Remembering Fred "Sonic" Smith on his birthday

Remembering Fred Smith with the Sonic's Rendezvous Band's rippin' mono version of "City Slang" and the Detroit Tango comp.  

New MC5 oral biography from Jaan Uhelszki & Ben Edmonds due October 8

CREEM Magazine writers Jaan Uhelszki and Ben Edmonds along with Guitar World's Brad Tolinski use interviews with MC5 insiders to tell the band's story. 

Here's the scoop from Hachette HQ...

A riveting oral biography of the proto-punk Detroit rockers MC5, based on original interviews with the band and key members of their inner circle

 Few bands have dared to ignite a revolution through their fusion of activism and art like MC5. Managed by the charismatic radical and hippie spokesman, John Sinclair, MC5 wasn’t just a band; they were a thunderous proclamation of dissent, amplifying the voices of the marginalized long before it was fashionable. From championing racial equality to rallying for cannabis legalization, they fearlessly thrust their beliefs onto the world stage. For their efforts, the rabble-rousing musical arm of the White Panther Party, the scourge of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and other defenders of public decency, were often beaten with clubs, threatened at gunpoint, tossed into jail, and even unceremoniously dumped by their record company, right as their album was storming up the charts—and all while the Sex Pistols were still on training wheels.

What has been lost amidst this notoriety is MC5 itself, a band worth remembering not because they were bad boys, but because they were so damn good. In MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock’s Most Revolutionary Band​, music journalists Brad Tolinski and Jaan Uhelszki invite readers to reconsider this legendary group. Centered around a series of interviews with MC5, their manager, and their inner circle—many of whom are no longer with us—that Tolinski and Uhelszki inherited from CREEM Magazine founding staffer and Mojo's US editor Ben Edmonds prior to his death, this book presents a genuinely candid, funny, and moving portrait of rock’s most uncompromising and articulate band. MC5 also features a virtual “who’s who” of 1960s rockers, including Iggy and the Stooges, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, promoter Bill Graham, John Lennon, the Jefferson Airplane, and political firebrands like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver.

As innovative, insightful, and inspiring as the band itself, MC5 is a fitting testament to the legacy of these iconic rock pioneers—told in their very own words. It's out October 8 via Hachette Books in North America and October 10th in the UK via Omnibus Press. 

You can pre-order a copy of MC5: An Oral Biography of Rock's Most Revolutionary Band right here. 

R.I.P. MC5 drummer Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson, 1948-2024

Sadly, Dennis Thompson – hard-hitting drummer of The MC5 – has passed away at the age of 75. He'll be greatly missed. 

LINKS
New York Times Dennis Thompson, drummer and last surviving member of the MC5, dies at 75

R.I.P. John Sinclair 1941-2024

Sadly, Flint-born poet/activist & MC5 sixth man John Sinclair has passed away. Here's John & Yoko's "John Sinclair" and more.

Wayne Kramer interview from 1978 airs on WCBN-FM, Friday

Tune into Ann Arbor's WCBN 88.3 FM on Feb 9th from 2pm-4pm to hear a rare chat with Wayne Kramer from December, 1978. 

Here's the scoop from Radio Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa's Frank Uhle...

Wayne Kramer of the MC5 passed last week and WCBN's Dan Gunning just dug up an interview he recorded with Wayne at the station in December, 1978. We will air the full 90 minute conversation (sourced from the original reel-to-reel master) Friday Feb. 9 from 2-4pm EST! Recorded right after Wayne had gotten out of prison and his memory of the MC5 days was fresh, this interview has not been heard in more than four decades. Listen live at 88.3 FM in and around Ann Arbor, or worldwide at wcbn.org. *My show, Radio Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa, was named after the MC5 song by former co-host Dan Mulholland, and the station once had a promo copy of their first 45!

One For The Weekend: The Zeros

Watch the video for The Zeros' "In The Spotlight." They open for The MC5's Wayne Kramer at San Diego's Soda Bar on May 15.  

Watch Leni Sinclair's footage of The MC5's "Kick Out The Jams"

Check out Wayne Kramer and crew getting down at the Grande Ballroom as captured by Leni Sinclair. 

Happy Birthday Mick Collins!

Celebrating Mick Collins birthday with his performance of "Kick Out The Jams" with The MC5's Wayne Kramer.

UIC kicks out the jams on new FM Hill album out Friday

UIC's long-awaited new studio album FM Hill captures the group at their raw rockin' best.

