MC5 (Motor City Five)

MC5 was founded by lead guitarist Wayne Kramer and boyhood friends, singer Rob Tyner and rhythm guitarist Fred Smith. Together, the teenaged greasers developed an explosive and fiercely original sound. Borrowing from avant-garde jazz, rock, and rhythm and blues, they stormed the rock world with 1969’s Kick Out the Jams. It was a galvanizing and landmark live document recorded at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom and introduced a major voice of late 60s Midwest counterculture. It proved to be incomparably influential on metal, punk, hard rock, and almost every form of loud, boundary-pushing music to follow. They recorded two more albums before imploding: 1970’s Back in the USA, produced by rock critic and future Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau, and their 1971 creative zenith, High Time. The last days of 1972 marked the final performance of the best-known MC5 lineup, thereby ending a turbulent existence marked by drugs, acrimony, financial woes, police harassment, FBI surveillance, and lots of uncompromising, unequaled rock and roll fury. In spite of MC5’s limited run, their sound and politics during a volatile time in America’s history secured a place for the band as one of the most controversial of their generation. In March 2022, Kramer announced something the world thought they would never hear — the coming of the MC5’s fourth official album entitled Heavy Lifting with title track co-written and co-performed with lifelong friend and fellow activist Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine). More dates forthcoming so watch this space!