MC5//Kick Out the Jams

The MC5 always remind me of this one professor I had in college who I totally fucking hated. He taught an American Cultures class on American Counter Culture: Beats, Hippies and Punks, which, in theory, should have been the best thing ever. Was it? No. Why? Because this dude was a sad washed up wannabe and all he could do was name drop his famous friends and tell us to REVOLT! AGAINST! THE! SYSTEM! while wearing expensive professor hiking boots and listening to a sparkly new ipod.

However, there were some high points (no pun intended) in his class and these always came when he decided to ditch the preaching and just tell us wacky stories from his youth. One of my favorites was the one about how he and a friend pretended to work for Con-Ed and blocked off a few key NYC exits, thus messing up the whole traffic grid of Manhattan. In another, which was very complicated but very awesome, he pretended to be a radio personality and got involved in all the controversy surrounding 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and John Sinclair’s arrest. It was wild.

I guess what I’m really trying to say here and not saying at all is that the MC5 rule. They were an amazing bridge between the end of hippie-era rock and the beginning of PUNK!. Their music sounds like a sponge for the political and cultural unrest that was happening at the time. It is fucking rad. KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!



Kick Out the Jams.mp3

Let me be who I am
And let me kick out the jam.
Yes, kick out the jams!
I done kicked ‘em out!