Show #182 Wayne Kramer Tribute

 

This one's for Brother Wayne Kramer...

 

Ramblin' Rose- MC5 Kick Out The Jams 

Jail Guitar Doors- The Clash Clash City Rockers 7"

Snatched Defeat- Wayne Kramer Citizen Wayne 

Billy The Monster- The Deviants The Deviants 

Get Some- Wayne Kramer Ramblin' Rose 7"

East Side Girl- Wayne Kramer The Harder They Come 7"

Hey Thanks- Gang War Crime of the Century 

Gimme Some Head- GG Allin s/t 7" 

Party Boy- Rousers s/t 7"

I Need Your Love- The Boyfriends Lost Treasures 

Down In The Trenches- The Broadcasters 13 Ghosts 

Bad Love- Mark Johnson Mark Johnson & The Wild Alligators 

Negative Girls- Wayne Kramer Negative Girls 7"

Edge Of The Switchblade- Wayne Kramer The Hard Stuff

Back to Detroit- Wayne Kramer Dangerous Madness 

Revolution in Apt. 29- Wayne Kramer Citizen Wayne 

Better Than That- Dodge Main Dodge Main 

Nuts About You- Mad For The Racket The Racketeers 

Great Big Amp- Wayne Kramer Adult World 

One Of The Guys- MC5 '66 Breakout 

Break Time- MC5 '66 Breakout 

Looking At You- MC5 Michigan Nuggets 

No Easy Way Out- Wayne Kramer LLMF

The Internet has helped destroy the fabric of our society yet there's no denying it's also made it much easier to find information about things you're interested in.  Growing up on Massachusetts' South Shore in the late 70's, rock mags Circus and Hit Parader had all I needed to know about Kiss and Aerosmith but after getting into punk rock I realized I was on my own when it came to news about Buzzcocks and The Clash.  As he usually did, Cousin Rich found the solution with a subscription to Alan Betrock's New York Rocker.  Within a few years we'd be able to pick us British papers Sounds and NME, then we found the best looking of the bunch, NYC glossy magazine Trouser Press.   In 1980 we got our own paper when record store Newbury Comics started publishing Boston Rock.  Fanzines starting showing up around this time too and I especially liked Boston freebie The Noise.  I still have a copy or two of most of these but was too cheap to pay for a subscription- when there were so many new records to buy I couldn't see spending my hard earned paper route money on something as fleeting as the printed word, especially when Cousin Rich let me borrow his copies.

Along with college radio stations WERS and WMBR (both of which I'd work at years later) by the early 80's we had tons of places to learn about punk and new wave bands but in almost every case nothing predated The Ramones' debut in 1976.  It's dorky as hell to admit now, though I passed on the "cool" rock press there was one magazine I did subscribe to:  Stereo Review, for a whopping $4.99 a year.  Why did a 13 year old need to read about signal to noise ratios, graphic equalizers, and quad sound debates?  I didn't but the back half of the magazine was about music and they had a critic named Steve Simels who I really liked.  He was smart, funny and had great taste in music, like Lester Bangs (who I wouldn't read until later) without the drug abuse.  Simels wrote the first reviews I read about punk and new wave bands, giving their music context in the larger rock & roll continuum.  It was probably in a review of a new punk band that he made the reference for which I am ever grateful.  It was something along the lines of  "The MC5's Kick Out The Jams is the greatest album ever made."  Now it might have been "live album" or "debut album" he was talking about but the point was made- I HAD to hear this record.  

 '

I was a huge fan of NYC proto-punk band The Dictators so my curiosity was further peaked when their brilliant lead guitar player Ross The Boss (AKA Ross Friedman) cited Kick Out The Jams as his all-time favorite album in New York Rocker.  (After Wayne Kramer got out of prison and moved to NYC, he and Ross even played a show together.  By all reports it was a mess but I still would've given anything to be there.)

