TESTIFY!"You know what 'Black To Comm' means?
Okay. "Black To Comm" was when we were playing the Grande Ballroom, we used to let bands - a lot of bands would use our equipment, and we would say, "Fuck you, if you break it, we told ya... "black to comm." Quite simply, on the P.A. amp, "Comm" is commonly referred to as the negative ground, and the "Black" was the wire... clear from the power source, right? And that's exactly what it was, it's like, "Okay, just be sure you put the black wire into the comm connection here," you know what I mean? "if we trip over it and knock it out again" - because there was all these wires strewn across the stage." (Dennis Thompson interviewed by Ken Shimamoto)

    [ NOTE ALL QUOTES ARE TAKEN FROM THE SOURCES ]
FALL
"Kramer's father and mother split up when he was a kid, and his mother began seeing a man who played guitar ..."

Wayne Kramer:
"Every few months his pals would come over and they would have electric guitars and violins and they would set up in the living room ... some of my most exciting memories of that period are waking up late in the evening and hearing a band playing in the living room. Rushing out - 'Mom, can i stay up? Can i stay up?' Just awestruck at the sounds of these instruments. They'd played aset and then go into the kitchen and drink whiskey and i'd jump on somebody's electric guitar. It was just fabulous." (MH)

"There are literally hundreds of bands around Detroit ...

Wayne Kramer:
The auto plants were rollin', so parents had money to buy kids electric guitars.
... Among Wayne's friends in Lincoln Park, the vogue are for guitar instrumentals played by bands like the Ventures, Johnny and the Hurricanes, and the Frogmen. Then Kramer discover Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley.
Wayne Kramer: I realized there was a difference between most of the white stuff and what the black musicians were doing, there were certain sounds that had more drive to them." (MH)
 
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CURRENT

Wayne Kramer: "Me and Fred played together when we were in junior high school. He had a couple of guitars at his house because his father was from the South and everybody from the South has guitars around the house. Fred's band was the Vibratones and i was with the famous Bounty Hunters. We were sorta rivals. There was a well developed scene back in Lincoln Park. The Downriver Rock and Roll scene." (c2#4)

Fred Smith:
"We used to play a lot of the same kind of gigs. Little neighborhood parties and at the junior high school. When my band'd play he'd go and see us and when his band would play we'd go and see them. Finally we got together and got talkin' about it. We got the idea to take the best members from each band and form a new band." (c2#4)
"Wayne contributed the name Bounty Hunters [inspired by the name of Conrad " Connie " Kalitta’s dragster
], himself and his rhythm player, Billy Vargo. Fred contributed himself and drummer Leo LeDuc. Vargo left the band because he couldn't relate to the general insanity, and so the Bounty Hunters became, in Wayne's words, "the first power trio". (c2#4)

Wayne Kramer:
"Equipment was the biggest problem back then, and it was over equipment that the band finally broke up. LeDuc got this amp for Christmas, but he told us it was his neighbor's and that we could rent it. If we could pay him so much money we could use it anytime we wanted 'cause his neighbor was a piano player but he didn't play in a band; he just had this amp. We went along for a while until we found out that the amp was actually his and that he was extorting all this money from us to use his amp to play in our band". Needless to say, that was the end of LeDuc. (c2#4)

"The MC-5 (are) coming from such supergroups as the
The Vibratones, Jeff and the Atlantics, and the suprateen band, the Raydells. Fred Smith, Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson, at 13, banded together in the Bounty Hunters."(SD#1)

"Kramer met Bob Derminer, Lincoln Park's resident teenage beatnick.
Wayne Kramer: he was two years older, which was a big difference back then. He could drive. And he was into jazz."
"Kramer was subsequently surprised late one Friday night when he ran across Tyner sitting in a White Castle parking lot. (MH)
Wayne Kramer: It was about two in the morning, he was drunk as a skunk, had let his hair grow out, and was playing the harmonica. I said, 'Yo-what's with that? I thought you didn't like all that rock and roll stuff.' He said, 'No, man. Have you heard about this band the Rolling Stones? They just changed the whole thing for me.' "
Kramer asked if he wanted to be involved in the Bounty Hunters. (MH)

Rob Tyner:
"I had this job, i used to break up barricades, but i wanted to be in a band; that's all i could think of. I'd know Wayne for a long time, and one day he came in on his motorcycle, he was a real down dude, high up in the entire bizarre scene. It was a Yamaha ... if you had a Yamaha in Lincoln Park you're the Hell's Angels. Anyway, i'd been messin' around with harmonica and wayne came in and we just sat down and i had my harmonica. I was stinkin' drunk and Wayne said "Wow, i didn't know you played harmonica. Why don't we get together tomorrow? We'll mess around and see what happens."
(c2#4)

 
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"THE LEGENDS OF THE MC-5" IS HISTORY IN THE MAKING . . .
IT'S TIME TO JOIN AND TESTIFY !

