Who’s Punk?! What’s the Score?!…Song #6/21: Kick Out the Jams by MC5

When you are a parent of teenagers, one of your main jobs is helping them to maintain their sense of self-esteem. It isn’t easy being young these days and trying to discover their true self amid the myriad of images from influencers and advertisers that bombard them each day. This is especially true when that face in the mirror doesn’t seem to line up with how the cool kids on social media appear to be. Being on the outside looking in on the lives my daughters are leading, it is sometimes easy for me to sit back and marvel at how competent and smart and compassionate my girls have turned out to be. It is something entirely different to have them believe in their hearts that they are as special as their mother and I deem them to be. Having a good sense of self tends to be something that comes with time and experience. One of the simplest things that any young person can do to find out who they truly are is to do what makes them happy. Follow the path that your heart sets for you, and more often than not, you will find yourself headed in the correct direction in life. Once you start blazing your own trail in life, who knows what kind of difference you will end up making in the world simply by being yourself? 

This advice isn’t just something that applies to teenage girls in our modern world. It is a time-tested mantra that, as my boy Dennis Miller once said, has existed since we first started tossing our bone tools to the sky with Kubrickian glee. A perfect example of this can be found with the career of five young men from Detroit who formed a band that came to be known as MC5. The members of the band were lead singer Fred Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith, bassist Michael Davis and drummer Dennis Thompson. MC5 began as a band in 1963. To put that date in context, 1963 was the year that The Beatles released their debut album “Please, Please Me”. The world had not yet heard “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” or The Rolling Stones’ “Let It Bleed” or “Pet Sounds” by The Beach Boys or any number of the most legendary rock albums of all time. That was to come. What was happening in 1963 was all of those kids who had discovered Chuck Berry and Little Richard, Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton and, of course, Elvis Presley in the 1950s were coming of age in the early 1960s and forming bands of their own. 

Detroit, in particular, was a city that was exploding with music. It was when Motown Records opened and started producing hit after hit and star after star. Little Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye and so many more were all blossoming into stars on a national stage that had its roots in the Motor City of Detroit. In an economic sense, Detroit was at the centre of America’s economy as the Big Three automakers churned out cars in record numbers so as to fulfill the promise of a car in every driveway in America. On a societal scale, the Civil Rights Movement had a big impact on Detroit. By the mid-1960s, with Motown booming, jobs a-plenty in manufacturing and racial equality appearing to become a thing as desegregation bills became the law of the land, it was a heady time to live in the Motor City. The future looked bright for people of colour and it looked even brighter for people of colour in the music industry. Detroit was the centre of it all at a time when Rock n’ Roll, as a musical genre, was discovering its true self.

The young men who formed MC5 (which stands for “Motor City 5”) were not people of colour. All five boys were white. But from their earliest days, they were drawn toward the music played by Bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf and early rockers like Chuck Berry. When the time came for the boys to choose a musical direction, they all agreed that rock n’ roll was the way. Further to that, MC5 formed just as people like Bob Dylan, The Byrds and The Rolling Stones were popularizing the use of electric guitars. In a music scene that was soon to unleash Jimi Hendrix on the world, the boys from MC5 found the way an electric guitar sounded to be intoxicating. So, they formed a band and began to play. Like many a young band, initially they had no tunes of their own, so they began their career as a cover band in and around Detroit. They played cover versions of the latest songs by The Stones, The Kinks, The Faces and other bands of that ilk. MC5 played with a lot of energy and enthusiasm and soon developed a reputation as being a great live band. By the time the late 1960s dawned, MC5 could draw upwards of one thousand people for a local show. As their popularity soared, it soon became apparent that being a cover band would only take them so far. They needed their own songs if they were to ascend to a higher musical plane. Unlike their compatriots at Motown, MC5 didn’t have a team of songwriters waiting in the wings to supply them with new material. That job fell to themselves. 

This is when the old adage of doing what makes you happy comes into play. After having honed their skills playing live for almost five years, the boys in MC5 were starting to create an identity for themselves. They knew that they liked to play electric guitars. They knew that they liked to play these instruments fast and hard and loud. They knew that they enjoyed the interactivity that came from playing in intimate venues. What they also knew was that they were from Detroit and that a lot was happening in their city from which they could draw inspiration when it came to their own music. One of the things that happened in Detroit was an event in 1967 that shook the city to its core. That was the year of the great Detroit Riots. In 1967, with all of the promise of racial equality that arose out of the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, came the pushback from those in positions of authority who preferred a world in which people of colour knew their place. The Detroit Riots happened when the desire by people of colour for systemic changes to the way Detroit was run, ran smack into organized resistance by authorities such as the police department. *(I wrote all about the Detroit Riots in a previous post about the origins of the classic song “Soul Man” by Sam and Dave. To get a more detailed breakdown of what happened at that time, please take a few moments to read that post, which is one of my favourite posts of all time. You can find that post by clicking here).  Many people lost their lives during these riots. Many parts of Detroit were destroyed as a result of looting and fires. If you add to this all of the things that were happening on a national scale, such as resistance to the Vietnam War, you have a picture of a city and a country under tremendous political and social stress. Enter MC5.

