MC5 - Power Trip [1968-1970]

I was planning on posting a version of this MC5 bootleg when I first started this blog. But since I still haven't gotten around to ripping that record, I might as well give you this CD version. This one is superior because it has more songs on it than the 10" vinyl would allow. Opening with a karaoke version of "Looking at You," the bootleg aims to have you singing the whole way through. Next is a 1968 recording of the 19-minute live jam "I'm Mad Like Eldridge Cleaver's Mad," and well, if you don't know who Eldridge Cleaver is, then go do your goddamn history homework on google. There's one other 10+ minute song on here, the 1970 workout called "Head Sounds (part two)", which resembles a bluesier Can session from around the same time. As always, vocalist Rob Tyner shouts like a madman throughout, but especially on the aforementioned tracks and also on their cover of Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign," and the title track. Like almost every bootleg of the Five, there's also of course a version of "Black to Comm," this one from late '69.

Come now, this is essential Five material, and true rock and roll.


Let it come on down babe in the midnight hour

MC5 - High Time [1971]

In honor of the passing of MC5 bassman Michael Davis, I give you their third and final 'regular' album, High Time.  I won't say too much about it, but this is the Five so you should be getting this regardless. It's probably their best overall, though obviously Kick Out the Jams gets points for being a live thing. But the production on this record is so good and full, I think I have to say it's my favorite. 'Future/Now' gets pretty psyched-out, but mostly they've got some real strong, turned-to-11 r&b sounds going on here; I honestly have a hard time seeing how High Time, judged on its actual merits (the sound and the songs, and ignoring the commercial hindrances presented by saying "motherfuckers" on a record and the whole White Panther Party thing), could not have been successful. These songs are a perfect fit for the radio sounds of 1971, and they'd been pioneering this stuff, yet success eluded them. The Man had it in for them I tell ya.

I prefer side 2 on this record but the whole thing is good.

By the way, does anybody know if the Five's performance at the 1968 DNC in Chicago (everyone else scheduled to play, besides the Five and Phil Ochs, chickened out) was properly recorded? All I have ever seen from their show is this (soundless) clip supposedly taken by the Department of Defense:

Discogs link for CDs and LPs
They don't know 'coz they're stuck in the past