The Wake

MC5 - Kick Out The Jams

With blood, adrenaline and testosterone spewing from its every orifice, MC5’s Kick Out the Jams is quite possibly the most appropriately titled album in the history of appropriate album titles. The band’s call to “Kick out the jams, Mother Fuckers,” jumps past the cliché “take no prisoners” to floor you with 40 minutes of unremitting rock.

Kick Out The Jams was recorded at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in late 1968. The album was recorded before a live audience, so MC5’s sound could feed off the crowd’s energy and break the confines of studio. The result is a work comprised of the energies of both the crowd and the band. Combined with the raw power of live rock and roll, the album inspires listeners to kick out the jams, motherfucker.

While the album borrows from guitar blues, rock ‘n’roll, and R&B, it reinvents any established conventions of these genres. Like an early Rolling Stones garage anthem, Kick Out the Jams presents a glimpse of familiarity before it is cloaked and overpowered by a mixture of sweat and psychosis. Using crunching guitars and wailing vocals, the album essentially creates the kind of chaos, which, nearly a decade later, became popularly called punk.

When it was originally released, Kick Out the Jams received less than stellar reviews. Lester Bangs of Rolling Stone Magazine criticized the band for both their outrageous teenage behavior and their borrowed rock ‘n’ roll machismo. Lester - rest in peace man, but you missed the point… you can mock the album’s style and creativity, but it contains some truly special rock ‘n’ roll. While other bands transformed the genre into harder and faster styles, few have come close to the explosive chemistry of the MC5

Lastly: Album reviews cannot give you a full understanding of what Kick Out the Jams is, listening will.