MC5 – Kick Out the Jams – Review

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Kick Out the Jams (Creem/MVD)
by Craig Regala

A buncha great live footage from America’s most overrated band overlaid with hippie visual effects. Yeah, I dig the 5, and yeah, maybe the Doors beat’m out in the overrated sweeps, but Jezus, they never had a conscious musical center and existed as a collection of a half dozen really good tracks and two ground-breaking ones, “Gold” and “Black to Comm.” That said, this is a cool piece from a time that was under-documented from a band I would’ve dug seeing, had I been a whole lot more mobile as a nine year old. Bug your library to buy it: Many ex-punks went on to get their MLS and “work within the system.” Try the “it’s a piece of history” argument. The bonus feature with ex-manager John Sinclair in ’93 is certainly the kinda blab that contextualizes things.
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