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**Kick Out The Jams - MC5**
★★★★☆

By the time MC5 finally imploded in 1972, their legend had already crystallized into rock mythology. Three years of chaos, controversy, and increasingly diminishing returns had left the Detroit quintet broke, strung out, and politically exhausted. But before the inevitable collapse, before the major label compromises and internal warfare, there was one perfect moment when everything aligned – when five working-class kids from Lincoln Park channeled pure revolutionary fury into 38 minutes of the most dangerous rock and roll ever committed to vinyl.

That moment was captured live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom on October 30 and 31, 1968, and released as "Kick Out the Jams" in February 1969. What Elektra Records unleashed upon an unsuspecting world wasn't just an album – it was a Molotov cocktail hurled directly at the establishment's face, complete with Wayne Kramer's incendiary guitar work, Rob Tyner's howling vocals, and enough political rage to fuel a small revolution.

The album opens with Tyner's now-legendary battle cry: "Right now... right now... right now it's time to... KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!" The profanity might seem quaint by today's standards, but in 1969, it was enough to get the album banned from major retail chains and land the band in hot water with their label. More importantly, it served notice that MC5 weren't interested in playing by anyone's rules.

The title track remains the album's crown jewel – a three-minute sonic assault that sounds like Chuck Berry fed through a Marshall stack and political awakening. Kramer's guitar doesn't just solo; it screams, wails, and threatens to tear holes in the fabric of reality itself. Meanwhile, the rhythm section of Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson pounds out a groove so primal it seems to tap directly into humanity's reptilian brain.

But "Kick Out the Jams" isn't a one-trick pony. "Ramblin' Rose" transforms Hank Williams' country standard into a psychedelic freakout, while "Come Together" (not the Beatles song, but MC5's own composition) builds from a hypnotic groove into controlled chaos. The 11-minute "Starship" pushes the boundaries of what rock music could contain, incorporating free jazz elements and extended improvisation that would make Miles Davis proud.

The band's musical style defied easy categorization, which was precisely the point. They were simultaneously the hardest rock band and the most political, the most experimental and the most primal. Drawing from blues, jazz, R&B, and pure Detroit street energy, MC5 created something that wouldn't be properly named until years later: punk rock. The Ramones, Sex Pistols, and Clash all owe a debt to what MC5 accomplished on this album.

The circumstances leading to this recording were as volatile as the music itself. MC5 had spent years as house band for radical activist John Sinclair's White Panther Party, performing at rallies, protests, and benefits. They were genuine revolutionaries who happened to play rock and roll, not rock stars playing at politics. Their association with Sinclair brought constant FBI surveillance and harassment, adding genuine danger to their already explosive live performances.

The Grande Ballroom shows were captured by Elektra as a compromise – the label wanted to record the band but recognized that their live energy couldn't be replicated in a sterile studio environment. The decision proved prophetic, as MC5's subsequent studio albums, while containing moments of brilliance, never quite captured the lightning-in-a-bottle intensity of their live performances.

Today, "Kick Out the Jams" stands as one of rock's essential documents. Its influence can be heard in everyone from the Stooges to Rage Against the Machine, from Metallica to the White Stripes. The album didn't just predict punk rock – it invented it, fifteen years ahead of schedule. More than five decades later, it still sounds like the future, or at least like the future we were promised before corporate rock sanitized rebellion and turned revolution into a marketing strategy.

In an era of focus-grouped rebellion and manufactured authenticity, "Kick Out the Jams" remains genuinely threatening. It's the sound of young Americans who believed rock and roll could change the world, and for 38 minutes, they make you believe it too.