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DKT/MC5—The Truest Possible Testimonial (Part 1) |
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Saturday, 01 January 2005 23:42 |
Detroit Metro Times, June 9, 2004
It's been more than 10 years since Wayne Kramer, Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson took the stage together in Detroit at Rob Tyner's memorial concert at the State Theatre, and more than 30 years since they lurched their way through their final performance as members of the MC5 at the Grande Ballroom on New Year's Eve 1972.
photo by Leni Sinclar
Thirty years is a long time in anyone's life, especially when most of those years are spent in lives mired in frustration, poverty and despair. But once in a while a small miracle occurs, and all of a sudden everything is right back on the beam, and the future opens up on a brand new note, and everybody who's managed to survive is right back on center stage where they belong.
So, when Davis, Kramer and Thompson return to Detroit "in celebration of the MC5" at the Majestic Theatre on June 10, the disaster years will melt away and they'll begin to enjoy a new day in the sun, bringing the noise from the glory years and illuminating the dismal present with the power of the music created by the MC5. It's an amazing thing, but when you hear it and see it, you'll know what all the shouting was about.
MC5 singer Rob Tyner and guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith have left us, of course, and it's difficult to imagine the 5's music absent them. But the essence of the MC5 was in its songs and the high-energy methodology the band developed to deliver them, and those are the core elements brought back to life by the DKT/MC5 celebration band. (DKT stands for Davis, Kramer and Thompson.)
"We've gone to great lengths with all the promoters to make it clear that it's not an MC5 reunion," Kramer says. "It would be wrong to call it that, because Fred Smith & Rob Tyner have passed on. They can no longer be with us, but we're still here, and these shows are a celebration of the music of the MC5 and the work of Fred Smith & Rob Tyner. It would be an insult to their memory and to the fans to pretend that this is an MC5 reunion."
While it's impossible for anyone to take their place, Royal Oak native Marshall Crenshaw will fill in on second guitar, and singers Mark Arm (ex-Mudhoney) and Evan Dando (ex-Lemonheads) will share the lead vocal duties. But it's Davis, Kramer and Thompson who know how it's supposed to go, and they haven't lost a step since the days of yore. Kicking out the jams is still the order of the day, and they'll be up there doing it without reservation.
"I don't feel like we're from the deep, dark past," Davis says with a chuckle. "What we're bringing to the stage is just as urgent and relevant as it ever was, and not out of step with 2004. We might've recorded this stuff last year and, in fact, we did!"
"The MC5 was hard-chargin' and all out. There were no reservations," Kramer reminds us. "The MC5 was visceral all sweat and muscle and the whole concept of high energy. It's a real thing. It's not just a theory. It's a way of life and a way to play music. It's wonderful to share it."
Yet the spirit of celebration is tempered by a simmering conflict. The Detroit show and the band's subsequent world tour are unfolding in the midst of a protracted battle over distribution of MC5: A True Testimonial, a critically acclaimed documentary about the band. Lawyers are involved.
* * * * *
In the interest of full disclosure, as we say in the journalism racket, a caveat is in order. While this writer may be seen wearing several hats during the unfolding of the MC5 story, I'm here principally as a journalist attempting to negotiate the twists and turns of a fascinating tale and tell it the best I can.
I first met the MC5 in August 1966, the day after I was released from the Detroit House of Correction after a six-month sentence for possession of marijuana. They played at the Artists Workshop party celebrating my release. I saw them perform at the Michigan State Fair a month later, and I was there when they played at the opening of the legendary Grande Ballroom in October. I loved their music, missed few opportunities to hear them play, and gradually became close friends with Tyner, the band's lead singer and chief theorist. I would also become the band's manager.
Somehow, over the years, a popular myth evolved by a succession of reactionary rock journalists came to hold that the MC5 had been a bunch of innocent suburban rock boys who were corrupted, bamboozled and manipulated by their left-wing radical manager (that would be me) into fronting for his bankrupt revolutionary politics. But the fact is that Tyner was himself a radical firebrand and a charismatic frontman who sang fervent pleas from the stage urging people to rise against the government and to reject the constraints and constrictions of mainstream culture.
Let me put it as simply as I can: I was probably even more deeply influenced by Tyner's thought and practice than he was by my own, and with the possible exception of Thompson so was the rest of the band. Tyner was our leader in thought and action, plain and simple. I was a poet, music journalist, underground newspaper writer and director of the Detroit Artists Workshop when I met the MC5. Tyner and I found that we shared a common outlook on what was wrong with our country. Our views matured and developed as a result of what was happening in the exact world we lived in, and we grew into radicalism together.
For the next year I attended virtually every performance by the band and spent many long nights scheming with Tyner over endless joints and periodic acid trips, attempting to find a way to make some kind of positive change in the world around us. By September 1967 I had somehow assumed the duties of full-time manager of the MC5 not by contract or oral agreement, but almost by osmosis and by the fall of 68 had secured for them a recording contract with Elektra Records.
