MC5 – Back In The USA

Rot in Hell Jon Landrau, the producer for the castration of this material! If you heard these song live, you understand. What a shit record. Thank the goddess for High Times, the very good album after this nightmare.

i wonder what this original (label) pressing sounds like? (the first Brownsville Station album, No B.S.,originally issued on Punch Andrews' Palladium imprint)). i have had a Warners WLP (no jacket) since back then in real time, and it (that pressing) is the BEST SOUNDING HARD ROCK RECORDING to come out of the whole 1968 - 1971ish local/national Detroit/Michigan scene. the hard rock songs/rearrangements (Roadrunner and Rumble are to f'n die for) just kick mega-ass. and what a great drummer (he's gone by the end of that season or year).

why the MC5 didn't have the "duh PAY ATTENTION YOU f'n IDIOTS" oh jeez, it's the MC5, trying to get anything productive or logical or whatever out of that pack's brain trust (rob and wayne after being brainwashed by jon landau: "yeah! that's just what we need! brand new shiny little silver-face fender CBS-ERA amps that sound like shit! that's just what our album sessions coming up need, plinky-dinky-dink rhythm guitar sounds that chuck berry would approve of!" (A: are u f'n nuts. please check out his early 45s from 1955-56, man that rhythm guitar is distorted or at least edge-of-distortion as all fuck, and i mean like AC/DC bon scott era would salute him) and soooo, yeah. (the 45 mix on Tonight definitely works though, maybe the album cut too. meaning the "gain pot / volume knob" and wayne and/or fred's 1st rhythm guitar track rolled back). arrrrrgh, let me go back in time, whack Wayne upside the side of the head a couple times, and lay a 100% simple truth on him: if you write songs with a little practice amp that distorts and shrieks and whines the minute you're 'standing to close" with its knobs (gain, volume, master volume) all the way up -- well, duh, that is what your songs are going to sound like.

but dennis thompson -- when dennis is "the sane voice in the room" you know that the ship has gone off the rails, hit a freeway over and maybe a couple of stray cows before it finally thumps into an abandoned empty VW 'hippie van' -- really had the last word on the ultra sort-of-really-a-semi-fiasco that was the MC5 through the last half of 1969: "i ain't going to play NO! NAZI! MARCHING! MUSIC!" (his quite reasonable suggestion to noob rookie producer jon landau). but he did. part of that living abortion (the half of it that sucks, hard) of an album that pretty much tanked their career and would've anyone else's too. (there is nothing else you can call it's 1st and last tracks, i.e. the two cover songs. except a gigantic wtf. like what the hell are you guys doing? have you LOST YOUR MINDS? ("but these shiny little new CBS Fender amps are so cool looking! look how they sparkle and shine when you turn the studio lights down!"). like, omg. can't we just go back in time and throw these guys into a cheap UK studio (Regent Sound's famous 4-track board) with an unknown london guy/producer named Rodger Bain? ("no, you can't"). well fuck it then, this is not going to end well.

meanwhile, way-down-on-the-bill relative-schlub band (relative to their peers around Detroit and Michigan) cut (that next year, 1970) the BEST SOUNDING HARDEST ROCKING MOTHERFUCKKER OF A HARD ROCKING (did i say that it rocks hard, and the drummer kicks mega-ass?) ALBUM out of the entire 3 or 4 or 5 years of that "everybody is getting signed. but who the hell greenlighted turds like bandleaders doug fieger or dick wagner for album deals?" ("probably the same brainiacs who thought that the Savage Grace were somehow related to the MC5 or at least SRC") crazy wild Detroit/Michigan scene. crazy world, man, crazy world.

Greil Marcus in rolling stone nailed the Back In The USA album to the wall, just in more polite language. Call Me Animal is great, The American Ruse is better than great, Human Being Lawnmower is fucking amazing (and the Looking at You remake is f'n excellent). (and either mix of Tonight on lp or 45 is exce-fucking-lent, just a tom hanks-worthy "man, that's snappy! and barely two minutes long! i like it! let's get it in the stores by monday!" radio-ready track). but lame weak-assed crap like "highschool, sis boom bah!" oh jesus, ARE? YOU? KIDDING ME? Teenage Lust is worse, and omg Let Me Try is just h o r r i f i c, again, refer to brownsville station.

i will duly note (and not amused one bit by the fact) that Dennis Thompson was the most BADLY and/or POORLY RECORDED top notch 60's-style drummer in all of 60's/early 70's hard rock history. and i mean criminally so. jeesus, man. just call Glyn Johns on the phone! it is SOOO SIMPLE. two overhead microphones to pick up the whole kit! (ancient style "big band era" microphones is what johns/shelTalmy were using, notably forever captured on tape on that aMAzinG sounding "little drum kit where everything is also magically in TUNE to real tones" (snare, side toms, floor tom, all of it) first Who album. (plus a mike on the kick drum front side, which was a first for that in the UK). IT IS THAT SIMPLE. seriously, did any of you even go to college? (hand in the air, jon landau). um, i mean, to MUSIC college? (hand in the air again, jon landau. who played in rock band cover bands in his late teen years, including when starting his undergrad studies at Brandies University). oh man. this is hopeless. no one will ever be able to fix this, but people will argue about it forever. THIS BAND (the five from the motor city) SHOULD HAVE BEEN AMERICA's ROLLING STONES. jesus, what a bunch of fuckups. did you guys even have a manager? (oh wait, entire books were written by or about that guy). ha. i bet brownsville station just skipped the "10% to the manager" and cubby the cubmeister did the inbetween phone work to the booking agent! (could it have been jeep holland?)

again, dennis thompson was right to call red flags on what was going down, although i am sure that the six people involved (counting jon landau) have six to sixty alternate versions of just how "should have been america's rolling stones, all it's going to take is two hit singles and it's all downhill" (starting with square one: they LOOKED the part. they 'fit the suit'!) instead went down in history as a complete bunch of f u c k ups.

and if any band from detroit/ann arbor proper deserved to have a hit single, man, brownsville station was it. even if it wasn't the greatest song ever written.

i am conspicuously avoiding the "grand funk question" (since they were way up in Flint, and with the dubious 'terry knight and the pack' sideman pedigree for don, and if i right, mark too at one point). who did everything right, had a real manager, and just rolled nonstop until they realized that (said manager) all their money had disappeared! (legally). moral, well taken: show up early to a 'business meeting,' close the manager or lawyer or publicist's door, and start hacking through all those unlocked desk drawers! you never know what you might find! and boy Grand Funk sure did.