Growing up during the 70s in the rural South Western Ontario town of Exeter, there wasn't much in the way of legal entertainment. Bored teens had to get their kicks where they could find them. For Fred Robinson and fellow UIC founding member Murray Heywood, that meant piling into Fred's '68 Chevelle Malibu 6-banger – outfitted with a tree-shaking Craig Powerplay stereo 8-track – and heading west on Highway 83 and then north on the Babylon Line to a place they called "FM hill."

Underneath the stars on FM hill, just about a mile from the Hay Swamp home of the mysterious Green Lady, the higher elevation meant that on a clear night they could pick up near by Detroit radio stations blasting The Stooges, The MC5 and Alice Cooper. The rush that Fred and his younger brother Dave Robinson had hearing that explosive Motor City music for the first time is what they were after on their long overdue new album, FM Hill. 

Of course, with anytime a band  returns to the studio after a lengthy hiatus, there are naturally going to be questions, number one being, "have they still got it?" Anyone who saw UIC's opening spots for L.A. punk legends X in 2017, and that amped-up show with a horn section celebrating the 50th anniversary of Kick Out The Jams with The MC5's Wayne Kramer at the Danforth Music Hall in 2018, should have reason to be optimistic. See for yourself – here's a clip from UIC's performance of the title track from FM Hill below. 

At every step along the way back to full-throttle action, UIC has met or exceeded expectations. Just as now, many UIC fans back in early 2016 were wondering what kind of shape the band would be in when they first reconvened for a one-off tribute concert in Oshawa honouring the late Star Records owner, Mike Shulga. By then, 21 years had passed since UIC played their final show at Lee's Palace. And although the members had continued to perform and record in different capacities over the ensuing years – Ted Triebnor and drummer Murray "Hounddog" Heywood in Positively Stompin' and the others became The Chickens –  there were some still wondering whether they would be the same full-tilt rock 'n' roll party band they remembered. 

With rhythm guitarist Ted Triebnor living in Saskatchewan and unable to rehearse, Dave Dysart from their old Og Music labelmates Supreme Bagg Team was deputized and proved to be a worthy replacement. Dysart also lent his production skills to the task of remixing the cassette-quality tape that UIC recorded in 1988 with former Blue Rodeo keyboardist Bob Wiseman into what became the unanticipated 2016 delight of The Wiseman Sessions album. 

Even though Oshawa had been a UIC stronghold, headlining the Mike Star Tribute at the jam-packed Royal Canadian Legion on April 2, 2016 wouldn't be a cakewalk. UIC would have to follow a rousing set from Peter Zaremba's Rock Delegation featuring The Fleshtones' Keith Streng and the Purple Toads' Rob Sweeney and member of his band Crummy Stuff. But any lingering doubts about the current state of UIC were quickly quashed when the group's rubber-legged frontman Dave Robinson came strutting onto stage and hyperactively bounced his way through songs from their 1986 debut album Our Garage (Fringe Product) much like he did 30 years earlier. A few more gems from their whumpin' 1988 classic Live / Like Ninety (Og Music) left the well-lubed crowd hollering for more which they kindly obliged by roaring through The Stooges' "No Fun" and The Ramones' "Rockaway Beach." 

As impressive as the UIC performance was, the half-joking jabs of "play something new" from greying fans who'd followed the group from the start had hit home. After the 30th anniversary performance of Our Garage in Toronto and the 2017 release party for The Wiseman Sessions, they knew it was time to stop looking backwards. That fall, as the band returned to their rehearsal space to work on new material, bassist Dan "Hack" Preszcator suddenly fell ill. While Dan took time off to recover, El Speedo bassist Andy Hauber was asked to fill in on a temporary basis. Sadly, Dan passed away from an auto-immune disorder on March 29, 2018. Knowing how much Dan wanted UIC to record again, the surviving members were now even more determined to see the FM Hill album through to completion.        

In June 2019, the UIC crew assembled at Canterbury Music in Toronto with a fresh set of tunes and a few from the past that were never fully realized. While the songs of FM Hill still feel like classic UIC, there's a new sense of self-assuredness to the performances that only comes with playing together for decades. Canuck rock legend Ian Blurton (Public Animal, C'Mon, Cursed, etc) who'd seen UIC firing on all cylinders at their peak was wisely brought in for the mixdown before the tracks were sent off to Noah Mintz at Lacquer Channel for proper mastering.