CURRENT

Starting in 1964, they played private parties or school dances and after a while latched onto Detroit's teen-center circuit.

Wayne Kramer:
"Every litlle commnunity in downriver - and, later we discovered, all over Detroit - had a teen center, like a gymnasium that they used somewhere on Friday night for dances. And these were our gigs. Usually they'd be a couple of other bands and you got to hear who was doing what. I used to come home from school and get the phone book out and call every municipality, trying to book my band. And you could get paid - fifty, sixty dollars for the band! It was exciting. And there were girls! The potential was unlimited." (MH)
NOVEMBER
Wayne Kramer: Driving around one night, Rob came up with the name : "Let's call it The MC5, bacause it sounds like a serial number and we're from Detroit. It sounds like a manifold part !" It was all connected together, loud electric guitars and high horsepower Detroit muscle cars. That night was the defining moment. From there it was just a matter of finding two more guys ...
WINTER
The first public appearance of the MC5 is at the *Lincoln Park Bandshell*
 
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CURRENT
In 1965, they will play in several "record hops".

Jerry Goodwin:
"Back in '65 there was no less than 4 "top forty" radio stations in Detroit with 5 or 6 DJ's doing record hops all over the area. The local band scene was huge as well. The bands knew that to hook up with a DJ on a regular basis gave them the opportunity to showcase themselves and build a fan base that would travel all over the Detroit area to see them and when and if a band finally came out with a record their fans would buy it. At the time I was using a band called "Jack and The Misfits" which broke up and re-emerged as "Jack and The Strangers." Wayne and Rob used to drop by my hops and ask me to consider using the MC5. When the Misfits broke up I gave them a shot and fell in love with the band immediately ... "The Motor City Five", a hot rock band that was doing all the greatest rock songs of the day. (Stones,Motown,Chuck Berry,etc.) On A Saturday night in '65 at Plymouth High School in Plymouth, Michigan, rock and roll changed forever. The format of the record hops that I did at that time was: I did 20 minutes of records and the band did a 20 minute live set with the band always finishing off the night. On this particular night I intro'd the band and before I could even get off the stage both Wayne and Freddy hit an off key chord and moved toward the speakers creating a cacophonous feedback that absolutely froze me in mid-stride. Rob then stepped up to the mike and started screaming at top volume. About 2000 kids in that gym stopped doing whatever the hell they were doing and stood frozen staring at the stage all (I'm sure) wondering if the world was coming to an end. After about a minute or so all 2000 kids started heading toward the doors as quickly as they could. I don't think it took 10 minutes to clear the place. The MC5 just kept on jamming for the whole 20 minutes while I kept the one security cop from pulling the plug. After the gig we sat in their van smoking a joint and they told me that had been listening to Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sauders and Eric Dolphy and that they wanted to take their music in a different direction. They called what they were doing "avant rock". This was the first time I had ever heard this term and it made sense. I told them at the time that I felt they had a long row to hoe in finding venues for their music but if they just stuck with me and played the hops I would try to find a club for them to play." (ps)
Jerry Goodwin: "The DJ's at WKNR rotated the MC jobs on the Karavan and so each DJ would highlight the particular band they were working with. I would MC the Karavan usually every fourth time and naturally I would use the MC5. I probably did the Karavan four or five times with the band." (ps)
Jerry Goodwin:
"The bass player at that time was Bob Gaspar and the drummer was Pat Burrows. I remember that neither of them were to thrilled with the new "avant rock" direction the band was taking and one of them decided to take over his father's gas station and the other decided to join the Marine Corps." (ps)

