THE SPIRIT OF '76 :

MC5 classic still has plenty of kick to it (Jim DeRogatis, August 11, 2002, Chicago Sun-Times)

In August 1968, there was only one rock band that dared to perform against the first Mayor Daley's wishes at the protests outside the Democratic National Convention. When the police moved in, the tear gas rained down, the billy clubs swung, and the band paid the price for its convictions, taking its lumps and losing all of its equipment.

But while survivors of that day grant that the political rhetoric of the time now seems a bit idealistic (if not downright laughable), the ideals remain laudable.

"The MC5 not only talked about revolution, we believed it," guitarist Wayne Kramer told me a few years ago. "The part about destroying the government and taking over and shooting it out with the pigs and all that--that didn't work. But the other part about the concept of possibilities, the revolution of ideas--that has changed the world."

Indeed, the power of those ideas remains undiminished on the group's greatest album, its 1968 debut, "Kick Out the Jams."

Of course the ideals as applied to American society were ridiculous too, but where they were laudable was as applied to the pop music industry. Perhaps you had to be around then to comprehend just how pretentious rock music had become by the late 60s/early 70s, from the late Beatles to the Who to Yes to the Moody Blues to "concept albums" like those of Rick Wakeman to Led Zeppelin and the excutiatingly self-indulgent Stairway to Heaven, rock and rollers had mistaken the adulation of children for an indicator that their music was "important".
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2002 8:34 AM