The Sandoz Collection by Sandoz Diego Cerveza (best short books to read .TXT) 📖

so many cans of Spam. Kramer was arrested as the cops claimed he was spotting uniformed targets for snipers. Incoming!!

This was the Fives second encounter with a schizophrenic Demon-ocracy not taking it's meds. The MC5 and John Sinclair were now in the rifle sights of a paranoid establishment and were the poster children of the dreaded Red Squads that kept lists of "enemies of the state", a phrase borrowed from Josef Stalin no doubt, but it was the year 1968, the Chicago Year of Daley that would make all other riots pale in comparison and place the MC5 on a government hit list, marked for commercial death.

1968. The Democratic Convention in Chicago. There was a euphoric elation lifting the spirits of the younger generation accompanied by a sense of real change in the air, optimism for the future, and an arrogance on both sides of the line drawn in the generational sand. The chant of "Make Love, Not War" drowning out the Om! of Merle Haggards, "Love It or Leave It" Okie mental illness that affected an older generation with hardhatitis "my country right or wrong" philosophizing.

Jerry Rubin, Uncle Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, yeah, the list goes on and on of the participants and syncophants involved. Anyone who was anyone was there. Terry Southern covering the convention for left wing periodicals, but the scene that stands out is the live telecast of regular guy journalista, Dan Rather being carted off, unceremoniously from the convention floor, with an appalled Walter Cronkite giving a blow by blow commentary.

Mayor Daley of Chicago was glaring at the podium in a classic case of a Political Portrait of Dorian Gray whose time had come and gone. Outside in the park the crowd was getting as restless as villagers ready to storm Dr. Frankensteins castle to kill the Promethian beast the mad doctor had created...so with pitchforks held and decibels cranked up high, the band played on.
The MC5 were scheduled to play a free concert outside the convention hall, and they did amidst the amok and the chaos.

They had been invited by Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to kick out the jams, and kick them out they did, right in the balls. Just as they were finishing the cops moved in and the Five began removing their equipment as fast as they could. Having been through many riots before, they didn't need a crystal ball to know what was next on the "to protect and serve" agenda.

The MC5 have the distinction of being the only band to actually perform a free concert amidst the melee and police riot that subsequently defined the American meltdown of the American wet-dream, and many were now thinking of bullets over ballots. The revolution was on....or so we thought.


Following the Demo-debaucle, the MC5 clicked their revolutionary Red slippers (There's No Place Like Home) and returned to Detroit and the familiar sanctuary of the Grande. Elektra Records was now interested in the band, so they sent a talent agent to hear what they had in a live performance, (along with the Stooges) and in the end signed the Five and Iggy Pop both to the label.

Their first Elektra release is the now classic "Kick Out The Jams" which was recorded live at the Grande in late '68 and because the record company felt they sounded better live, decided to release the live version.

Of course there was a matter of Mother Fuckers...so the dreaded, castrated AM radio version that turned Mother fuckers into Brothers and Sisters won out...ok, so it was a compromise...it's hard to foment revolution without a top ten on the hit parade.

Fuck Karl Marx and his manifesto, and Mao's Little Red Book...gotta make Billboard Magazine first.

But wait...not another fuckin' riot. New Yawk this time, and a riot by any other name...not on the scale of the Newark or Detroit riots...not near the benchmark set in Berkeley at Peoples Park and the gassing on Telegraph Ave. but a riot all the same if you please. In New York, Bill Graham, rock empresario without peer had opened the Filmore East to compliment his original Filmore in the Filmore District of San Francisco, now unfortunately re-named, Filmore West.

A group calling themselves the East Village Motherfuckers were the American version of Amsterdams Provos, without knowing it, and had talked Wild Bill Graham into setting Wednesday nights aside as "community night" with free shows for the panhandling proletariat who roamed the beat streets of the Village.

Bill, said yes, and even had the MC5 play a freebie for the community. Elektra, the MC5 lable wanted to showcase the band to a more affluent record buying crowd so they in turn booked the Filmore (real American cash money) on a Wednesday, yes, community night. Now that was a page torn from How to Piss-off an Already Pissed-Off Mother Fucker 101. The MF's, never really a cheerful lot to begin with weren't happy and stormed the Graham Bastille. (I know, more villager visuals for the reader to consume)

Bill stood his ground outside the auditorium and refused entry, in a stance reminiscent of Gov. Lester Maddox standing in a southern academia doorway brandishing an axe handle so black students couldn't enter a white school. Next thing you know old Bill is hit with a chain by a Motherfucker who breaks his considerable nose.

Inside, the band is kickin' out the jams with Motherfuckers in the audience who had crashed the party, and when the Five finished, the maddening crowd storm trooped the stage trying to rip off the Five's gear as the band itself bolted out of the Filmore as fast as their power to the people legs could run. motherfuckers in hot pursuit, roadies mixing it up in the fray, a carnival call of Hey Rube goes up and all hell breaks out.