Wayne Kramer:
"The Motown stuff was a little tame for me. Chuck Berry, he was more dangerous. We has a great rhythm section, and we started working on this concept of drive - the music had this forward power. I think it came from that kind of adrenaline you have when you're sixteen or seventeen, when your hormones are pumping so fast that you're almost insane. there was this sound that gave us what we needed. We weren't getting it from Bobby Vinton and the music on the radio. We weren't getting it from what parents and teachers were telling us. But we were getting what we needed from this certain kind of music that we started to call high-energy music ...
... Our show was based on the dynamic of James's show. It was going to start at ten-and-a-half and go up from there. On a bad night we were going to be great - and on a good night we were going to be unbelievable." (MH)

The Five didn't play for their audiences, they incited and assaulted them. And along with James Bown's pyrotechnics, there was Tyner's interest in avant-garde jazz, which was leading the MC5 to experiment with free-form music, creating musical interludes without meter or key. (MH)
FALL
Wayne Kramer: "In the beginning we listened to Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Both of them had an energy to them. there was an attraction to this "high energy" music, and there was a manic intensity to it. Like breathing, or drinking water, i needed that energy. That attraction evolved through the course of the MC5 as we discovered the music of James Brown, and we found it in Motown. Especially in the Motown rhythm section. We heard it in hte music of the Who and the Rolling Stones, and in the music of the free jazz movement in the late '60, through the music of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and, of course, the wonderous Sun Ra. All this music had the same "high energy" level. There was a degree of commitment by all of these musicians to go beyond traditional musical forms." (DTP#1)

Wayne Kramer:
"We were rehearsing one day in my mother's basement, and we took a break. So we went upstairs to eat sandwiches or something, and i'd leaned my guitar up against the amp, but forgot to turn it off. We were upstairs sitting around talking, and we started hearing this noise from the basement. Then we all realized that whatever was happening downstairs, this was the power that could control the universe. So, we were downstairs, and there's this guitar playing all by itself, going, "Uhmmmmmmm." there were jars of nails on the shelves, and the vibrations made them fall and break. So, then we knew we had power! At the same time, the Yardbirds were coming out and Jeff Beck was using feedback, and Pete Townsend was using it. It wasn't like the MC5 invented it, but we discovered it for ourselves. It certainly helped us take what we were doing and go beyond that." (DTP#1)

Rob Tyner:
"When Pat Burrows left the band, well, we had previously become associated with this degradee' ruffian known fallaciously as Michael Davis, or at that time, Mick Davis. Michael was hanging around down in the infamous Warren-Forest area way before it was the Warren-Forest area, way before it was infamous at all. The Original Prentis Street scene. Michael was at that time the rebellious young folksinger; he used to play acoustical guitar and sing Bob Dylan and i knew if he was into that he was a heavy dude. We got Mike in the band and we continued on our program of playing weird jams. Bob Gasper was still the drummer." (c2#4)
Rob Tyner: "We'd play normal kind of rock until our last number, when we'd do a thing called 'Black to Comm' which was really wild, bang-bang-bang, and the audience would say 'naaaah' and clear out pretty fast. We'd just empty those ballrooms faster'n light." (MM70)
Rob Tyner:
"Bob Gasper ... there's a thing that happens in Black To Comm that starts out with Fred playing the basic sound of the tune and the drums don't come in for a long time. Dennis waits and lets it build. That came from Bob Gasper's unwillingness to play the song, period. Sometimes the song'd go on for ten minutes with no drums. He'd sit there and sit there and get madder and madder and madder because he hated it so much and he couldn't relate to it at all. We're all flipping out, screaming into the mike, and finally he'd go crazy and take out all of his frustrations by coming in very strong, maintaining the thing at a very high energy level. We always manoeuvered him into that situation. So there's the Bob Gasper Memorial Wait at the beginning of Black To Comm. We'd been having a lot of trouble 'cause Gasper did not want to play that kind of music 'cause he didn't feel that it was valid. It was just an outburst of energy and noise as far as he was concerned, and in some ways that was exactly what it was." (c2#4)

