MC5

Of all the loud, rebellious rock groups forged in the white heat of America’s Motor City, MC5 were the most uncompromising. A high-octane force of nature, saluted now as punk pioneers, MC5 were streetwise Detroit factory rats, assembly-line escapees who lit the touchpaper on some of the most combustible rock’n’roll ever heard. It’s 1968. An incendiary debut album fuses the raging pungency of free jazz with dislocated cosmic blues and brutally confrontational garage rock. A second will strip the music bare and become an ur-text for Britpunk. A third, exuding maturity and professionalism, will be widely praised. Yet by 1972, their advance ruptured by accident, deception and often self-sewn misadventure, MC5 are done. Despite the tendency to self-ignite, the distractions of activist tomfoolery and management seeking only a soundtrack to sedition, MC5’s aim was pure: to get down, party and blow every other rock’n’roll band into insensibility. Now Richard Butterworth dissects MC5’s chaotic, magnificent history, their records and the fevered countercultural ecosystem that spawned them: the speedfried music; the bristling posture; the duplicitous record deals; the corrosive drugs. And, of course, the significance of MC5’s infamous catchphrase. So right now, it’s time to … kick out the jams, (brothers and sisters).