158. MC5 — Kick Out The Jams (1969)

1. MC5 must be one of the all time “better to burn out than fade away” bands. Hailing from Lincoln Park, Michigan (hence: Motor City Five) in the 60s, they managed to grace the cover of Rolling Stone before releasing any albums. Their first album would come soon after, and it’s Kick Out The Jams, a live recording from a few months prior in 1968. Three years later, they’d be disbanded (though they’d eventually reunite, and disband, and reunite again, a few times).
2. I can’t think of another act that launched itself with a live album instead of a studio recording, but it makes sense for MC5. Renowned for their fiery live sets, it makes sense to focus on capturing that energy rather than attempt to recreate it in a studio setting. The energy is rampant on this album from the get-go, a rallying cry from John Sinclair begging the crowd to “kick out the jams, motherfuckers!”, reminiscent of the opening to Black Monk Time (sadly, this appears to have been edited out of Spotify’s version, but Wikipedia is Truth). The album from there is a torrent of guitars, wails, screams, and pounding drums. MC5 launch at 60mph and only speed up from there.
3. The result is something approximating a bootleg recording of a mystical band acting on top of the world before disappearing rapidly. This has a side effect of sorts; because the songs only knew life in a live atmosphere it can feel like walking into a club, seeing a band you’ve never heard before, enjoying the hell out of it, but walking out with a sensation that you could not name or hum a tune you’d heard. Still, the album sounds like a roadmap for someone like Iggy Pop, and combined with the Led Zeppelin albums released around the same time, points a clear picture of the direction hard rock would take.

Next up: the pristine production of the Temptations

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