Rob Tyner: "So we got a job in the now-defunct Crystal Bar where we used that context as a place for us to get our thing together. It was a place for us to play. There would never be any people there, just this old Polish fellow sitting in the corner eating a sausage and a stick of butter. So we got this job and Bob Gasper cracked. He had a new car that he was trying to pay for. Got a job in a bank. The incredible job at the Crystal Bar was not paying any money, was not contributing to his financial sucess, so he said 'you guys are fucked up' and took off. That left us without drummer.
In the past we had had a problem with Gasper not being able to make a gig once or twice and we had used this young drummer from the Bounty Hunters, the infamous high energy rock band. (Dennis Thompson, who had quit the Bounty Hunters in the early days to play weddings and Bar Mitzvahs with Jeff Wardy and the Paramounts, because "back in those days you couldn't make money in rock and roll". We had gone through two or three drummers and we were using Dennis as a last resort because, well, i hated his guts. He was terrible drummer and besides that he was a prick.
So anyway, Dennis played with us several nights at the Crystal Bar and we'd succeded in antagonizing him to the point where he would be playing o.k. and he'd be working hard and so one night we had a little impromptu ceremony on the stage seeing as how there was only one person in the bar, who had since passed out. We announced to his lifeless form that we were going to ask Dennis impromptu on the stage to join the band because we needed him. So we made a little ceremony and asked Dennis if he wanted to join the band, publicly, you know, and he said 'aw shucks, yeah,' so we finally presented him with the ceremonial plunger out of the toilet down in the dressing room and there we were, the MC5."
(c2#4)
 
FEEL FREE TO JOIN AND TESTIFY. . .
"THE LEGENDS OF THE MC-5" IS HISTORY IN THE MAKING . . .
FEBRUARY
"Just before Sinclair's incarceration, Rob Tyner had discovered the Workshop and come down with a classic case of teenage hero worship.

Rob Tyner:
"I heard about [Artists' Workshop] and went to one of the readings one time, and i realized that this was definitively our audience. As soon as i met Sinclair i felt this fantastic energy coming out of him, and the people at the Workshop were the kind of beatniks who i knew would respond." (MM70)
Rob Tyner: I'd gone there a couple of times and got literally blown back. The very foundation of everything i understood was shaken by the intensity of John Sinclair himself in the flesh and the people he associated with." (MH)
SPRING
Wayne Kramer and Michael Davis write MC5's anthem "BORDERLINE"
Michael Davis: "The song BORDERLINE is one of my favorites, yet it is overlooked in favor of lots of others. I'll tell you why. Wayne and I used to live in the same roominghouse in 1966 before we all moved together, via Sinclair's TRANS LOVE ENERGIES/ MC5 merger. One day Wayne came up to my room to show me a new song he was working on. All he had was a rudimentary guitar rif that was; bang bang, bang bang, bang bang. I said; Wayne, that's great! It's so raw. So, we sat there, and I played my bass along with the simple little part. When the band came together for a practice, we showed the part to Fred, Rob, and Dennis. The sound was power of the most basic type. Fred invented the 3/4 time breaks in the middle, and Rob made up some generic lyrics, that, to this day, I still don't understand, and BORDERLINE became an MC5 song. Oh yeah, I made up the part at the end where the music stops and Wayne and I sing a falceto; ooooooooh ooooooooh. I wanted to play that song in London [March 13, 2003], but no one else would even consider it. I think it gets lost because no one can understand what the lyrics mean. In a weird way, I do. It's about being passionate and confused at the same time. Like "teenager" stupid, ie., being nervous. It would be better if it was about something more macho, but it is, like it is. If I ever have my way, I will play that song." (PS)
SUMMER

Jerry Goodwin: "We played around the area in the "Keener Karavan" with some other great Detroit area bands and finally in '66 Russ Gibb came back from San Francisco with great stories of the "dance halls" on the west coast. By that time I had shed my shirt and tie and had become a card carrying, acid taking, long haired freak doing one of the first "free form" shows on WKNR-FM. Russ was also moonlighting at the station at the time (he was a fifth grade teacher during the day) and asked me about finding a "houseband" for his new Grande Ballroom. It was a perfect time to put Gibb and the MC5 together and, as they say, the rest is history." (ps)

