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In the days since I wrote my Wayne Kramer tribute, I have been steadily bothered by my own unintentional slander of the MC5's debut album Kick Out the Jams . While I still consider it my least favorite among the band's three official albums, it's still a good album and absolutely worth investigating. If it's the first MC5 album one listens to, one must place it in its historical context to appreciate it more. The band had only recently been signed to Elektra Records, and the story goes Elektra thought the "5" were too raw and inexperienced to record a studio album. (But what young band ISN'T raw and inexperienced when they enter a studio to record an album?). In any case, Elektra decided to record the band at their home stomping grounds, the Grande (pronounced GRAND-ee) Ballroom, at the corner of Grand River Avenue and Joy Road in Detroit, on October 30 and 31, 1968. Their debut would be a live album. Detroit in October '68 was still only a year remove...

WAYNE KRAMER (Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)                On my drive home from work yesterday, I saw the news that Wayne Kramer, MC5 guitarist and overall legendary Detroit rock musician, had died. It came as a shock, because the last I had heard, within the last few months, was that Wayne was set on recording a new MC5 album and doing live dates. (I won't get into the dubious nature of a new "MC5" album with only one of the then two surviving members participating, but the idea of new music from "brother Wayne" was exciting). To find out that he'd succumbed to pancreatic cancer was a total shock. I can only assume that in the usual "older Midwestern guy" tradition, he'd kept his condition a secret. I then remembered the one time I saw Wayne Kramer in a live setting, when I caught the "MC50" show at the Fillmore in Detroit, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Kick Out the Jams album. I inexplicably never mentioned it in this b...

I'm currently reading this great oral history of rock music in Detroit from the mid-'60s until the first decade of the aughts. If you're at all interested in the MC5, The Stooges, Bob Seger, Mitch Ryder, Alice Cooper, Ted [renowned asshole] Nugent (et al.), then definitely do yourself a favor and check out this fine book. The full title is Detroit Rock City: the Uncensored History of Five Decades of Rock 'n' Roll in America's Loudest City , by Steve Miller. (No, not the "Take the money and run" Steve Miller. This is Michigan journalist Steve Miller who was also in the Lansing punk band The Fix). Right now, I'm a little beyond the early seventies and the flame out of the MC5 and The Stooges, and am reading about lesser-known bands such as Destroy All Monsters (Ron Asheton played with them) and Fred "Sonic" Smith's post-MC5 band, Sonic's Rendezvous Band. Reading about these groups has inspired me to check out some clips on You...