MC5 Or DC5?

If there is a more burning question than "Boxers Or Briefs?" it's the big musical question: MC5 or DC5? Not that its impossible to enjoy the music of both bands, but there is a slight generational difference. In some ways they're surprisingly similar - both bands have an affinity blues/jazz only presented differently, and both are also extraordinarily LOUD, especially for their time. Let's weigh both bands:

The MC5 (Motor City Five) were the pride of Detroit, Michigan in 1968 and well initially well-known for aligning themselves with John Sinclair's White Panthers Party, not quite as menacing as the Black Panthers, but still a great gimmick, forerunners to The New York Dolls and their red leather drag and Communist flag shtick and many others following that.

In 1969 several labels hit pay dirt cashing in on the Detroit sound, like The Bob Seger System, The Frost, The Amboy Dukes, SRC, The Stooges, Grand Funk Railroad with even Alice Cooper stopping by for an extended residency. Elektra Records signed the MC5 for the terminally loud 'n proud "Kick Out The Jams" showing the band ripping it up with bottomless American flags rolling down miles and miles behind them.

One of the brilliant highlights of Kick Out The Jams was the choice of covering Sun Ra and The Troggs on the same record, pretty audacious for its time and a definite influence on me, as well. If free jazz can't be played on electric guitars then it can't be played on anything, dammit! Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith clearly defined the band's sound with their wild, barley controlled screaming guitars.

Back In The USA was considered a disappointment when it was released, but I think after the utter Mad House riot Revolution In The Streets vibe of the first album a more controlled affair was in order, so you got more poppier songs like Shakin' Street and High School. By the time High Time was released the band was back in full psycho abandon with tracks like Sister Anne, Sonically Speaking - back to the jazz saxes honking like mad - and Future Now.

I'm the usually the last to hear good news about anything, so I just recently heard that in 2010 Dave Clark finally turned over at least ten albums worth of material of DC5 (Dave Clark Five) music, three of them containing either unreleased or obscure tracks that barely got its minimum daily requirement of oxygen. Unfortunately they're only available on iTunes, so it's time to pay the Apple piper again. But I digress.

The DC5 were such a powerful force during the British Invasion that they knocked The Beatles out of the Number One position in the charts and in their prime were two steps behind The Fab Four everywhere they went. They followed The Beatles as the second English band to play on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was that serious, but why not? They were sensational.

Unlike the MC5 there was more than guitar army reconnaissance going on: the DC5 had some wicked blues organ playing from singer Mike Smith, who wrote most of the material, and wicked raspy saxophone playing from Denny Payton. Denny Payton occasionally overdubbed his tenor and baritone saxophones together on several songs, sounding not unlike that badass Dana Colley from Morphine.

With Mike Smith's snarling vocals mixing with Dave Clark's military march pounding (pre-dating Gary Glitter's homo stomp by a good 10 years!) and Payton's growling mad dog saxophone, the DC5 tore into R&B standards like "Do You Love Me", "Reelin' and Rockin'" and "I Like It Like That" with vicious abandon.

Equally exciting is the new, unreleased material like "Fallout Shelter", "The Man In The Pin Stripe Suit", and "Return My Love". And how great is it that we can finally enjoy songs like "I'm Thinkin'" and "Say You Want Me" in digital panorama sound instead of that scratchy Epic Records vinyl. Nostalgia is nice but pops and hisses aren't and a good, clean polish only makes the songs sound more demented.

The influence of both bands is far and wide, almost hard to even estimate: MC5 have influenced bands like Radio Birdman, KISS (esp. High Time, listen to Baby Won't You or Over And Over) and The Didjits. The DC5 have clearly influenced bands as varied as The Monks, Slade - check out the stomping drums! and The Ramones, who covered the sublime Any Way You Want It.

If you haven't heard the MC5 lately dust off their records and turn it up, especially Sister Anne. And if you haven't checked out the DC5 on mp3, now's the time to do it before Dave Clark pulls a Walt Disney and pulls the tracks off the shelf, which he's done before. I guarantee it'll clean your clock!