Russ Gibb:
"I was teaching social studies and English in the 9th grade at Maples Jr high in Dearborn, Michigan USA. On the weekends i worked at WKNR AM and FM radio. On AM i did a show called PM DETROIT an interview and talk show. About this time "Black" Frank Maruca became the program manager and he is the one who will offer me the opportunity to go on FM radio which at the time was called "Underground radio."
"I visited an old school buddy Jim Dunbar and his wife Beth. Jim is a radio personality at KGO radio. Bill Graham had just been on his show and had invited Jim and guests to the just opened Fillmore Ballroom. Having nothing to do after dinner we decided to head down to the ballroom. Well, need i say more !!!! The light show was like nothing i had seen before and immediately started to think about doing a similar thing in Detroit. Jim introduced me to Bill and we talked about the biz... I asked Bill about the strobe light, as i had not seen one before. He asked me how far Detroit was from SF, i replied about 2000 miles... He paused, and said "I guess you wont be completion with me" and proceed to give me the names and phone numbers of the guys at Berkeley University that had built the strobe for him. After that intro Bill and i became friends."
"Many of the "ideas" for the Grande came from my visit to the Fillmore. However a fellow DJ from WKNR AM radio Gary Stevens and i had owned a weekly teen club called the Pink Pussy Club. It was in a suburb of Detroit and basically was a teen record hop. Acts that were in town and appeared on Gary's show would many times perform at the hop for free publicity. The music was mostly records. Much like discos are today. It was here that i learned how to run a club and how to book acts."
"As i had been in radio for a few years at that time. And had helped produce and "worked" the control board for DJ's Robin Seymour and Lee Allen, both top rock jocks for WKMH am. Plus putting on record hops all over metro Detroit made me aware of the growing influence of rock and roll."
(ps)

AUGUST
"When he (Sinclair) was released in August, the Workshop (note: the workshop does not exist anymore since Feb.66) threw an all-day music and poetry fest to mark his homecoming.
One thing Sinclair had not been expecting at his party was a teenage rock band from downriver. But the Five were looking to hook into the Workshop: they needed a place to rehearse. And they believed Sinclair could help the band ... the first meeting of Sinclair and the MC5 did not augur good things: Sinclair, high on freedom (at the very least) and surrounded by his friends and family, ignored the band and their request to play. By the time the MC5 finally got to plug in, he and Leni had gone upstairs to bed."

Wayne Kramer:
"We had waited all day to play for him, and then at two in the morning they finish with all the fucking poetry. We had these huge amps, Vox Super Beatle one-hundred-watt tube amps, and we cranked the shit up."
"Halfway into the band's third song, Leni came downstairs and pulled the plug. It wasn't until Sinclair reintroduced to Tyner months later that the relationship really clicked." (MH)

Rob Tyner:
"We began our assault on the young Sinclair by playing at the joyous gathering held the day (August 6th) he got back from bein' in prison the first time. There was a festival to commemmorate the joyous occasion of john's leaving the clutches of the Honk. At the very end of the lineup was the bizarre MC5. We waited all afternoon in the hot sun to play for him, and it got to be one o'clock in the morning by the time everything was done and there was only a couple of people there. So anyway John unfortunately went upstairs shortly after we began our third song, a standard piece of improvisation, and then Leni Sinclair came downstairs and pulled the plug. Never happened to us before. We were never censored like that before. Here we were, being censored by a bunce of beatniks. It was weird, we were knocking ourselves out to please."
(c2#4)

"Sinclair was already writing a local jazz dispatch for Down Beat, and he expanded it for The Fifth Estate, including local psychedelia and poetry renaming it "The Coat-Puller." Also working on the paper was a friend of Tyner's, artist Gary Grimshaw. The Sinclairs struck up a friendship with him, Tyner, and Frank Bach, another musician who was writing a rock and roll column for the paper."(MH)

John Sinclair:
"You could see that something big was happening. Rock and roll was growing and it was going to include jazz and it was going to include blues and all the interesting things from the past. They (MC5) were really exciting. It wasn't very well shaped, but bursting with energy and the idea of taking it somewhere else. They called themselves 'avant-rock,' which was intriguing to me as an avant-gardist. Their self-concept was well beyond being a pop group, although they wanted to be a pop group, too. Tyner was an intellectual, a rock and roll intellectual. The other guys figured they were freeing their minds and their asses would follow. But they aspired to make music of import. Like John Coltrane." (MH)