 

On our next record shopping trip to Harvard Square, Cousin Rich and I started looking for the elusive Kick Out The Jams but it had gone out of print in the US and we had yet to discover used record stores.  I had almost forgotten about the record when on a visit to my grandparents in Ottawa, Ontario that summer I was shocked to find a copy at a record store in that open air shopping district downtown.  The album cover is as visually cacophonous as the music inside. I didn't even see the band name at first but something about Rob Tyner in the upper left corner, the American flag and the photos of Wayne Kramer alongside the undeniably cool Fred "Sonic" Smith in the lower right corner grabbed my attention.  My heart started racing when my eyes focused enough to read the band name at the top and when I turned the record sideways to read "Kick Out The Jams" on the spine I nearly had a heart attack.  I'd found it!!!  KOTJ never went out of print in Canada and I had found it!!!

Here's the thing though- we still had two more weeks in Canada and either my Granna didn't have a record player or (more likely) she did but it did not meet my Stereo Review-informed quality standards, especially for something as precious as the long-sought KOTJ.  So, that meant two weeks of staring at the record cover and it's magnificent gate fold image

 

without being able to actually hear the music.  This had never happened before- I was used to staring at album covers but it was WHILE I was listening to the music.  (FYI- Canadians are nothing if not polite so not surprisingly this album was the version with censored John Sinclair liner notes and "Kick Out The Jams (click) Brothers & Sisters!" intro.  I've since purchased the original version but this Canadian copy remains near and dear to my heart.)  

 

In any case, by the time we got back to Massachusetts the record had already attained mythic stature in my imagination.  Not wanting to spring for a hotel, my family would make the 9-10 hour trip home from Ottawa in one day.  This meant I wasn't going to be able to listen to Kick Out The Jams until 11pm or so and I was going to have to do so on headphones as my parents and sister went right to bed.  I remember dropping the needle and laying down on the floor, perhaps dosing off for a moment until the sound of a clapping crowd brought me back to hear Brother J.C. Crawford deliver the greatest introduction in rock & roll history:

Brother J.C.

"Brothers and Sisters! 

I wanna see a sea of hands out there, 

let me see a sea of hands!  

I want everybody to kick up some noise, 

I want to hear some revolution out there Brothers, 

I wanna hear a little revolution! 

Brothers and Sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are gonna be the problem or whether you are gonna be the solution! (That's right!)

You must choose Brothers, you must choose...

It takes five seconds, five seconds of decision, five seconds to realize your purpose here on the planet...

It takes five seconds to realize that it’s time to move, it’s time to get down with it! 

Brothers, it’s time to testify and I want to know, 

ARE YOU READY TO TESTIFY?

ARE YOU READY?

I GIVE YOU A TESTIMONIAL … THE MC5 !!!

The band launches into their scorching rendition of soul singer Ted Taylor's "Ramblin' Rose" with Wayne Kramer's falsetto vocal leading the way.  Then, in one of the greatest 1-2 punches ever, the band launches into title track "Kick Out The Jams," with it's own iconic intro.  As I write this nearly 45 years later, it's as if I had this experience only yesterday.  There are whole years in my 40's that are less vivid to me.  That is the true power of rock & roll.

Wayne Kramer's post-MC5 story is immortalized in The Clash's "Jail Guitar Doors:"

Let me tell you 'bout Wayne

and his deals in cocaine

A little more every day

Hold for a friend 'till the band do well

Then the DEA locked him away

 

It's a sad story but it's not unique.  Neither is Wayne's time in Gang War- after his release from prison he moved to New York

Wayne & Johnny

and fell in with former New York Doll Johnny Thunders (AKA "Junkie the Laughing Clown").  A band of heroin addicts, what could go wrong? (Based on Wayne's song "Snatched Defeat," the answer is "Everything,") His itinerant years in New York, Key West, and Nashville picking up live and session work, producing bands and mostly working as a carpenter also don't separate Wayne from hundreds of other talented "coulda binna contenduh" rock & roll gypsies.  During this time he put out music under his name or in groups like Death Tongue (props to Berkeley Breathed's comic Bloom County for the band name) but none of it could hold a candle to the MC5 (yes, drummers can be a pain but the alternative -(gulp) a drum machine- is so much worse).