Christmas With The Hip Chicks

Saddle up a satellite, baby, and I’ll spin you a wild yarn about two hip chicks, the Scooby Dooby Sisters, why they might be the craziest chicks you ever did seed, keed. It was Christmas Day and Ellie and Millie bugged out on making the scene at their Mom’s humble three-story pad. They stayed in and sipped their holiday espressos, digging their crazy Christmas branch, a thick branch from an elm tree with a red balloon on it with glitter. There were four presents under this Christmas branch. One for each of them from their mother and one they bought for each other.

Ellie, the blonde with the ironed hair, opened up her Christmas gift from Moms, and pulled out a beautiful black Christian Dior formal. “Dig this. What am I supposed to do with these crazy threads?”
Millie, her sister with the ratted out auburn locks, shook her shoulder. “Zilch! She laid a century on you, though”, and pointed towards the $100 bill that fell out of the package.
“Crazy! Benjamin Franklin, dig those crazy shades. Never did make the presidential scene”.
“What a drag”.
Millie opened up her package from Mom and another $100 bill tumbled out along with a necklace of double string pearls. “Pearls? Dresses? Man, somebody GOOFED!”

Ellie picked up something that looked like a pair of bongos poorly wrapped up in some newspaper scraps stuck together with scotch tape that had blonde hair strands stuck on the ends.
“Hey, sis, dig this crazy present”.
“Man, that’s one suave-looking gift, lay it on me, chick”, Millie grabbed it and tore off the wrapping. “New bongos! They’re the most!”
“Lay some sounds on me!” Millie drummed wildly on the bongos while Ellie did a wild interpretive dance. This went on for five minutes until they both got tired.
Millie picked up her package and thrust it at Ellie. “Dig my bodacious bundle. Merry Commercial Christmas!”
Ellie tore open her package and it was a stolen library book called, “Famous Presidents In American History”.
“Ooh, solid, baby! All my faves are here: William McKinley, James Buchanan, the only swinging single President ever, Millard Fillmore –“
“-and don’t forget Zachary Taylor, the coolest President alive. He split the scene seven weeks after he got elected!”
“Yeah, he cut out right after he copped the Big Chief gig!”
The chicks got so jazzed that Millie picked up her dirty bongos again and Ellie went into her abstract expressionist dance with her book in her hands, the very stern face of Abraham Lincoln peering out of the cover. Her wicked dance cast shadows set by the flickering candle in the room, the shadows playing against the cheap Picasso prints and bullfight poster on the wall of their humble beatnik apartment.

Well, the dolls got so tired from dancing and crashing from their caffeine jag that they both sacked out on the sofa, making the sandman scene, both snoring more atonally than Brubeck, Mulligan and Kenton all put together.

___________________ _______________________ ______________

Millie and Ellie stood around a dark ballroom with brightly colored gels projected on a stage. There were hipsters of all sizes wearing brightly colored clothes and the men had hair as long as the girls they were with.

“Dig this crazy fallout shelter!” Millie’s crazy orbs got big clocking the weirdo establishment they were standing around in.
Ellie nodded. “Like nervous, baby, nervous! These cats got some caveman action going on, hair down to their-“
“Say girls”, a hippie with a bushy beard and Ben Franklin shades walked up to them. “I’ve never seen you chicks make the scene at the Fillmore West before. What’s shaking?” He handed them both a dirty, wilted flower that smelled like sweaty dogs.
“I dig your glasses, Clyde, you got that presidential thing going on, bippity bop, boop bop”.
“Far out, sunshine! They call me Star Sailor. Hey, are you going to the Love-In at the park by Haight Street this Saturday? The Dead are gonna be jamming.”
“You wanna transpose that in another key, Long Hair Daddy. Why would you be loving a place called Hate Street? That’s abstract!”
“Dead people jamming, chicky”, Millie added, “that’s some freaky rebop!”
“Later, chicks, much, much, later”, the hippie walked away, disgusted.
“What’s his scene?” Ellie asked.
“Too many test patterns. Sold American”.