Wayne Kramer:
"The Master Plan. It's never been told. When we all went through our individual domestic scenes at home we kinda made up our minds that we didn't want to live with our parents; we just weren't gonna tolerate it no more. It was just get a job or move out, that's all, you know, and we all knew what we were gonna do. Rob was already living downtown and there was already a little thing down there, some people, the kind of people that we could relate to, you know, so we all started moving downtown. After talking about it, discussing the general situation of rock and roll we came to the realization that the hippies and beatniks, well, prehippies really, were gonna be the next thing. 'Cause everything they were into was all right. It was gonna be the latest sensation. So we figured, well, the thing to do, man, is to get all the beatniks to like us. If all the beatniks liked us then all the kids would like us, 'cause all the kids'll like what the beatniks like,, so it turns out who was the head beatniks? John Sinclair, man, so we knew wa had to get Sinclair. If he liked us all the beatniks would like us."
(c2#4)
SEPTEMBER
"Tyner and Sinclair became fast friends, and the MC5 moved their equipment in to the Artists Workshop. Within a few months they landed what would prove to be the best gig in Detroit, When Russ Gibb wandered into one of their rehearsals.
Gibb wanted to hire a house band, and when he asked Jerry Goodwin, a Detroit disc jockey, if he knew of any good bands who played their own music, Goodwin sent Gibb down to the Artists Workshop. For $125 a week, the MC5 became the house band at the Grande." (MH)

Rob Tyner:
"So we played there [Artists' Workshop], and they really dug it a lot more than our previous audiences. People got to hear about us, and about how we were really crazed, and i guess that was now i started happening.
We used to do all kinds of things to wake the audience up. We'd turn on the house lights and start a tape which said 'Important...
come to the stage...' and all the kids would cluster round while we'd sit down and stare at them. Then the tape would say 'Look at all those people... why are they standing there?... what are they doing?...' and it was like slapping them in the face. We'd jump on the chicks in the audience, all kinds of things, and after a while the kids got to really dig it." (MM70)

Russ Gibb:
"My recollection of meeting the MC5 is as follows. I was visiting the Fifth Estate underground newspaper around Wayne State University where i first meet Harvey Ovshinsky and the Editor of the paper... I cant recall his name (Peter Werbe). I told them of my plans to open a ballroom and would need to buy advertising in their paper. Needless to say, they were interested in helping me and it was here that i first heard of John Sinclair. They also told me about his band "THE MOTOR CITY FIVE". I don't remember how i found out about them playing at the Wayne, Michigan Memorial Center. Wayne is a suburb of Detroit, but i drove out to the center and there for the first time heard the band and met John Sinclair. As i recall the MC5 were all dressed in black suits and ties and looked very Mod to me." (ps)
OCTOBER
Russ Gibb: "The Grande Ballroom was a dance hall in the 30's and 40's maybe even the 20's. As to the payment of the Five, i think that the first two weeks they did not get paid, but after that i recall, they received a low of $25 a night to a high of a $1000 a night and as they played bigger venue concerts they received over $3000 ... and i did underwrite equipment for the band." (ps)
WINTER
Recording of titles "I Can Only Give You Everything" "One Of The Guys" "I just Don't Know" at United Sound, Detroit and (?)Tera Shirma Studios, Detroit - "I Just Don't Know" is heralded as the first experimental use by the MC5 of feedback.
 

KICKM---------------------C-------------- FIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!OUTTHEJAMSM---- O ------- - -T-----H ----E -----R -- --- F--U--C-K-E-R    ! ! ! ! ! ! !!!!!!!!!!THE---------

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"THE LEGENDS OF THE MC-5" IS HISTORY IN THE MAKING . . .
CURRENT
Ted Nugent: "It was seeing the MC5 at the Grande Ballroom that opened our eyes. I can't describe in words what it meant to witness the power of that band live. Seeing them made us realise we had to play better, harder, than anyone on the scene. We began practising like boys possessed. In Detroit, you'd die if you played it like the record - you had to add something ... We channelled the MC5 beast ... but then everyone started getting stoned too much - i had watched the MC5 destroy their brains, become de-balled, de-spirited..." (Mojo may03)
FEBRUARY
17 Friday / quoted in the Detroit Free Press "They will release their first 7inch in a few weeks. The recorded titles will be the following : ONE OF THE GUYS / I CAN ONLY GIVE YOU EVERYTHING"
MARCH
Release of I CAN ONLY GIVE YOU EVERYTHING / ONE OF THE GUYS 7"
'Their first single, just released, was produced by their so-called manager, and the result was a typical big-beat side that makes them sound like all the other tenn bands on the top 31. why don't they sound like the MC-5 on the record? Because some greed-head decided that he didn't think their real music would sell, and after all, that's what the music's all about to him. It's time for bands to start standing up and refusing to record anything but their best music - - then we'll have a real music scene. Otherwise it's just Dick Clark all over again." (Ann Arbor Sun, april 1967)

