DKT-MC5 - I Believe to My Soul
Congratulations for having made it to the last diatribe of the month!
Today we're gonna honor two recently departed troublemakers -- one of whom would have been 76 today -- who are finally dead enough for the milquetoast minions in Cleveland to decide to do the same.
I can see the ceremony in my head right now.
The lights will dim and dramatic music will play. A picture of them all without the shirts, in front of an upside down American flag, will fade up as the crowd -- who wouldn't know legitimate dissent or rebellion if you roasted it and served it to them for Thanksgiving dinner -- will cheer lustily, hoping the balls and bravery these guys exhibited will somehow rub off on them.
Then, a picture will fade up of their manager, all 6 foot 13 of him puffing on a big joint, and the crowd will cheer just as lustily for the idea that cannabis is now mostly legal, due to the pioneering efforts of self-sacrifice he made that they themselves wouldn't dare try if it jeopardized their pitiful careers one pathetic, cheese- and Autotune-encrusted iota.
Then the story will be told, about how this band of basically kids from Detroit invented Punk Rock and Rock-n-Roll rebellion, and terrorized the established order into authoritarian responses against them.
They'll tell you all about how Mr. Manager got thrown into jail for what was supposed to be a decade, for giving two of those jazzy cigarettes of his to an undercover lady cop he was likely trying to bed. And how no less than John Lennon sprung him from the dungeon.
The revisionist and thoroughly phony narrative -- concocted by those for whom revolution and rebellion are just disguises and hypes to sell pieces of plastic to impressionable and autonomic consumers -- will include how they bravely fought the record company and eventually got dropped by the label, with the manager's incendiary (and hilarious) liner notes erased from the LP gatefold and the word to blacklist them coming down from the highest echelons. The music will swell to a dramatic crescendo.
Then their most notorious song will play, and the wealthy, connected and powerful attendees -- steeped like moldy teabags in the mordant dystopia the CIA and Mossad made of the music industry in the last 35 years -- will bang along apace and feel oh so proud and brave for fistraisingly saying the word "motherfucker" out loud like they do in the tune. You naughty rebels, you.
The entire spectacle will be both galvanizingly true and spectacularly false, simultaneously. There may even be PSAs admonishing viewers to "vote" for the catatonic and zirconia-fake money duopoly these cats railed against their whole lives.
You see, once upon a time it was 1968, and the Motor City 5 -- whom some people consider the very greatest Rock band ever to play -- knew what was really at stake. If there were an analogous outfit today, they'd likely be killed in a mysterious Motorway crash and black helicopters would be seen fleeing the scene.
I always laugh when I see the footage of record douchebag honcho Jac Holzman describing how elated he was to have signed both the MC5 and The Stooges in one phone call for a total of 25 grand.
He must have thought the whole White Panther, overthrow the government, dope plus fucking in the streets thing was some sort of elaborate ruse to sell teen magazines.
Where is he now, now that the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame has decided that not only do these guys belong, but they deserve a special Achievement Award induction? I guess Wayne Kramer -- born this day in 1948 -- and his mentor John Sinclair (they both passed away, weeks apart, earlier this year) are at last fully deceased enough that the people who run the thing no longer have to worry about what those guys might say on that stage when the moment at last arrives.
Not to over-fantasize the thing into a scene where the two guys blow up the whole stage with homemade incendiary devices, but that would have been a true testimonial for all times.
DKT-MC5
Testify Live
2004-2005-2006
1.
