!be icldittu n Jtd1 Double your pleasure, double your fun with Yuki and Tumoko Mack, an award-winning piano duo. Renowned for their impressive technique at the keyboard, the Mack sisters will playselections from Mozart, Infante, Dello Joio and Rachmaninoff. The duo appears tonight at the Kerrtown Concert House (415 N. 4th Ave.). '-Tickets are $8 and $12; call 769-2999 for more information. 0 Page 10 Thursday, March 23, 1995 The Prodigal Son comes home '' . 4 MC5's Wayne Kramer brings his fire back to Detroit g m 0 By Matt Carlson Daily Arts Writer The generation gap has been tra- versed. My dad saw the MC5 in the late '60s, when the rock band made its stand at the Union Ballroom, per- forming for hundreds of kids and students burdened with the pres- sures of the Vietnam War, the mass consumption of drugs and the struggle to rise above the clamor of the capitalist economic system. Faced with the Freudian-night- marish fact that my dad may have been cooler than I am, I regress into denial: No! The '60s youth culture was a bunch of dopey hippies, and they were hypocrites. Some burned out in New Mexico communes while contemplating Zen and gardening lettuce, but most joined the system that they fought so hard against, a system that became even more cor- rupt in the Watergate '70s and the Reaganomic '80s But I can deny no longer. "I'm a very fortunate guy," said "Brother" Wayne Kramer, guitarist for the legendary Detroit combo, who is bursting back into the public eye with his new Epitaph Records solo album "The Hard Stuff." "There are a lot of guys from my generation who arefucked-burned-out, fat and ugly. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily good looking, but I'm not fat and burned out." Kramer is also not a hippie - the MC5 spawned modern punk as they ripped through a barbarian blend of rootsy R&B and fuzzed-out hard rock. Their third and final album, "High Times," is perhaps one of the top rock records of all time and unquestion- ably one of the most underrated. It dabbles in rock-jazz fusion, "striving to get beyond the traditional forms of music into a new sonic dimension," as Kramer related, and it pointed to the future - a future the MC5 were never around to discover. Like most musicians in the '60s, the MC5 deeply immersed themselves in political and social issues (and marijuana), but the band and their manager, John Sinclair, didn't dig peaceful demonstration. They couldn't wait that long. They wanted armed revolution NOW, and aligned themselves with the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. "In the '60s," said Kramer, "there had to be a voice for those of us who weren't black, but who were pissed WAYNE KRAMER Where: St. Andrew's Hall Tickets: $8.50 in advance Doors open at 8 p.m. 18 and over; call (313) 961-MELT for more information. off, who demanded change and who weren't afraid to get guns. Looking back with the benefit of 20 years, I can say that the armed part was a tactical mistake. You can't use the image of the gun to effect positive change." The voice for the MC5's revolu- tion was Sinclair's White Panther Party which called for full endorse- ment of the Black Panther Party as well as the abolishment of money, the freeing of all prisoners, and a "total assault on the culture includ- ing rock n' roll, dope and fucking in the streets." But the militancy was only part of the revolution, and the complete inanity was only another small portion. "The other half of our revolu- tion," Kramer explained, "was the revolution of ideas and possibili- ties. And that part is alive today, realized in a company like Epitaph. If you think of the MC5 as the Big Bang Theory, then, before the MC5, bands didn't take a big political stand on anything. It was like 'You're in show business, then don't talk about religion or politics.' But those are the most interesting subjects. "We need to use our brains to play past the bullshit and get right down to the truth of the matter. Our creativity is what's going to get us through." Unfortunately for the MC5, their creativity didn't get them through the '70s or create much of an impact upon the supposed "free your mind" '60s culture, as they combatted re- sistance from politicians and an apa- thetic record-buying audience (af- ter their debut "Kick Out The Jams" broke into the top 40, the next two, "Back In The U.S.A." and "High Times," did progressively worse). "We came out to California with Marshall amplifiers turned to 10, sequined clothes, moves like James Brown and doing Little Richard songs with a whole militant anar- chist political stance. And everyone out there were all peace-love hip- pies." So, you can see the difficulty in trying to reach their audience. "Also," Kramer continued, "there was constant sentiment, from the White House on down, about when something was going to be done about the MC5 because we weren't good little rock stars who would stay over in the corner minding our own busi- ness. We fought