31 Friday / MC5, SRC *Teen Fair for WKNR*, Cobo Hall. "The latest big promotion to rob the kids of their money took place at Cobo Hall ... the Teen Fair; designed to sell all kinds of garbage to the kids who were drawn there by lots of live music. One encouraging sign came when the MC-5 refused to let the Fender and WKNR people turn their equipment down to a volume level of 4. The MC-5, who operate at full electronic power at all times, just walked off the stand. Blew their minds. The money people aren't used to having some kids tell them what to do, and they'll keep fucking over people as long as the people let them." (Ann Arbor Sun, april 1967)

MAY
1st week / R.Tyner is interviewed by J.Sinclair ( who is not the manager of the group yet.)
The Sun Interview :
* "Tyner is writing a book of exercises for lead singers which will be published soon by the Artists' Workshop Press/Detroit"
* 2 years before the MC-5 played at Betty Conn a 45-minute version of HANG ON SLOOPY during which Tyner lost his voice, then played harmonica until his lips bleed and finally stuck his microphone in front of the P.A. speakers. A few evenings later in Dearborn they test their discovery of feedback on BLACK TO COMM (a piece written in the basement at W.Kramer’s). F.Smith also discovered the power of a Super Beatle amp with volume on 11 on the first notes of BLACK TO COMM !!...
* B.Gaspar (future Endless Chain) and P.Burrows were still in the group at this time.
* Sinclair asks if they played BLACK TO COMM when they play the Guerrilla Lovefare during that winter (January, 24).
? did they play this last concert.
* Tyner says that the single I CAN ONLY GIVE YOU EVERYTHING has just come out.
* The first song that Tyner wrote is Long-Haired Angels Screaming.
* Sinclair announces at the end of the interview a concert of the MC5 with Sun Ra & his Myth-Science Arkestra in Detroit Saturday June 10 in * Upper DeRoy Auditorium * of WSU, organized by Trans-Love Energies Unlimited and The Sun, the light show will be provided by The The Magic Veil Light Co.
In fact the concert took place on Sunday 18 of June. End of the interview
JUNE
14 Wednesday : the Who plays at the *Fifth Dimension*
Dave Marsh: "One key moment for every Detroit rock group was the Who's appearance at the Fifth Dimension club in Ann Arbor, the weekend prior to Monterey Pop. In a club that held maybe six hundred, the Who were devastatingly loud, but more than anything, it was Roger Daltrey, scampering across tables and looking though enough to take on the entire Rouge plant and win, who left a lasting impression." (FS)
AUGUST
Sinclair becomes the manager of the MC-5

Wayne Kramer:
We had a serious streak of felony thinking. We considered ourselves the young hustlers, young scam artists. Out thinking was 'Look, this hippie thing is going to be big. It's going to be big. If we get all the hippies to like us, we'll get over.' So how do we get all the hippies to like us? We get the king of the hippies to be our manager. That's John. It's really crass and manipulative and small-minded, but that was the way we looked at it." (MH)
Wayne Kramer: "He's (John Sinclair) an incredibly persuasive and charismatic person, he's this great big cat and he's got all this energy, you know, and he just turns it on you. There is something to John's father-figure effect on the group. I had just left home, and here was this older cat who could explain all these things that i didn't understand about the world. And he did have a strong effect on everyone else, philosophically strong spiritual attitudes that he instilled in us." (rs6/8/72)
SEPTEMBER
Trans-Love Energies start to work full-time with the MC-5 and Up and move the Workshop, which becomes the place where the MC5 play regularly.

Fred Goodman:
Altough Trans-Love (Energies) also included the people who supplied the light show and operated a head shop at the Grande as well as a handfull of artisans and other musicians, its economic and artistic center was the MC-5.
A female base of fans is created, Grande Stompers, Highland Park Stompers. It will later be renamed MC5 Social and Athletic Club.
 
1968  -  1969  -  1970-72  >
 

THE LEGENDS OF THE MC5 TAKES ITS INSPIRATION FROM AN IDEA BY CHRIS GHIARDI.

RESEARCH COORDINATION / CONTACT FRANCOIS HOSTAL and ANDERS RODER

 

UPDATED on December 7, 2017

Sources & Credits: HERE

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