meyrs is going to get ripped in his first start. He’s been doing waay too much talking about how good he is pitching. I think he gave up 2 runs in his last start (in “A” ball)
Rex Harrison as Pope Julius II in “The Agony and the Ecstasy”? would that make Myers Michelangelo? Cool!
I’ve always thought Myers was a bit of a girl. How many freaking times do we have to watch him completely lose it on the mound before everybody involved realizes that this guy’s “stuff” is no match for the mess between his ears. He hits girls for god’s sake.
I agree about So and Jenkins. they were brought in for specific purposes, which they’re not fulfilling.
I’m optimistic about Blanton, but I still see this team as barely better than their one-and-done playoff performance of last year (which was barely better than all the previous teams that kept finishing a game or two or three out of the playoffs).
Unless, as you say, they make some moves. Right handed batters, preferably.
Sat,
I’ve never read any interviews with WK or seen him live so I knew some of the basic back story but none of his version of it.
A friend told me the other day that he was surprised at how WK didn’t seem bitter at all. While I think that’s an overstatement but I do think that they were way ahead of their time and a lot of their particular brand of mach shau has been absorbed into the public domain which has to be frustrating due to the lack of mach shau royalties.
In my estimation, they essentially created the template for “hard rock” (including inventing the power ballad), had a big hand in punk and appear to have little to show for it aside from a couple of muscle cars and, judging from the interview clips with the drummer, some pretty sweet digs down in his parents’ basement.
They are not my favorite band by a long shot but I think that they left a much bigger foot print than they get credit for.
I love that youtube clip of them doing Ramblin Rose. Swinging for the fences and Tyner is not even on stage yet.
Good stuff cdm! Swinging for the fences, indeed!
I love the MC5 for what they are, and what they do.
I don’t really give a crap about things like whether or not they had any “influence.” it’s such an easy thing to posit, but such difficult thing to track with certainty. So I quibble with your estimation of the size of their footprint. Would punk have happened if they never existed? Sure it would have. Would mach-ing shau in this manner have come along? Sure. In fact, some of it already had: the Who and Hendrix may be too obvious, but there’s no doubt they were ahead the curve. There are even stories about Jimmy Page, *in his earliest days of playing with Alexis Koerner* being made to do guitar solos while doing back bends just like the ones Wayne and Fred were doing in that Looking at You clip. And if we want to, we could even find the same kind of shtick in the earliest rockabilly acts.
The way you describe their influence, along with your defense of Wayne as someone who isn’t bitter, makes me think you’re Wayne himself! I kid, I kid.
But as for Wayne’s bitterness, we’re almost at the point where I’m saying “yes he is” and you’re saying “no he’s not.” Let’s not go there. I’m just callin’ ’em like I see ’em. My experiences are, no doubt, limited, but do include personal contact.
ps. I have little sympathy for any grown man living in his parent’s basement, whether he played drums in a great rock band or not.
maybe he should put his pacifier away, stop whining about the price paid by pioneers, and be a man?
i’m just saying is all….
So brings first pinch hit
Victorino flies to home
Tie game. Shea rains boos.
Next, J. Roll singles.
It’s a five run 9th inning.
Mets stunned, wonder why.
I love Taguchi! My man! And how ’bout the fear that Jenkins struck in the Mets’ Lesser Manuel? I’m loving it! Go Lidge!
Tonight’s turning point? (In the Phils game, as Phils Town Hall breaks out…) I say it was Blanton nearly hitting Santana followed by Romero drilling Easley for the second time in the game – to load the bases, no less.
After all those years in the AL, I had no idea that Santana was such a wuss. He’s only had 1 complete game in each of the last two seasons, none to date this year. This is the second game against the Phils in which he was cruising along and could have finished the game but left after 8 innings, to allow the Mets’ bullpen to blow the game. Especially with Wagner unable to pitch tonight and Santana with what – about 90 pitches thrown – you’d think he’d finish a game. Weak. And there’s nothing I like better than watching the Soft Serve Mets fall apart. That Reyes blunder on the non-tage of second base was a gem!
Taguchi finally came through, but I still think they should play “Say It Ain’t So” for his music when he comes to the plate.
As for tonight’s game, I look forward to that wife-beating scumbag Myers being lit up like a pinata tonight. Of course as the sole Mets fan on here, I’m disappointed by last night’s results.
As for the MC5, I agree with kpdexter. My favorite of the 3 is definitely Back in the USA though it definitely doesn’t represent their sound that well at all. I like the intensity of Kick Out the Jams but again, Back in the USA has better songs. High Time is the best produced, but by that point they’d run out of steam.
The Rhino comp The Big Bang: The Best of the MC5, which I have, is a pretty good place to start since it has some early singles and (for the most part) the best moments on each of their 3 albums. I don’t have Babes in Arms or that ’66 album, but I’ve heard alternate mixes that blew away the album versions (I’m thinking of an alternate version of “American Ruse” that I heard at a club a few years ago that just blew me away). I guess I should get Babes in Arms then.