Royce Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, California USA
9.17.2005
01 Ramblin' Rose
02 Tonight
03 Call Me Animal
04 Sister Anne
05 I Believe to My Soul
06 Human Being Lawnmower
07 Kick Out the Jams
08 Over and Over
09 Looking At You
10 High School
11 Skunk
12 Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa)
13 Starship/There Is a Land/Outer Spaceways, Inc./We Travel the Spaceways
Total time: 1:17:23
Michael Davis - bass
Wayne Kramer - guitar & vocals
Dennis Thompson - drums
Nicke Royale Andersson - guitar & vocals
Handsome Dick Manitoba - vocals & kazoo
Lisa Cocolla - vocals & percussion
Mark Arm - vocals
Greg Dulli - vocals
with members of The Sun Ra Arkestra, supervised by Marshall Allen:
Marshall Allen - saxophones
Dr. Charles Moore - trumpet
Buzzy Jones - saxophones
Phil Ranelin - trombone
"There Is a Land" is a poem by Sun Ra
320/48K webstream from Wolfgang's Vault
spectral analysis goes losslessly to 20k, so essentially equivalent to a preFM source
captured, converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked, repaired & remastered by EN, April 2024
2.
2.
Paradiso
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
12.5.2006
01 Ramblin' Rose
02 Shakin' Street
03 Tonight
04 Sister Anne
05 Call Me Animal
06 Come Together
07 Miss X
08 High School
09 Spirituals/The Music Moves Inside/A Love Supreme
10 I Believe to My Soul
11 Human Being Lawnmower
12 Over and Over
13 Motor City's Burning
14 Kick Out the Jams
15 Looking At You
16 I Want You Right Now
17 Future/Now
18 Teenage Lust
19 I Can Only Give You Everything
20 Tonight
21 Let Me Try
22 American Ruse
Total time: 1:45:28
disc break goes after Track 11
Michael Davis - bass
Wayne Kramer - guitar & vocals
Dennis Thompson - drums
Nicke Royale Andersson - guitar & vocals
Handsome Dick Manitoba - vocals & kazoo
Lisa Cocolla - vocals & percussion
John Sinclair - vocals (Track 09)
Johnny Walker - vocals
Mark Arm - vocals
Tracks 01-16 (Paradiso), 19-22 (Ramier, Toulouse FR 9.8.2004): 320/48K soundboard webstreams from Wolfgang's Vault
spectral analysis goes losslessly to 20k, so essentially equivalent to a preFM source
Tracks 17-18: Bluebird Theater, Denver CO 7.9.2004 * HD YouTube file of a minidisc capture from the soundboard, bitrate unspecified
captured, converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked, repaired & remastered by EN, April 2024
1.14 GB FLAC/direct link
So that's the big tribute project Wayne Kramer masterminded, from the mid 2000s when the post-9/11 goings-on demanded it. I made kind of a box set of it all, almost 3 1/2 hours of balls-to-the-wall testimony, worthy even of the original MC5 and including all the members of it who were still breathing at the time.
For John Sinclair's testimony, I'd refer you all here, taped the day I spent with the dude -- who was 101% real -- back on Easter Sunday of 2005.
So Wayne Kramer and John Sinclair are gone, after a lifetime of shitstarting and the honest, necessary provocation the forces of repression require at every turn, consequences be damned. Let the whitewashed, depoliticized narrative of Baby Boomer indulgence and fictitious, bloodless "rebellion" begin! And thank you Wayne and John for trying.--J.
1.14 GB FLAC/direct link
So that's the big tribute project Wayne Kramer masterminded, from the mid 2000s when the post-9/11 goings-on demanded it. I made kind of a box set of it all, almost 3 1/2 hours of balls-to-the-wall testimony, worthy even of the original MC5 and including all the members of it who were still breathing at the time.
For John Sinclair's testimony, I'd refer you all here, taped the day I spent with the dude -- who was 101% real -- back on Easter Sunday of 2005.
So Wayne Kramer and John Sinclair are gone, after a lifetime of shitstarting and the honest, necessary provocation the forces of repression require at every turn, consequences be damned. Let the whitewashed, depoliticized narrative of Baby Boomer indulgence and fictitious, bloodless "rebellion" begin! And thank you Wayne and John for trying.--J.
4.30.1948 - 2.2.2024 10.2.1941 - 4.2.2024
stay alive with the MC5
stay alive with the MC5