100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #55 MC5 – Kick Out The Jams

Released: 1969

The MC5’s guitarist Wayne Kramer summed up the challenge of putting lightning back in the bottle when talking to Caroline Boucher of Disc and Music Echo in 1970. “Promoters think we’re going to go out and burn things. They hear incredible rumours of how we kill cats on stage and run around stark naked. No, of course we don’t do that. But I’d much rather be controversial than safe.”

Having integrity in rock n’ roll can be a very career limiting thing. Closely linked with the White Panthers movement via their manager John Sinclair, the Michigan quintet were radicals at a time of supreme political unrest, but the suits still preferred their artists to toe the line and not shock the public. The relationship came to a head when they aggressively singled out a local store for refusing to stock their debut album Kick Out The Jams due to Sinclair’s expletive led introduction. Their resulting label defenestration was almost inevitable.

Its title track was an exhortation to themselves, a rebellious clarion call with a monster groove. It had been a typically unorthodox move to make their first album a live one, but this in a sense was the MC5’s environment: messy, raw and unpredictable, their high octane provocation melded blues and psychedelia, but the way they played it would go on to inform the seeds of punk, glam and metal. Safe it was not.