The album opens with the crankin' lead single "Superstar"(listen below) followed by the mighty riff from "Mystery Train" which sounds more than a bit like the one Kurt Cobain used for "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But as UIC fans know, a live version of "Mystery Train" appeared on their Live / Like Ninety, recorded at Lee's Palace in November 1988 and released in early 1989 – a year before Kurt came up with "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Nirvana  didn't perform the song in public until April 17th, 1991 and it was recorded in the studio in May of that year. Hmmm...

The "Mystery Train" story for UIC began sometime in 1988 when Fred Robinson was approached by Richard Carstens, then singer/guitarist of Toronto rock 'n' roll trio The Wammee, with a tape of a song he'd written and demoed acoustically which he thought was right for UIC. Sadly, Carstens passed away in 2014 at the age of 53 but Robinson well remembers the day Richard dropped by with a cassette in hand.

"Back in 1987/88 we had a band house in Toronto at 13 Grenadier," remembers Robinson. "Lonnie James was living there and was playing with The Wammie. Richard (Carstens) was also with Wammie and would stop over on occasion. He presented a cassette with an acoustic version of this song and asked if we would take a crack at learning it. We loved the song and rocked it up with a key change and restructuring. Richard wrote many great songs." Watch a clip of The Wammee playing "Mystery Train" right here. 

The new studio version of "Mystery Train" sounds like nothing other than primo UIC with a sound and structure more in line with The Haunted's Montreal garage classic "1-2-5" than anything to come out of Seattle. Loyal UIC supporters will be relieved to know that the group have remained true to their rock 'n' roll roots on FM Hill. 

There are no cheesy orchestral strings added, no choral backing vocals, no syrupy synth washes, no programmed drums, no guest rappers, no plaintive piano ballads – no baloney. And although they've each become better musicians in the years between studio sessions, their musical maturity hasn't gotten in the way of the go-for-broke attitude with which they still approach every tune. And really, you shouldn't expect anything less from dudes who took their marching orders from The Stooges, The MC5, The Ramones, Teenage Head and Radio Birdman. Yeah hup!

Like UIC at their top-dollar best on stage, the fat-free 10 track album is a straight up ripper from start to finish. In fact, FM Hill is probably the closest they've ever come to capturing that sweaty UIC small club experience in a studio setting. You'll hear it when FM Hill is released digitally on UIC's own Like Ninety Records via Warner Music Canada on Friday (October 23) followed by a vinyl release Friday, October 30 wherever rock 'n' roll records are still sold. 

UIC hosts a release partty for FM Hill at Toronto's venerable Horseshoe Tavern on Saturday, November 21 at 8:30 pm – get tickets right here. In the meantime, watch UIC perform "Mystery Train" at The Horseshoe back in 2017 followed by "Superstar" off the new album below. 

Hear Eddie Criss Group's 1980 Undertaker LP feat. Wayne Kramer

 

HoZac released the Eddie Criss Group's Undertaker album which you can check out below.

Here's the scoop from HoZac Records...

At this point, it’s pretty fair to assume that the USA’s most famous “Punk hotspot” has been pretty well-mined for it’s obscure fringe rock’n roll nuggets for some time now. And with further investigation within the deep confines of David Peel’s Orange Records catalog in recent years since his passing, we’ve found a couple of tragically-overlooked rippers. Behold: the Undertaker LP from the elusive Eddie Criss Group, released to minimal fanfare in 1980. Little to no information really exists on the band, who were a short-lived studio-only project that fronted by a teen-aged Eddie Criss, and employed the MC5’s legendary Wayne Kramer on blistering lead guitar on every track. What comes out of the speakers cooks up a vibe that feels right at home with the first GG Allin LP (most notably the MC2 with Wayne & Dennis Thompson on the EP recordings), caked with NYC scum-punk gold! 

But don’t leave your first impressions there, as the Undertaker LP has quite a few stylistic flourishes that border on the psychedelic glam that Mr. Criss grew up around, and the flanged-out rhythm guitars and dramatic vocals criss-cross with Wayne Kramer’s scorching leads, creating a real “outsider” feel on a few of the less-intense tracks. Combined with an eerie organ accompaniment that seems to lead down an ominous path to certain death, the Undertaker LP covers a lot of ground, and reveals another still unknown teenage NYC punk-era figure that history left out. 

While working on the King of Punk LP, David had regaled us with stories about Wayne Kramer during this period running ads 'offering to play on local band’s recordings for a few hundred bucks,' which in lots of cases, he would remain uncredited. Which makes this LP one of only a small handful of confirmed recordings from the period in the late 1970s, when Kramer was in NYC playing in Gang War with Johnny Thunders, and trying to drum up studio recording work to help offset legal fees after his drug bust. 

