Featured Song: Lookin At You by MC5 (1968/A-Square Records & Trans-Love Energies/Detroit, MI)
Over the last few entries, I've shown a couple different approaches people took to making rock 'n' roll 'grow up.' The Folk Rockers slowed things down and played up the storytelling while gesturing towards politics. The Br*ts brought back the blues aspect The Psychedelic Rockers incorporated elements of international genres like Indian Raga. In New York City, the likes of The Fugs and The Velvet Underground were trying to make rock and roll about art. However, while all this was going on, there were terrific swathes of people who wondered if rock and roll really needed to mature. After all, this was more than a decade after rock and roll was dismissed as a passing fad. This kind of music spoke to people, and though it might have been the Teeny-bopper's favorite, people were starting to stick with it into adulthood.
Oh, remember when I said Louie Lou-eye by The Kingsmen inspired thousands to start up bands in their garages? Well, appropriately enough, one of the places where this trend caught on the most was in Michigan, home of the American auto industry. There was ? and The Mysterians from Saginaw, The Plagues from Lansing, The Index from Grosse Pointe, and The Pleasure Seekers, an all-female outfit from Detroit, just to name a handful of the ones who recorded. When enough artists in a similar area start taking influence from each other, you'll find what you have is a scene. The Michigan scene took a little bit of influence from the psychedelic scene in California, but looked at everything else and said "No, Thanks."
Things started to change as the political situation in Michigan intensified. As black Michiganders fought the backlash from white Michiganders in the wake of The Civil Rights Act, the once prosperous American auto industry began to slow down. While smaller manufacturers went out of business, giants like Ford moved plants into the mostly white suburbs. Combined with inequality in housing, education, and above all, the extensive drafting of black men into the Vietnam War, lead to riots in the summer of 1967 .
These riots proved highly influential to teenage Detroit rock guitarists Fred Smith and Wayne Kramer. Through their interest in the works of The Beat Generation, they got into jazz music, and through free jazz they got into black politics, specifically Marxism as practiced by The Black Panther Party. Their high-energy, free-jazz influenced take on the garage rock of their contemporaries make them one of the most popular rock acts in the Detroit area. Despite being only around 18-19, Fred and Wayne's band, MC5, are playing nightly. The Motor City 5 are so cutting edge that, having seen them live in late 1967, James Osterberg, formerly of The Iguanas decides this is the music he needs to be making.
By 1968, the dominant sound coming from Detroit is a wild, primal sound fueled by amphetamines, LSD, and radical politics. While MC5 were a wild stage act (once performing for 8 hours straight at the 1968 DNC protests), they prompted others to go further. James Osterberg, now known as Iggy Pop, started taking his clothes off on stage and rubbing himself with raw meat and broken glass. MC5's 1968 summer tour of the East Coast brought a great deal of media attention to the scene. Record labels came looking to sign the most popular acts. MC5 signed to Elektra records, and on their recommendation, The Stooges and The Up got signed, too. In February 1969, MC5 releases their debut album Kick Out The Jams, recorded live for maximum effect. In August 1969, The Stooges release their self-titled debut. Both get panned by critics, with Lester Bangs devoting his inaugural Rolling Stone review to trashing Kick Out The Jams. Nevertheless, both albums manage to crack the Billboard top 200. There was certainly something to this music, and to that scene in Detroit.
Tomorrow, More weirdness in the Detroit Scene (Plus, What Does "Punk" Mean Anyway?)