Kick Out the Jams

Kick Out the Jams is the debut album by American rock band MC5. A live album, it was recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit over two nights, October 30 and 31, 1968, and released in February 1969, by Elektra Records.

The album peaked at No. 30 on the Billboard 200 chart, with the title track peaking at No. 82 on the Billboard Hot 100. Although the album initially received an unfavorable review from Rolling Stone magazine upon its release, it has gone on to be considered an important forerunner to punk rock music, and was ranked number 294 in both 2003 and 2012 editions of Rolling StoneTemplate:'s "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" lists, with it dropping to number 349 in a 2020 revised list.

Background and release

The album peaked at number 30 on the Billboard albums chart, "in the wake of a publicity blitz", wrote Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). In Canada, the album reached #37.

While "Ramblin' Rose" and "Motor City Is Burning" open with the band's typical leftist and revolutionary rhetoric, it was the opening line to the title track that stirred up controversy. Vocalist Rob Tyner shouted, "And right now... right now... right now it's time to... kick out the jams, motherfuckers!" before the opening riffs. Elektra Records executives were offended by the line and had preferred to edit it out of the album (replacing the offending words with "brothers and sisters"), while the band and manager John Sinclair adamantly opposed this.

However in 2002, Wayne Kramer explained to NPR's Terry Gross on her show, Fresh Air, the band understood and accepted the single needed to be recorded without the profanity.

The original release had "kick out the jams, Motherfuckers!" printed on the inside album cover, but was soon pulled from stores. Two versions were then released, both with censored album covers, with the uncensored audio version sold behind record counters.

The controversy escalated further when Hudson's department stores refused to carry the album. Tensions between the band and the Hudson's chain escalated to the point that the department stores refused to carry any album from the Elektra label after MC5 took out a full-page ad that, according to Danny Fields, "was just a picture of Rob Tyner, and all it said was 'Fuck Hudson's.' And it had the Elektra logo". To end the conflict and to avoid further financial loss, Elektra dropped MC5 from their record label.

Later the same year, Jefferson Airplane recorded the song "We Can Be Together" for their Volunteers album, a song containing the word "motherfucker". Unlike Elektra, RCA Records released the album wholly uncensored.

Music and lyrics

The music on Kick Out the Jams has been described as "raw, in-your-face, savage and raging." According to Classic Rock Magazine, "it’s a devastating introduction to a band who had so much anger and frustration to get out of their system."

"Kick out the jams" has been taken to be a slogan of the 1960s ethos of revolution and liberation, an incitement to "kick out" restrictions in various forms. To quote MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer from his interview with Caroline Boucher in Disc & Music Echo magazine on August 8, 1970:

People said "oh wow, 'kick out the jams' means break down restrictions" etc., and it made good copy, but when we wrote it we didn't have that in mind. We first used the phrase when we were the house band at a ballroom in Detroit, and we played there every week with another band from the area. [...] We got in the habit, being the sort of punks we are, of screaming at them to get off the stage, to kick out the jams, meaning stop jamming. We were saying it all the time and it became a sort of esoteric phrase. Now, I think people can get what they like out of it; that's one of the good things about rock and roll.

The title has also been reinterpreted as an establishment message masquerading as a revolutionary anthem. David Bowie sings in the song "Cygnet Committee": "[We] stoned the poor on slogans such as/Wish You Could Hear/Love Is All We Need/Kick Out the Jams/Kick Out Your Mother".

Critical reception

Upon its release, critic Lester Bangs, writing his inaugural review for Rolling Stone, called Kick Out the Jams a "ridiculous, overbearing, pretentious album". In contrast to this view, modern opinion of the album generally holds it in very high regard, noting its influence on rock music that has followed. Mark Deming in a retrospective review for AllMusic called it "one of the most powerfully energetic live albums ever made". PopMatters reviewer Adam Williams wrote, "For my money, 'Kick Out the Jams' is one of the greatest records ever pressed. It is a magnificent time portal into the past, a fleeting glimpse of a band that actually had the balls to walk it like they talked it" and that "no live recording has captured the primal elements of rock more than the MC5's inaugural effort." Bangs himself would change his mind about the album, writing in a footnote in his Troggs essay "James Taylor Marked for Death":

Incidentally, I'm not trying to run down the Five, or write them off as some Troggs trifle. When I reviewed their first album in Rolling Stone, I finished by mentioning "The Troggs, who appeared with a similar sex-and-violence thing a couple of years back, and promptly sank into oblivion, where I imagine they are laughing at the MC5," and that of course is as snottily unkind to the Troggs as to the Five. But then, it was the first review I ever had published, and even if more death threats came in after that review than any other save Jann Wenner's Wheels of Fire massacre (and most of them from sweet home Detroit), I can see why people privileged enough to be part of the apocalyptic birth of the Five would be enraged. And to compound the irony, Kick Out the Jams has been my favorite album or at least one of the two or three most played for about three months now.

Legacy

In March 2005, Q magazine placed the song "Kick Out the Jams" at number 39 in its "100 Greatest Guitar Tracks" list. The same track was named the 65th best hard rock song of all time by VH1.

"The MC5 were a mercurial band," remarked guitarist Wayne Kramer. "We were inconsistent. All of a sudden, this was the night. It was a lot of pressure for us to be under. I hear it every time I listen to the record. I hear me making clumsy mistakes on the guitar; I hear Dennis all over on the tempos; I hear Rob not quite in the perfect voice he was capable of."

Tyler Kane of Paste Magazine wrote in 2018: "It might not have been until 1977 when punk rock became somewhat of a household term, but its foundation was set in 1969 with the Motor City Five’s roaring arrival, Kick Out the Jams."

Classic Rock Magazine wrote in 2021: "While many people would suggest albums from Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, UFO and others, it’s arguable that Kick Out The Jams is the greatest live album of all time."

Personnel

MC5

• Rob Tyner – lead vocals
• Wayne Kramer – lead guitar, backing vocals, lead vocals on "Ramblin' Rose"
• Fred "Sonic" Smith – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
• Michael Davis – bass guitar
• Dennis Thompson – drums

Additional personnel

• Brother J. C. Crawford – "spiritual advisor"
• John Sinclair – "guidance", liner notes
• Bruce Botnick – engineer
• Robert L. Heimall, William S. Harvey – artwork
• Joel Brodsky – album cover photo
• Magdalena Sinclair – liner photography

External links

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