back as hard as we could, and we rocked as hard as any band could ever rock, but ultimately they jailed John Sinclair as a message that said 'We're not going to allow this."' Sinclair's arrest on the possession of two joints seemed as absurd then as it does now, but the MC5 read it within the context of the political pres- sure to destroy the band and the mes- sage. "When we said we were going to corrupt the youth of America with this powerful tool called rock 'n' roll and send them screaming into the streets to tear down anything that would stop them from being free, they took us seriously. What it got the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X was death squads; what it got John Sinclair was nine and a half to 10 years in prison; and what it got the MC5 was being erased from the his- tory of music." Police pressure and minimal sales did force the MC5 to disband in the Even 25 years later and without Fred 'Sonic' Smith and Rob Tyner, Wayne Kramer indisputably rocks. early '70s, and the breakup was brutal for both the group and Kramer as an individual musician who took years to reconcile the loss. The MC5 never liked the idea of a reunion, and recently when singer Rob Tyner and guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith passed away, leaving Kramer to tell the tale of the group. "The loss of them was a crushing blow," Kramer said. "Fred and I grew up together; we learned how to play guitar together; we went through the MC5 with the police problems and the politics. Those guys were my brothers, and we had gone through the fire together. Part of my job now is to tell the story of how we stood up and fought back when people said you can't do that. "The MC5 were never accepted by the music industry which was try- ing to elevate rock to high art. Rock had always been considered devil music and teenage music, and all of a sudden it was striving for a level of legitimacy. But the MC5 was a blue- collar band from a working class city, and we were throwing a stink bomb in their graduation ceremony." Twenty years later, the shit still stinks. "The Hard Stuff' falls somewhere between triumphant return and blis- tering audio assault with its brutally harmonic metal-punk riffs and guitar solos that aren't presented as the typi- cal "this is where the solo goes" stan- dard. Performed by guitar-master Kramer, they emanate with subtlety from within the songs until they're hovering along the top of the rhyth- mic outpouring in a cacophony of melodically-biting ecstasy. Updated for the '90s, its mes- sage is still as strong with themes that range from the Los Angeles riots (where Kramer currently re- sides) on "Pillar of Fire" to the MC5 tribute on "The Edge of the Switchblade." Kramer first demon- strated his precise penchant for metaphor and lyricism on the group's "Poison," a tale of craftily vicious politicians, which becomes more searing on the new disc with backup by the Melvins. Members of Pennywise, Clawhammer, the Muffs and Rancid also provide strong back- ing. "I wanted to work with street level players," said Kramer. "I don't want slick session players or rich Hollywood rock stars on my record. I wanted people who hump their own gear to stinky rehearsal studios and practice and go play in the cor- ner of a bar for 50 of their friends because they love doing it, not be- cause they've got their BMW pay- ment to make. The action is on the street level, always has been and always will be." The street is also where the ac- tion of heroin exists. On "Junkie Romance," Kramer delves into the glamorization of the dope-fiend rock 'n' roll star, a figure that's tragic as well as stupid. "A lot of times, you're dealing with how the record industry works. They'll sign five bands, hope that one goes triple-platinum and the * other four bands can eat shit and die. They don't care about you, and if you're in one of those other four bands, and you're young, sensitive and creative, then all of a sudden your hopes and plans are being crushed, then that opens the door to discovering Jack Daniels and heroin to kill the pain. "The glamour of a dope fiend, being like Charlie Parker or William Burroughs, is really a big rock n' roll lie. Playing music is how you plug what you feel into what you're trying to play, and you can't do that fucked up. Heroin kills the emotional pain, and ultimately it ends up turning your life to shit and robbing you of your most valuable thing, your time." Although struggling through the streets of LA recently, Kramer, whose MC5 made the Detroit and Ann Arbor kids roll in the '60s, is returning to Detroit to kick out t'hejams in more of a '90s fashion. "I'm interested in playing the music in the city that spawned it all," said Kramer. "It will be like the Prodi- gal Son for me, and I'm looking for- ward to stretching the audience out, pushing the limits of rock and making rock extend out from itself. Same thing I try to do everywhere." 111 Y 0. e :. . - = r"'.