We cut the first MC5 album "live" at the Grande Ballroom on Oct. 30-31, 1968, dates declared by the Oracle Ramus Jesse Crawford, the 5's road manager and stage MC as the beginning of the First Year of Zenta. The next day we announced formation of the White Panther Party as an organization of fiercely resistant white youths committed to the principles and practice of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The founding members of the WPP included this writer, Pun Plamondon, Crawford, Tyner, Kramer, Smith, Davis and Thompson.
I served as the band's manager until Crawford, Bob Rudnick and I were abruptly and summarily discharged in mid-June 1969. Others had convinced the band members that ideological advocacy would impede commercial success.
A month later I was convicted in Detroit Recorders Court of possessing two joints of marijuana and sentenced to 9-1/2 to 10 years in prison. I spent the next 29 months in Marquette and Jackson prisons before I was released on appeal bond in December 1971. My conviction was overturned on appeal by the Michigan Supreme Court in March 1972, and the state's marijuana laws were declared unconstitutional on several of the grounds raised in my appeal.
By the time I was released from prison late in 1971, the MC5 was well along its protracted slide from the musical and commercial peaks the band had reached in 1970 to its painful and ignominious demise in the final minutes of 1972. A succession of ineffectual managers and two failed albums for Atlantic Records exacerbated by the destructive drug habits developed by several members of the band led inexorably to the utter disintegration of the once-mighty ensemble from the Motor City, and the MC5 was soon consigned to the dustbin of rock n' roll history.
* * * * *
But, oh, in its heyday the MC5 was truly a wondrous thing to behold, and above and beyond everything else was the power and beauty of an MC5 performance. Holding nothing back, the 5 pounded and pulsated with unbelievable energy and incredible stagecraft.
Though the MC5 itself had little commercial impact, millions upon untold millions of dollars have been made since by reducing and narrow-casting the musical concepts, maniacal stage antics, defiant attitude and blazing guitaristics perfected by Kramer and Smith and their brothers in the MC5 between 1965 and 1972.
The MC5's go-for-the throat audio onslaught and over-the-top theatrics though utterly stripped of their social context and creative intelligence live on in the legions of heavy-metal huffers who've repackaged the sound and fury of the 5 and gleefully sold it to successive generations of rebellious teenagers without a cause.
photo by Leni Sinclar
The band's reckless advocacy of recreational drugs and its all-out, gob-of-spit-in-the-face-of-god-and-art defiance of authority and social convention likewise inspired the punk rock movement and whatever has succeeded it. But the 5's focus on musical invention, rhythmic thrust and social change was replaced by the embrace of a musically inept, socially sleazy pseudo-anarchism lacking comparable intelligence or emotional force.
The MC5 also pioneered in combining jazz and rock to make a new musical form infused with unbridled energy and improvisational freedom, equating the imaginative explorations conducted by John Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra with their own irrepressible urge to take the music to a higher level of emotional and intellective registration.
Even the MC5's fearless commitment to radical social causes and incessant fund-raising for community organizations, political prisoners, victims of the dope police, and other outcasts helped create the template for socially-conscious popular musicians who would allow their art to be utilized to raise millions of dollars for worthy recipients who were otherwise without hope or support.
But all that is now just so much water under the bridge. There has been no MC5 for more than 30 years, and there will never be another time like that nor another MC5 to illuminate it.
What remains is the music made by the MC5, and the way they played it. To celebrate the MC5 in 2004 by applying the principles of kinetic engagement with the music to its performance makes a beautiful tribute to what the Motor City 5 was all about.
* * * * *
For years the idea of an MC5 reunion has been a particularly abhorrent concept. The band was indelibly stamped with the heat of the moment of its time, and it seemed ludicrous to think that its members could shake off all the negativism and distrust that led to its disintegration. When Kramer, Davis, Thompson and Smith got together in 1991 to honor Rob Tyner, however, the music they made together was anything but ludicrous the surviving members hit hard and deep, their fabled attack still fully intact. But no one seemed to have any intention to make it more than a one-time thing, and even if they had, there were no market forces that would make a reunion tour economically feasible.
So the MC5 survivors went their separate ways again: Kramer back to Nashville, where he was working as a finish carpenter and cabinet-maker; Davis to his ranch in Arizona and his musical assignments with a series of hard-edged young Southwestern rock bands; and Thompson to his home in suburban Detroit and his duties in the work-a-day world, from which he would emerge from time to time to essay various attempts at making music in public again.
Kramer, in fact, had pretty much given up on the music scene after spending the late 1970s and early 80s trying to revive his career. Released from federal prison after serving almost three years on a cocaine conviction, he settled in New York City and did some lightweight touring with a band called Kramer's Creamers, formed Gang War with guitarist Johnny Thunders, toured and recorded with Detroit's all-star Was (Not Was) revue, then devoted several years to developing an underground gangster-rock musical, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, with lyricist Mick Farren and a dedicated cast of musicians, singers and actors.