MC5 released their debut album in 1969. It was called Kick Out the Jams!. By this time, the final piece of the puzzle of who this band actually was fell into place. Not only would they play loud, hard and fast, not only would they play as close to their audiences as they could safely get, they collectively decided to become a political band. Their affinity for racial justice fuelled a belief within the band that their purpose was to effect social change. One of the ways that they felt that they could help make this happen was to challenge societal norms in ways that best suited them. One example happened the previous year when the band traveled to Chicago to play at protest concerts scheduled to occur at the same time as the Democratic National Convention. They made contact with protest leaders such as Huey Newton from The Black Panthers and became politically active in opposing the Vietnam War, racial injustice and the whole political machine that existed throughout the country. One of the ways MC5 channeled these new anarchistic feelings was to do something on their debut album that hadn’t been done before…they included profanity in the opening line of the song they were releasing as their first single. In the opening line of the single “Kick Out the Jams!”, lead singer Fred Tyner shouts out to the live audience, “Kick out the jams, motherf*ckers!” MC5 was daring the establishment to play this song on the radio as it was written. In live concerts, the opening line became a rally cry of sorts between the band and their fans. When you watch the video I have posted below, you can see the glee and gusto with which Tyner delivers his line. 

Did MC5 change anything with their tactics?  Well, the reality of the situation was that even though society in America was becoming more open, the country still wasn’t ready to embrace profanity in the music that it listened to. Another famous example of how buttoned-down the music industry was in those days can be seen in the story of how Mick Jagger snuck a reference to oral sex past censors with the line from Honky Tonk Woman that goes  “She blew my nose and then she blew my mind”.  I am not sure if having profanity in our songs today is an improvement when it comes to music, but I do know that I would prefer to make my own choices with regard to what I listen to and not have my musical choices censored by authority figures hidden away in dark offices in the shadowy parts of town. For MC5, sales of their album fell flat because of lack of radio airplay. The rejection of their music by the man, as it were, helped the band achieve a measure of outsider status. MC5 used this to create an even tighter bond with their fans as they milked this us against them mentality for all it was worth. In the end, it wasn’t sustainable for the band. They ended up breaking up just a few short years later. With that, it appeared as though their impact as a musical collective had come to an end.

However, one of the truisms of life is that sometimes it is difficult to appreciate the impact that you are making at the time you are making it. Sometimes it takes hindsight to put your efforts into their true perspective and then, only then, can you see that, indeed, you did make a difference in the world. For MC5, that validation would come almost a full decade later. As the 1970s rolled along, there were more and more bands who opted to play their music in the same style as MC5 had. They played loud and fast and close to their audiences and often used music as a form of political expression. Eventually music critics began commenting on this style of music as being rock music or garage music played by musicians who could best be described as punks. One noteworthy example of this came from the liner notes of an album called Nuggets released by The Patti Smith Group.  She was there for the birth of MC5’s brand of political rock. Patti Smith would go on to become one of the most respected performers, poets, photographers and artists of her generation. But, for the sake of this post, it was in her liner notes for the album Nuggets that the term Punk Rock was first used to describe the style of music created by MC5.  ***In an ironic note, Patti Smith and Fred “Sonic” Smith married in the 1980s. Together they had several children, one of which…a son…ended up marrying Meg White (drummer of the Detroit band, The White Stripes). As the 1970s went on bands like The Ramones and The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned all rose to public prominence. The style of music they played officially became known as Punk Rock. As the term Punk Rock became normalized in everyday discourse, people eventually began tracing the evolution of the genre backwards in time in order to find the wellspring from which it sprang. That search led them to Detroit and, specifically, to a band called MC5. As if MC5 weren’t enough, around the same time, Detroit also gave birth to another great band that became referred to as punk rockers and that was Iggy and the Stooges, featuring Iggy Pop as lead singer. When the musical history of Detroit is written, the city will have so very much to be proud of. In addition to those Motown acts who became household names, Detroit produced acts such as Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, The White Stripes, Eminem, Alice Cooper, The Dramatics, The Romantics and many, many more. What a rich musical legacy the Motor City has, in addition to being the birthplace of Punk!

This brings us back to the whole notion of being true to oneself as a guiding philosophy in life. I can’t live life for my daughters. They have to do that for themselves. I will love them forever, but I can only protect them for so long. Eventually they will venture forth in the world and create their own experiences and make their own magic. The greatest gift that their mother and I can bestow upon them as parents, besides pledging to them our undying love, is to instill within each girl the belief that they are special in their own right and that they already possess the attributes necessary to make a difference in the world simply by being themselves. Although it may seem hard for them to believe at times, they are already worthy enough. They don’t require an influencer to mold them into that brightest version of themselves. That version already exists. It is you, my daughters (and you, my dear readers). Follow your heart. Do what makes you happy and proud. It will all be ok in the end. Sometimes, it will turn out to be better than you may have believed possible. That was the case for MC5. They were simply a rock band from Detroit who decided to be true to themselves and make music on their terms. In the end, they are credited as being the band that helped create the entire genre that we know today as Punk Rock. And they did this simply by being true to themselves. 

And that, motherf*ckers, is the secret to a happy life. 

The link to the official website for MC5 can be found here.

The link to the video for the song “Kick Out the Jams!” by MC5 can be found here. ***The lyrics version can be found here. ***FYI: the lyrics version is censored and omits the word motherf*cker.

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