Mein Kampf

 By Max Conroy

My struggle lately has been that I have way too much music to listen to.  In the past year or so, I’ve had some incredible resources and have acquired more music than I could realistically listen to.  It’s obviously the result of some sort of compulsion that I have to collect things.  But records are meant to be listened to, and I feel guilty about having some of the best records ever made lying around where I’m only able to dedicate a cursory listen.  Also, my interests wax and wane like the moon, so I’ll have some records that I’ve just purchased and my interest in that genera of music will fall by the wayside, the record filed to be stumbled upon when my interest in that music reawakens.  I guess the solution is to make it a point to try and not acquire anything new.  Don’t worry, readers, I’ll have plenty of stuff to write about.

For some reason, last night I actually went through my CDs and pulled out a huge pile and pretty much froze because it was late, past midnight, and I wanted to listen to everything, but I didn’t want to be up till sunrise.  I’ve been getting back into rock and roll, from jazz fusion and soul and funk.  I had also just hooked my DVD player up through my stereo, so I wanted to be able to watch a bit of something before I went to bed, so I had to make a tough decision, but I sure as hell made the right choice.

Starship, The MC5 at the Sturgis Armory June 27, 1968 is, in my mind, the best document of the MC5 live.  Don’t get me wrong, Kick Out the Jams is a hell of a record, but it doesn’t necessarily represent the 5 accurately with regards to their live show at the time.  They knew that they were going to make a record and had to trim parts of the set, like Black to Comm and various jazz and soul medleys from their set to make a digestible product for the masses (I’m not saying they sold out to the man or anything, they do say ‘motherfucker’ in the first five minutes, before their most commercial song).  The sound on Starship is obviously from someone in the crowd, so this is how it pretty much sounded if you were standing in the Sturgis Armory.  A lot of people don’t realize that soundboard recordings aren’t necessarily the shit because they just capture the sound that’s pumped through the system and not what comes out of it. 

Where is Sturgis you ask?  It’s in southwest Michigan, not far at all from where I, and Cousin Justin, grew up.  The area now is probably a ghost town, but back in the day when muscle cars were king the place was probably still out of the way.  This show catches the 5 playing their set in all its glory in a small town and displays perfectly their mettle.  They didn’t care where they were playing or who to; when they stepped on the stage it was all over; they were going to destroy any other band that dared share that stage, no matter who it was, Cream or Led Zeppelin.

I had to put the headphones on for this one as it was late and I needed volume, so I recommend that you do the same.  Find your headphones and brace yourself…

Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa:

James Brown’s Cold Sweat:  Dig Dennis Thompson’s drumming on this track.

PS:  In my opinion the only other live performace by the 5 that rivals this is Thunder Express, a live set in a European studio.  Go figure, Cub Coda gave it two stars in AMG, haha.