Kramer found paying work outside the music world as a carpenter and showcased Dutch Schultz at a succession of small venues in the city, but his efforts met with little success. So he finally packed it in and moved all the way south to Key West, where his musical opportunities were severely limited to the occasional bar-band gig. This situation proved so unsatisfying that he decided to abandon his quest for meaningful musical expression and concentrate on his woodworking skills.
But the reunion with his former bandmates in Detroit made Kramer start thinking about playing music again, and he got his chance when the owner of a Nashville recording studio where he was installing some cabinetry realized who his contractor really was and offered to trade him studio time in exchange for some additional carpentry work.
Kramer recruited a rhythm section and cut some tunes, then took the tapes to Los Angeles in a bid to get them released. Bret Gurewitz at Epitaph Records, a member of the band Bad Religion, confessed that Kramer was one of his musical heroes and offered him a multiple-record deal with a cash advance sufficient to cover his living costs while he recut the tunes with a supporting cast drawn from the ranks of other Epitaph acts.
Kramer decided to resettle in Los Angeles to try to make the most of this unexpected opportunity, which resulted in four albums for Epitaph and the resumption of tours in support of their release. The label's promotional efforts and the concomitant growth of the World Wide Web spawned considerable new interest in Kramer and his history with the MC5, but Epitaph was unable to garner enough radio play or adequate sales to advance his career, and Kramer soon found himself back at square one without a record contract.
* * * * *
In the middle of all this commotion Kramer was called back to the Motor City to mourn the untimely demise of his old comrade-in-arms, Fred Smith, who died in 1994. In recovery from years of drug and alcohol abuse, Kramer was moved to attempt to make things right with remaining MC5 bandmates, Davis and Thompson. There was a lot of unpleasant history to overcome, but it became increasingly important to Kramer that they put the past behind them and celebrate the positive things they had done together while there was still time.
Then another minor miracle took place: A team of first-time moviemakers from Chicago contacted Kramer, Davis and Thompson about making a feature film that would document the story of the MC5. Operating as Future/Now Films, director David Thomas and producer Laurel Legler struck deals with Davis and Thompson with respect to their participation in the project. The filmmakers would form a company with the surviving MC5 members and representatives of the estates of Tyner and Smith, providing for any net profits the film made to be split among the members of the company.
Future/Now envisioned Kramer as the film's central on-screen informant and interpreter of the MC5 story, while Kramer also saw himself as music supervisor for the film and producer of the soundtrack album. Kramer and his manager, Margaret Saadi, were organizing their own production company, MuscleTone Records, and wanted to secure the right to produce and release the soundtrack on their label. In return, Kramer would cooperate fully with the film production, perform as directed in several shoots for the film, and personally instruct his music publisher, Warner/Chappell, to provide to Future/Now a gratis license for the use of his compositions in the movie.
Kramer and Saadi worked closely with Future/Now for the next four years as the film went into production, the producers sought financing and distribution, and the MC5 story was slowly unfolded onto film.
"We became so involved in the creation of this film," Saadi says, "because we thought it was a great story which needed to be told and because we had an agreement that there was a job for Wayne."
She and Kramer introduced Future/Now to Warner/Chappell, helped set up filmed interviews with Jon Landau, Danny Fields and this writer, and vouched for the fledgling film production company with potential lenders and distributors.
Completed in 2002, MC5: A True Testimonial follows the rise and fall of the MC5 from its origins as a teenage band in Lincoln Park to its phenomenal local success as the kingpin of the Detroit rock n' roll scene, its daring appearance as the only band to show up to play at the Festival of Life in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention, its emergence as a touring act with an album on Elektra, its unique experience as co-founders and propagandists for the White Panther Party, its defection from the WPP and ensuing pursuit of conventional success in the music industry, its failure to gain popular acceptance or significant record sales, and its messy disintegration and dissolution in 1972.
David Thomas turns in a fine job in his directorial debut, marshalling the many disparate elements of the MC5 story into a coherent, well-paced exposition of the band's explosive impact and denouement. Most impressive is his deft editing of the archival performance footage shot sans sound in the 60s with 16mm Bolex and Super 8 mm cameras by Leni Sinclair (this writer's ex-wife) to recorded performances of such MC5 staples as "Kick Out the Jams," "Looking at You," "High School" and "Shakin' Street."
The performance footage, most of it previously unseen, is tightly interwoven with intimate interviews, government surveillance film shot at the Festival of Life, still photographs and images of the musicians from childhood to the present; and a powerful soundtrack pulsating with the triumphal yet under-acknowledged music of the MC5.
MC5: A True Testimonial had its international premiere in November 2002 at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. The film was then shown at the Raindance Film Festival in London, the Goteborg Film Festival in Sweden and the Toronto International Film Festival, drawing enthusiastic audiences and widespread critical acclaim.
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