Tag: MC5

Dennis Thompson, drummer for the MC5, dies at 75

Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact, is how Bruce Springsteen put it. It’s still sad in this case because Thompson was the last original member of the band. He played loud. The story was that the band couldn’t afford a microphone for the drums, and since the two guitar players had their amps at 10, Thompson hit the drums as hard as he could. He started playing the drums when he was 4. He dropped out of Wayne State where he was studying engineering when that would have been a draft deferment and a good shot at steady job. Thompson said, I chose fun. I wasn’t doing math at 4 years old, right? I was playing drums.

Wayne Kramer, a guitar player, died in February, and John Sinclair, the manager, died in April, so the stories about how the band was notorious and groundbreaking more than commercially successful have made the rounds. My favorite is that when Detroit’s biggest store didn’t carry the MC5’s record because it used profane lyrics, Sinclair took out a big newspaper ad using profane language directed at Hudson’s. When my cousin Moose was asked to leave a bar because he was drunk, he dropped his trousers on the way out. It was a perfect gesture in the moment, but at a price.

John Sinclair, 82, died

That’s evidence that smoking marijuana every day for over 60 years doesn’t kill you. I’m disappointed that there’s only spotty coverage of his death in the mainstream media I follow (looking at you, New York Times). Any outfit that reported Wayne Kramer’s death two months ago should have as big a splash for Sinclair. He managed the MC5 for a while, after all. He had a vision of a society based on rock and roll, dope, and sex in the streets. He called for a communal, classless, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, anti-racist culture of liberation. (He gave up on politics when he realized that middle-class kids only wanted the marijuana.) He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the late ‘60s for giving two joints to an undercover cop (the way I remember it, she had pestered him for it). Michigan changed the law so that possession of a small amount of dope was a misdemeanor with a one-year max. He was released a few days later. He was later arrested for conspiring to blow up a CIA office. He beat that charge because Nixon’s Department of Justice had ignored the Constitution as it collected the evidence. He is the godfather of decriminalized dope. Barefoot Jerry is on YouTube doing Tokin’ Ticket, but I can’t bring myself to link to such a lame song. Better you should play some MC5 loud.

Wayne Kramer died

I’m disappointed it isn’t being covered more. He was co-lead guitar player for the MC5. If you were a fan of fast loud guitars in the Midwest in 1969, he was a giant. The band was founded on the principles of revolutionary politics and drug use; it broke up (the write-ups frequently say ‘shattered’) in 1972. Kramer became, in his words, a small-time Detroit criminal. He went to prison in 1975, and I lost track of him.

Turns out his is an inspiring story of redemption. In prison Red Rodney, who played with Charlie Parker, took Kramer aside, teaching him about music and how to straighten up. When Kramer was released, he worked with dozens of punk bands live and in the studio. His obituary said he played with Was (Not Was)—I’d never heard that. I’ll get to that when I play their four records from my collection. He played a concert at Sing Sing. He was involved in antiwar protests. He founded and led Jail Guitar Doors, a charity bringing instruments and instruction to help rehabilitate prisoners. Rest in peace, Wayne.

Here’s my favorite, Ramblin’ Rose. It ain’t Nat King Cole.