Sunday, November 30, 2008
John Sinclair on MC5 music
From the MC5 MySpace Music page:
The MC-5 is a whole thing.
There is no way to get at the music without taking in the whole context of the music too- there is no separation.
We say the MC-5 is the solution to the problem of separation, because they are so together. The MC-5 is totally committed to the revolution, as the revolution is totally committed to driving people out of their separate shells and into each other's arms. I'm talking about unity, brothers and sisters, because we have to get it together.
We are the solution to the problem, if we will just be that. If we can feel it, LeRoi Jones said, "feeling predicts intelligence." The MC-5 will make you feel it, or leave the room. The MC-5 will drive you crazy out of your head into your body. The MC-5 is rock and roll. Rock and roll is the music of our bodies, of our whole lives- the resensifier (sic), Rob Tyner calls it.
We have to come together, people, "build to a gathering," or else.
Or else you are dead, and gone.
The MC-5 bring you back to your senses from wherever you have been taken to hide. They are bad. Their whole lives are totally given to this music. They are a whole thing. they are a working model of the new paleo-cybernetic culture in action. There is no separation. They live together to work together, they eat together, fuck together, get high together, walk down the street and through the world together.
There is no separation. Just as the music will bring you together like that, if you hear it. If you will live it. And we will make sure you hear it, because we know you need it as bad as we do. We have to have it. The music is the source and the effect of our spirit flesh. The MC-5 is the source and effect of the music, just as you are. Just as I am.
Just to hear the music and have it be ourselves, is what we want. What we need. We are a lonely desperate people, pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition, and we need the music to hold us together. Separation is doom. We are free men, and we demand a free music, a free high energy source that will drive us wild into the streets of America yelling and screaming and tearing down everything that would keep people slaves.
The MC-5 is that source. The MC-5 is the revolution, in all its applications. There is no separation. Everything is everything. There is no thing to fear.
The music will make you strong, as it is strong, and there is now way it can be stopped now. All power to the people! The MC-5 is here now for you to hear and see and feel now!
Give it up- come together- get down, brothers and sisters, it's time to testify, and what you have in your hands is a living testimonial to the absolute power and strength of these men.
Go wild! The world is yours! Take it now and be one with it! Kick out the jams, motherfucker! And stay alive with the MC-5!
- john sinclair
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Justice Yeldham rockin the glass
Mission of Burma peking spring
Early live performance at The Space, Boston, 1979. From the DVD, "Not a Photograph."
Monday, November 24, 2008
Wire one of us
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
MC5 sonic revolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGiDzEx_n0I
They provided the soundtrack for the 60s People's Revolution in America.
Wayne kramer on Band Dynamics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdNabFHhlcU
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Embarrassment 1981 videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX2I3UpmloQ
The Embarrassment "Funtime"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9DOs0yT_os
The Embarrassment "Don't Choose the Wrong Song"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71WmM7U2tXc
The Embarrassment "Dino in the Congo"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPDK0W_awsQ
The Embarrassment "I'm a Don Juan" 1981
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWcbYbKQO7o
The Embarrassment "Celebrity Art Party"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GfoF4Jxjoc
The Embarrassment "Careen"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM_D6QyT7s0
The Embarrassment "The Immigrant Song" 1982
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePJb9kmJk1A
A newer video:
The Embarrassment: "Beautiful Day"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpAnZpSdCPY
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
MC5 looking at you
Imagine the Sex Pistols suddenly posing as the Bay City Rollers or Strawberry Alarm Clock. Weird. A classic power pop LP by a hard punk anarchy band.
MC5 "Looking At You"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p759HunDnoM
MC5 "The American Ruse"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QgzYGFVPi4
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Casualties punk rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZi3rxpll3s
Grape Gorilla here at the Foundation, when he's drunk and watches this video, always roars: "There should be a federal law that forces everyone to watch this video first, the first time any person decides to listen to punk rock. This song defines the genre rather succinctly!" (or words to that effect).
