Future/Now — MC5
#365Songs: February 4
The world lost a great one on February 2, 2024. Wayne Kramer was something very special.
We all know the MC5.
“Kick out the jams, motherfucker” has been the rallying cry for just about everyone who’s ever believed that you could change the world with a band.
In a way, the band was a little too big for this world. They had too many ideas, too many ambitions, and too many troubles along the way. They were just humans, after all, and none more so than Mr. Kramer himself.
Wayne Kramer was kind of a living embodiment of the flaw that makes the beauty. He was wildly, gloriously imperfect, and the band was that and more.
For a band as great as they were, their recorded output can be challenging to sift through. Erratic at best, almost unlistenable at worse, their sound and songs seemed to change song by song, and especially album by album. Going from Kick Out the Jams to Back in the USA to High Times is a disorienting ride where you may find yourself wondering who on earth this band really is.
To understand it all, you just have to focus in on what Wayne Kramer is doing. His guitar is the thing that consistently makes sense through every incarnation.
If you’re struggling to sort it what’s him and what isn’t, skip ahead a few years to Kramer’s debut solo album from 1995, The Hard Stuff. Spend an hour or so there, and then head back to the MC5 catalogue—Mr. Kramer’s influence should be easy to spot.
While it’s true there are a lot of strange misses throughout their studio albums, there are also moments of unparalleled genius. “Future/Now” is one of these moments. Clocking in at over 6 minutes, it’s not exactly old-school punk rock fare. But it’s not exactly psychedelic excess either. It’s far too hard for that.
I struggle to describe it. It’s kind of like if Leslie West had been the one to write and record Tommy. It’s super-bluesy, it’s unapologetically arena-rocking, and it’s both low-down and high-concept. The opening chords feel like archetypical early 70’s BIG rock, and yet the final 2 minutes of the song song like a David Lynch movie.
Lyrically, it’s none of the above. As soon as you put vocalist Rob Tyner and Wayne Kramer together, you’re suddenly grooving with the house band of the apocolypse:
Screechin’ useless martyrs hangin’ naked upon the cross
They would have you believe the lie they shriek that all is lost
Forget their logical desperation
Utilize your own imagination
The future’s here right now if you’re willing to pay the cost
The power crazy leaders who control your very fate
They would twist your will, steal your life and sell your soul away
If you’re drifting or wandering lost
You’re the perfect target for the double cross
Freedom’s yours right now, if you rule your own destiny
I’m not getting any younger, and I castigate myself often for what feels like a failure to grow up—at my age, I’m not changing anything with a guitar.
And yet, I still believe. I really do. I can look to my left from where I’m currently sitting, and I can see one of my guitars on a stand, sittin’ there looking beautiful in front of my ol’ Peavey Bandit 65, and I still get that same tingle, that same touch of mystery, that same desire to just say “fuck you” to everything and grab it and go.
Wayne Kramer played the guitar like “fuck you.” Not in a nihilistic way, not in a reactionary way, not even in a destructive way. His “fuck you” always felt more like, I’m going to show you a different kind of beautiful than the lie you’ve been force fed. It’s a hard, ugly, triumphant, nasty beauty, but it smells, feels, tastes, and sounds like real power.
Wayne Kramer was, by every account, a beautiful and complex man. And he made music that was both beautiful and complex, but also beautifully raw.
Wayne Kramer’s mortal self is no longer here in this now, but in everyone’s future who believes in the life-changing power of the guitar, there is and always will be the music of Wayne Kramer to kick you out.
~
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