The MC5 motors on

 

There is quite a bit of material on the MC5 on YouTube, from documentaries to clips of live performances and some full shows.

 

My favourite MC5 clips are two songs at Tartar Field in 1970, where they perform “Rambling Rose” and “Kick Out the Jams” and a longer set recorded for the German rock music show Beat Club in 1972, presumably during their European tour of that year.

 

The Tartar Field show features a blistering rendition of “Rambling Rose” during which guitarist Wayne Kramer, whose song this is, puts on a real show for what seems to be a small audience, but Rob Tyner en Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith also are no slouches at throwing rock ‘n roll shapes.  The two songs give us a brief glimpse of what the powerful, incendiary force the  MC5 must’ve been on stage in their heyday.

 

The Beat Club performance is filmed in brilliant, high-definition colour against a blue screen probably because of the Beat Club producers’ penchant for psychedelic backgrounds to these kinds of shows. Rob Tyner wears a bright, spangly jacket and Wayne Kramer sports a slightly oversized green spangly jacket. This must be their homage to glam rock.

 

The band does a short “festival” set of their best-known tracks, mostly from Kick Out the Jams, in less high energy fashion than the Tartar Field clip, but still with a lot of power and one is always impressed with how they play. It’s a pity that the band seems to have rarely performed anything off High Time, the final studio album, and therefore repeated the same set lists drawn from the first two records.

 

Currently, Wayne Kramer is the only founding member of the MC5 who still performs, seeing as how Tyner, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith and Michael Davis have died, and drummer Denis Thompson doesn’t seem to be as active, and Kramer has led various incarnations of the MC5, under that name, or as MC50 or We Are All MC5, with various different musicians.

 

Nowadays, Kramer is a bald, middle class looking guy in stark contrast to the rock ‘n rebel looks of the first coming of the MC5 though his socio-political views remain pretty much the same. He’s had a solo career but presumably never became more popular than the MC5, not commercially successful at the time but increasingly influential amongst musicians and the hip, and now, in line with so many acts from the ‘60’s and ‘70s who’ve realised how much money there was still to be made from playing to their old fanbase, now as old the band members, and the occasional younger, new convert, Kramer can cash in on the huge  name the MC5 has in rock history. The pity is that he  can draw on only  three albums’ worth of music, and perhaps some unreleased tunes, which makes for good times if you’re a fan and want to hear the classic tunes from those classic albums but seems a bit sad to me.

 

The band performing as We Are All MC5 are obviously proficient and can rock as hard as anybody, but none of them are in their early twenties anymore, with none of the brio, arrogance and simple energy the MC5 would’ve had back in the late ‘60s or very early ‘70s and for most part they do sound like an MC5 tribute band, with a contemporary rock sound,  rather than the real thing.

 

The cliché is that so many now famous bands claim that they never thought it could happen, never imagined that they could have a career lasting beyond about 5 years and, like Mick Jagger, didn’t think they would be, or would want to be, in the rock and roll game at the age of 30 or beyond. However, many, many bands have had very long careers, with varying degrees of success and generally a reduction in popular profile and record sales to boot, but are still able to tour, if they want, and to play to audiences all over the world and make a decent living, provided the live set contains all hits and the crowd pleasers. These bands have become brands and own the commercially viable Intellectual Property of their songs, and why shouldn’t they exploit these opportunities?  So what, if Wayne Kramer must play and sing  “Rambling Rose” every night and repeat “Kick Out the Jams,”  “Motor City is Burning,”  “The American Ruse,” “Looking At You” and  “Tonight” at every gig. The paying audiences want to hear those tunes.

 

As I’ve said, the Tartar Field clip is the best MC5 I’ve seen, with the Beat Club show second, but other than that, I’d rather just listen to the records than watch and listen to the more contemporary shows that can’t replicate the freshness and sharpness of those albums.