When I think of bands as a vehicle for something more than just the music, the first band that pops into my head is really the one that matters the most - The MC5.
I wasn't even born yet, but Norman Mailer pretty much encapsulates exactly what hearing The MC5 for the first time felt like for me -
"For one of the next acts it hardly mattered~a young white singer with a cherubic face, perhaps eighteen, maybe twenty-eight, his hair in one huge puff ball teased out six to nine inches from his head, was taking off on an interplanetary , then galactic, flight of song, halfway between the space music of Sun Ra and "The Flight of the Bumblebee," the singer's head shaking at the climb like the blur of a buzzing fly, his sound an electric caterwauling of power corne out of the wall ( or the line in the grass, or the wet plates in the batteries) and the singer not bending it, but whirling it, burning it, flashing it down some arc of consciousness, the sound screaming up to a climax of vibrations like one rocket blasting out of itself, the force of the noise a vertigo in the cauldrons of inner space - it was the roar of the beast in all nihilism, electric bass and drum driving behind out of their own non-stop to the end of mind."
- from Had The Horns Of The Huns Ever Had Noise To Compare?, Mailer's piece on the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where The MC5 famously played for eight straight hours.
The 5 were not even on the same planet with the other bands of their era. I mean, for sheer visceral magnificence, The Stooges(who also cut their teeth in Detroit, Rock City - playing shows with The 5) were around to help them push the envelope a little. But The 5 had fucking chops, whereas The Stooges would just pummel you over and over again with a riff until your heartbeat synched up with it.
I remember the first time I heard them - I was wearing the shit out of The Damned's Machine Gun Etiquette, which has a smoking cover of "Looking At You" on it. My friend Chris Karch(who was deaf, but knew way more about punk rock than anyone I knew back in 1985 - he would blast his stereo so loud your balls would shake. I finally adjusted all his EQ levels for him once, since he had everything set all throaty and mid-range. Once that bass was set right, he just laid on his floor soaking everything in with a huge fucking grin on his face. It was the least I could do for the guy who introduced me to the glory of so many bands I'll be writing about on this here site.) pulled out this record(Kick Out The Jams) and handed it to me. All he said was "you gotta go to the source, Sean."
I took that record home with me, put it on my turntable, plugged my headphones in, and was immediately and utterly destroyed.
The now-famous opening invocation/testimonial, asking the assembled peoples if they were "gonna be a part of the problem, or a part of the solution" was a sneaky set up for what was about to blast right into the core of my brain. This was the most glorious shot across my musical bow - a band as a musical unit, unified as one being, all limbs flailing, soaring distortion, crazed soul-like harmonies and rhythmic beauty. This record kicked my ass all over the place. I had never heard a live recording where it sounded as if the amps were about to burst into flame before. I had never heard a band pushing through chord changes like they were going to drown. I had never heard anything like The MC5 before.
Obviously, I immediately sought out everything they had every recorded. This was long before the interweb, so I invested a lot of time hitting up every record store, asking stoned clerks in Ramones shirts if they knew where I could get my fix of The 5.
I tried to find books and whatnot, but there was nothing really out there. In 1986, it was as if they were a ghostly thing that nobody wanted to discuss. I was starting to think it was some kind of conspiracy, where all the cool kids were keeping me locked out of the clubhouse until I learned the secret handshake or some shit like that.
Eventually, I found a really warped and fucked-up copy of Back In The USA at a garage sale. The woman was shocked at how elated I was, and gave me the fucker for free. It would barely play on my turntable because it was so fucked-up, but I took in each note like communion.
At this point, I was able to find some shit out about The 5 - they had their own political agenda, The White Panther Party, started by their manager(John Sinclair), which was billed as "a total assault on the culture by any means necessary." These fucking guys were the real deal. Under surveillance by the FBI, harassed and beaten by local police - it didn't matter to The MC5.
They were going to bring the music to the people no matter the cost.
I'm not going to go too much further into their history and their inevitable downfall. There is plenty out there to read up on all that shit. To me, The MC5 were the initial spark, that first flickering of a band on a mission - torchbearers for others to follow, like At The Drive-In, The Nation Of Ulysses, and to an extent Refused. These bands learned the blueprint of what they became from The MC5, even if they were unaware of it - no doubt about it.
My suggestion to you, is that you seek them out for yourselves. If they don't move you, you ain't movable.
Everything you ever wanted to know about The MC5 is over at The Gateway.
STIMULI:
Friar's Club Aylesbury, U.K 2-11-72
Clip from Sonic Revolution(A documentary about The MC5)
Looking At You, July 1970 -
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