A voice came over the PA as a band got on stage. “Give a warm Fillmore West welcome to Big Brother and The Holding Company”.
The band tore into their opening number and Janis Joplin started squalling. “Why-ie-ie-ie I need a man to lo-ove…”
“Man, dig those crazy branches! I gotta have a major pow-wow with her”.
Janis shrieked for two more numbers. "Love's like uh bawwwllll-een-chayunnnn- waw-wowow..."
“She’s flipping out!”
“What a drag!”
“When does she make with the finger cymbals?”
A stoned girl in a huge mu-mu crashed into them and fell flat on her back, prompting our two hipsters to split towards the back of the club.
“Flip city!”
“Bugsville, like too bugged out!”

They looked around the club near the back and noticed one of their heroes double-fisting beers and chatting up an acid-bleached hippie hag.
“Neal Cassady? What’s he doing here?”
“Man, he looks beat, like more beat than he’s ever been beat”.
“What a drag. Mayhaps Sal Paradise or Ginsberg are making the scene, too”.
“Man, Cassady, he looks like fell off one of Kerouac’s crazy peaks and didn’t miss a boulder”.
“Neurotic”.

“You chicks made the scene! Far out!” a familiar voice piped up behind them. They spun around and smiled to see –
“SCRUFFY!” they both yelled. It was their beatnik crush, Scruffy aka Sterling Holloway Scarborough IV, hipper and even richer than them with a large trust fund. His hair was a little longer than they remembered, but his cooler looks were still as solid as ever.
“Man, what is this tee-pee we’re at? Clue us in”, Ellie asked.
“It’s 1967, you’re in San Francisco, it’s the Summer of Love, dig? This is the Fillmore West, where it’s all happening. Those crazy test patterns are called a light show and these kids are grooving to Janis on some prime psychedelic Owsley, baby”.
“Ows-what?”
“Acid, baby, acid!”
“No coffee? Bongos? Poetry readings?”
“Negative, but all the interpretive dancing you ever did see”, he pointed at a 300-pound girl nine months pregnant doing an Arabic snake dance with herself. “Dig that crazy way-out doll, she strips at a groovy club to all the square johns down on North Beach".
“You must be putting us on!”
Millie looked perplexed. “But why is it 1967? We're from 1955”.
“Just let your mind flow, dig the ride while it lasts”, Scruffy smiled. “Have some love beads”, and he placed love beads on both their necks. “Gotta split, like dig ya later. OOOOOM".

____________ ____________________ _______________

Janis finished her set and the girls moved up towards the front. The stench of pot was overwhelming, hemp stank of marijuana so thick you could cut it with a saber.

A short, thick Japanese girl with fried black hair down to her ankles got on stage with a guitarist playing noisy feedback. “Don’t worry, Don’t worry, Don’t worry, Don’t worry, KYOKOKYOKOKYOKO, AIEEEEEEE!” She shrieked and wailed like a cat caught in a threshing machine. The Hip Chicks clutched their ears and winced with pain.
“Bad scene!”
“Whaaaat?”
“BAD SCENE!”
“We gotta split from this oxygen tent, like, NOW!”

“AAAIIIIIIEEEEE, PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE PEACE, GET IN THE BAG, KYOKO!” She growled and screamed, her demented Japanese witch face all screwed up. The high-pitched frequencies of her shrieking coupled with her grotesque features made our girls cry.
“Cut the rebop, Kabuki Witch!” Ellie cried, tears streaming down her face.
“Make with that square Hollywood jazz, sister, say it!”
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”, Ellie chanted, clicking her scuffed moccasins over and over again. “There’s no place like home!”

_______________ _____________ _____________

Millie and Ellie both woke up from the sofa to the piercing whine of the test pattern with the Injun head on their tiny television set.

“I just had the craziest dream, sister”.
“I dig, like ditto. It was wilder than that test pattern on the boob tube”.
“Scruffy was in mine, and–“
“Me too, and Neal Cassady was in it making like a dirty old man, dig!”
“Yeah, and this beat geisha witch was screaming about bags and peace–“
“Ditto, chicky baby, ditto! That voice of hers jammed my wavelength.”

“Let’s cross our paws and wish it stays 1955 forever”.
“I dig, 1967 sounds like a stone cold drag”.
“All I gotta say is, we wish you a real gone gasser this Yuletide”, they both smiled and said. “And a groovier New Year”.