WE ARE THINKING ABOUT making this the Official NYC Punk Rock Evolution Foundation theme video, and use it in introductions to, and initiations into, the Foundation.
If you know a better video that uses punk rock to define and capture the essence of punk rock, we'd sure as hell like you to prove it. CONTACT US via our email addy in the right sidebar of this blog.
Or post a comment. Thanks.
Featured Evolutionist November 08
Villager photo by Jefferson Siegel
John Holmstrom, finding inspiration at the punk haven Manitoba’s, at 99 Ave. B.
The rebirth of Punk: John Holmstrom’s fanzine returns
By Orli Van Mourik
In 1975, a 21-year-old former art student named John Holmstrom decided to start a magazine that married his two favorite art forms: Punk rock and comics. So he rented a rat-infested storefront in Chelsea, recruited his friends Ged Dunn and Eddie “Legs” McNeil to help out, and set to work.
Holmstrom’s fanzine was crude, but it was also cool. And, in the end, it attracted so much attention that it galvanized a movement, making bands like The Ramones, Blondie and The Sex Pistols famous in the process. Now, some 30 years later, Holmstrom has decided to re-launch Punk, and re-energize New York’s rock scene. The Villager sat down with him last week to talk about the past and the new Punk magazine.
A lot of people credit Punk magazine with making punk rock a household word. Did you consciously set out to define a movement?
Yes. Eddie, Ged and I were all really media savvy. Ged used to say, ‘A decade defines itself in the middle, not at the beginning.’ We realized that we were in the middle of the decade and we could define the culture. We were precocious.
Your co-founder Legs McNeil, who went on to write what is widely considered the seminal history of punk music, “Please Kill Me,” claims to have coined the term ‘punk.’ Is that true?
I think he’s backed off that, because so many people have called him on it. It’s been researched. Greg Shaw [creator of the fanzine “Mojo Navigator”] coined the term in the early ’70s.
Punk magazine covered everybody from The Dead Boys and Iggy Pop to Blondie and the Clash. Who were your favorites?
Blondie and The Ramones were our favorite bands on the scene. As people, in addition to their music. They were really fun to hang out with.
We were very close friends with The Ramones. Danny Fields, their manager, credited us with enabling them to get their first record contract. The story in our first issue convinced Seymour Stein at Sire Records to sign them and get the record out as soon as possible.
The new Punk magazine came out in December. What prompted you to re-launch it?
When I go to the newsstand, I see a lot of magazines devoted to [punk] culture that seem to be doing pretty well, and I say: ‘Why isn’t that me? I had the idea first.’ It’s sort of like if Hugh Hefner went to the newsstand and saw a lot of imitations of Playboy.
I’m not expecting Punk to be like Rolling Stone. I don’t think we’re going to sell 500 million copies. But I think we can be successful. There’s no Lester Bangs anymore; there’s no more Ramones — there’s no CBGB’s! [But] if there’s a Punk magazine out there, there’s still a thread that connects today’s Punk rock with the past.
With CBGB’s gone, is there really a New York punk scene worth covering?
We’re preparing a special issue on CGBG’s, since you mention it. Someone has to do it. But we are trying to mix it up. We’re covering the original punk rock from the ’70s, some of the hardcore scene in the ’80s, and moving on to the ’90s and new bands.
Which new bands do you think are worth hearing?
Well, they’re not a new band, but I’ve always liked The Bullys. They’ve been around New York for years. We put them on the cover of the last issue. That was a story I really wanted to do, because I knew the leader Johnny Heff. His day job was working on Ladder 11 and he perished on September 11. I really wanted to write something about that. Every time you hear about a rock ‘n’ roll guy, it’s an overdose or a car accident or something sleazy. This was the first time in rock ‘n’ roll history that there’s been a hero who gave his life saving others.
Tell us about the next issue.