Then it happened. Two limo's appear for the band...limos? Revolutionaries...fuck...the crowd went nuts. Wayne Kramer tries to explain MC5 and White Panther theory while the crowd gets more hostile and come at him with knives just like a scene of the Sharks and the Jets in West Side Story. Kramer does get out alive with a little help from his friends, but unfortunately, Bill Graham thought it was Rob Tyner who swung the chain at him, it wasn't but it didn't matter, this was Graham and he had more clout than God...Graham had the band blacklisted not only at his venues but within his secret society circle of promoters who made the rules and had the decoder rings to prove it.

The Five had released their album and waited for success to come a'knockin' at the door. One of the places that the newly released album was to be available was in the bands hometown mondo-monstro department store, J.L.Hudsons, the venerable merchantile dominatrix that ruled the downtown Detroit skyline on Woodward Ave for decades merchandising whip in hand.

Hudson's was the equivalent of the Mall of America in it's day in the Motor City, and in fact, the Hudson family were the backers of the famed Hudson automobile including the NASCAR darling, the Hudson Hornet.

Hudsons sponsored the annual Thanksgiving Parade that would cruise down Woodward from the Institute of Arts into the city center, past the Vernors bottling plant where Detroiters for decades could watch ginger ale being bottled as they gazed through giant windows. Motown had moved it's record studios from it's ghetto nest to the more prestigious Woodward Ave...all culminating in a dramatic waterfront as Woodward ended at Jefferson Avenue exposing the freighter bearing Detroit River just across from the Canadian city of Windsor.

Hudsons was the record store of choice for Motor City rock n' roll rebels. Elvis dominated the racks at one time and now it was time for the MC5...hometown, homegrown favorites to take their place on the Rock n' Roll Rack of Fame at the gargantuan Hudsons.

Well, not quite. Seems the white collar sensitivities of the buying department at Hudsons, didn't take to the overtly blue collar, anarchistic war chant of the band, and the release was deemed...obscene which in itself was an obsenity.

The underground press and emerging FM radio stations such as the revolutionary WABX which broadcast from downtown Detroit took the battle of the retailer to the press and the airwaves and the Five took out a full page ad in The Fifth Estate underground paper with the simple message..."Fuck Hudsons"

Can't say for certain how effective it was, but today, ask any young Detroiter about Hudsons and they'll give you a blank deer in the headlight state...ask them who the MC5 were and at best you'll get "Oh fuck yeah, Kick out the jams, motherfuckers" although they will still miss the point. Let's face it, this generation is not of a rebellious nature, but if they ever do reinstate the draft I guarantee they will put down their Playstations and face it or fight it. Might even hear a chorus of Country Joe's Vietnam Rag.

It was a bit too much for Elektra, so they dropped the band faster than hot merchandise, but, they were picked up by Atlantic, who somehow thought they could make a silk purse out of this rock n' roll sows ear but that wasn't to be either.

Their releases failed to chart anywhere near acceptable and the material was turning commercial which the band didn't like. Their political-managerial alliance with John Sinclair was changing too. The band was beat, and Sinclair was about to make the blunder of his life by getting narc'd. It was only a matter of time.

John was busted for giving two joints to a narc. The result was a sentence of 9 and a half to 10 years imposed on the imposing White Panther. In 1971 a glitterati of leftists music luminaries assembled in the great Peoples Republic of Ann Arbor for the Free John Sinclair Rally.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono were there, and in fact the song "John Sinclair" (10 for 2) is on the "Sometime in New York" album. Rockin' Robert Seger was there, as were folk artist Phil Ochs and Howlin' poet emeritus of the beat generation, Allen Ginsberg to name but a few. Within days of the rally, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned the Sinclair sentence and from then on, the white knight was talking backwards as Ann Arbor held it's hookah high.
Soon, marijuana laws were decriminalized in Ann Arbor, (many thanks to Zolton Ferency and the Human Rights Party), and combined, all these events led to the present day Hash Bash held on the U of M campus each year in academia's version of the Grassy Bowl Conspiracy. Thank you to both John's and Zolton.

The MC5 planets were no longer aligned in perfect chaotic harmony. The times were changing faster than a pit crew at Indy changing tires, the bright red of revolution had become a faded pinkish punkish hue and the war in Vietnam was only escalating and the music hadn't brought the Pentagon to it's knees. Drugs began to push to the forefront of the bands quest for the holy rock n' roll grail, and as politics became less, well, political to them, the drugs took front and center stage, forcing the band into the background and relegated as the opening act of the comedy of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, and oh yeah, by the way, a blast from the past...the MC5.

One of the tours they did before the final splitting of the MC5 atom was in Jolly Olde across the pond to the land of the Ripper, God Save the