Kick Out The Jams – MC5*

Ramblin’ Rose/Kick Out The Jams/Come Together/Rocket Reducer No.62/Borderline/Motor City Is Burning/I Want You Right Now

Kick Out The Jams was the debut album from the Detroit garage rock group MC5 recorded live at the Grande Ballroom, Detroit in October 1968. It appears to have been aimed at those who prefer energetic performances to musical quality. (US:30)

“A stinging raw blister of sweaty hookless rubbish. Recorded horribly, this messy batch of heavy rock guitars has a sludgy grotesqueness performed by a loud gritty drug street rock band. The guitar tones are absolutely vicious. There is no precision in this loose slab of distorted chordery, and it hardly ever manages to rock because the drums are buried in the mix. The most remarkable thing about Kick Out The Jams, however, is not its revolutionary fervour, or socio-political leftist leanings, but the fact that it has almost no good songs.”

“Angry and politicised enough to edge towards punk rock, but with enough classic rock features - they slip in an old school guitar solo here and there. MC5 were one of the loudest bands you could hear in 1969. They made the right call in making their first album a live one, because the music is so raw, so vital, and the energy of the crowd is so intense, that it would be impossible to capture quite the same atmosphere in a studio.”

“This album is more about the punk energy than the music, which is below par. The Motor City 5 capture their energy well on this live album, and were important in the punk movement, but the album as a whole doesn’t do it for me.”

“There are no songs - there are riffs and beats and vocals but nothing seems to go together, they're all at the same tempo, but they're not related and don't communicate with each other. It's just so bizarre that they managed to create a whole rock album without any rock songs. You can listen to this twenty times and not remember any full songs properly.”

“Mostly noise. I don't care if it's raw, primal, sweaty, etc., where's the hooks? Where's the groove? Where's the swing? Not to be found here, that's for sure. Rubbish. I expect a lot more from this. It was just poorly recorded, underdeveloped, poorly played and poorly written.”