After we’d kept asking (with little to no feedback from Peel), David passed a couple years ago, and with that, we figured the link we had was lost to time. But with some considerable help from some NYC-area musicians, Hozac Archival has tracked down the one and only Eddie Criss, and remastered Undertaker for the world to absorb, including his first interview on the scene around the recording of his sole LP inside included in the liner notes. Grab a copy right here. Listen to the album below. 

 

Watch Wayne Kramer's MC50 perform "Future/Now"

Here's Wayne with Marcus Durant, Kim Thayil, Billy Gould, Brendan Canty performing The MC5's Future/Now. 

Third Man reissues A-Square comp of Ann Arbor garage gems

Alex Palao's rippin' A-Square (Of Course) comp featuring MC5's original Looking At You and Half-Life's Get Down has been re-released as a 2LP set. 

A² – An A-Square Compilation
A1:    Look What You're Doing (To Me Baby) - The Rationals
A2:    Get The Picture - The Scot Richard Case
A3:    Love To Love - The Thyme
A4:    I Need You - The Rationals
A5:    Listen My Girl - The Bossmen
A6:    Stranded In The Jungle - The Apostles
A7:    Someday - The Rationals
B1:    I'm A Man - The Prime Movers
B2:    Midnight To Six Man - The Scot Richard Case
B3:    Leaving Here - The Rationals
B4:    Easy Way Out - The Bossmen
B5:    Tired Of Waiting For You - The Apostles
B6:    Who Is That Girl - The Scot Richard Case
B7:    Time Of The Season - The Thyme
C1:    Looking At You - The MC5
C2:    Can't Find The Key - Stoney & The Jagged Edge
C3:    Somehow - The Thyme
C4:    I'm So Glad - The Scot Richard Case
C5:    I Need You - The Rationals
D1:    Rainbows - Stoney & The Jagged Edge
D2:    Get Down - Half-Life
D3:    Borderline - The MC5
D4:    Just Like An Aborigine - The Up
D5:    Mystery Man - Dick Wagner & The Frost

MC50 w/ U.I.C., Public Animal @ Danforth Music Hall, Wednesday

Wayne Kramer is celebrating 50 years of kickin' out the jams w/ Public Animal at 7:30pm and U.I.C. at 8:20pm.

Watch The MC5 perform Black To Comm at Wayne State University in 1967

Here's Wayne Kramer and crew on "The Hippies" episode for Conversations In Depth hosted by Seymour Ricklin.

Watch recently uncovered MC5 footage from Paris Gibus Club, 1972

Check out the rare performance clip of the mighty MC5 with guitarist Fred Smith (right) in his "Sonic Suit"

Before They Were Famous: MC5

This autographed photo of the Motor City Five circa 1966 was found at a flea market by Willy Wilson. 

RIP Scott "Rock Action" Asheton, 1949–2014

Along with the Stooges, Scott Asheton will be remembered for his work in Sonic's Rendezvous Band.

Happy Birthday Wayne Kramer!

Revisiting the MC5's rock 'n' revolution

Originally published in the UK three years ago, Brett Callwood's well-researched study of the Motor City's finest, MC5: Sonically Speaking, has finally been published in North America by Wayne State University Press. Subtitled "A Tale of Revolution and Rock 'n' Roll," the book. which esteemed MC5 authority Iggy Pop deemed "Sincere and straightforward, is built around Callwood's extensive interviews the surviving members. As a result, MC5: Sonically Speaking offers firsthand accounts of the influential group's high-school band origins to their Grande Ballroom glory days, the tumultuous time with manager John Sinclair and the White Panther Party through to the bitter end in 1972. And unlike past career overviews, the book also delves into the members' post-MC5 projects, including guitarist Fred Smith's vastly underrated Sonic's Rendezvous Band. As a special bonus, the expanded 249-page US edition comes with a snazzy new cover illustrated by famed poster artist Gary Grimshaw in the style of his classic Grande Ballroom designs. Nice touch!  

To celebrate the long-overdue US publication of MC5: Sonically Speaking, a launch party is being staged on October 1 at the New Way Bar (23130 Woodward Ave) in Ferndale, Michigan with performances by local roughnecks Luder, The Octopus, Man Incorporated and Marco Polio & the New Vaccines. Callwood will be on hand to sign copies of his book available for sale at the venue.




LINKS
Brett Callwood www.myspace.com/brettcallwood
MC5: Sonically Speaking http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/1180/MC5#news1