The unique and surprising part of the Wayne Kramer story is 
what came next.  After moving to Los Angeles in the early-90's, Wayne got sober and began a musical third act that is truly inspiring.  He was signed to Epitaph records (which was surfing the 90's punk rock tsunami with bands like The Offspring) and the music on his first album The Hard Stuff is so far beyond anything he'd recorded since the MC5 it seemed like another person entirely, which I guess it was.  Wayne's Epitaph albums and the music he released on his own Muscle Tone label is some of my all-time favorite music.  

 

I saw Wayne live 4 or 5 times during these years, the last a memorable show at The Troubadour in LA, and he was incredible.  A few years later I had the pleasure of meeting Wayne when he played with friend and former MC5 manager John Sinclair & his Blues Scholars in Sebastopol.  We talked for about 20 minutes and Wayne was more than gracious (I'm still kicking myself for asking about his connection with GG Allin but I couldn't help myself).  That night I also met Wayne's manager Margaret Saadi who told me she was working on untangling the shambles that was the end of the MC5.  Little did I know that this would have massive implications over the next 20 years in Wayne's personal and professional life.

 

Wayne & Margaret

Wayne and Margaret were married in 2003.  In 2004 the living members of the MC5 (Wayne, bass player Michael Davis and drummer Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson) reunited for the DKT-MC5 tour along with luminaries like Lemmy, Dave Vanian, Marshall Crenshaw, Mark Arm and others.  I saw their stop in San Francisco and it was awesome (who knew Crenshaw could shred... the less said about Evan Dando the better).  

 

Wayne & Billy

I was sorry to see Wayne's time as a solo artist end with 2002's brilliant Adult World but he had moved on to other things, hooking up with filmmaker Adam McKay to make music for films like Talladega Nights and TV shows including Eastbound & Down.  In a conversation with British songwriter Billy Bragg a few years later, Wayne heard about Bragg's UK organization Jail Guitar Doors, which brought music programs and instruments to men and women in prison.  Bragg had forgotten the first

verse of The Clash's song is about Wayne himself- out of that conversation, Wayne and Margaret formed Jail Guitar Doors USA which is still going strong today.  While I would've liked to have more solo records from him, there's no denying Wayne found a higher calling with Jail Guitar Doors.

 

Thankfully, Wayne wasn't done with rock & roll.  He was a regular in music documentaries like A Band Called Death, Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, and Creem: America's Only Rock & Roll Magazine.  As his contributions were some of my favorite parts of Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me:  The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, it was clear Wayne had a book in him and The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities was published in 2018. 

That year Wayne announced the MC50 tour which I missed but my wife and I were right there for the Heavy Lifting tour when it came to Bimbo's 365 in San Francisco on May 13, 2022.  I had some trepidation going in- Wayne was over 70 and it had been roughly 20 years since I'd last seen him play.  My fears were quashed at the outset:  Wayne was on fire and the band (singer Brad Brooks, guitarist Stevie Salas, bassist Vicki Randle, and drummer Winston Watson) smoked right along beside him.  They played a ton of favorites I had never heard live

before- it was especially great to hear the poppier stuff I loved from Back In The USA.  If at age 74 I have half the spirit, fire and enthusiasm Wayne Kramer shared with us that night I will consider myself a lucky man.  Don't just take my word for it, see for yourself:

The frosting on the cake was Wayne's announcement that this sh*t hot band was in the studio with legendary Kiss producer Bob Ezrin working on a new album We Are All MC5.  Then, radio silence.  Then, this:

Needless to say it was a gut punch.  In less than 20 months the man who gave that impassioned speech and over the top performance of "Looking At You" at Bimbo's 365 was gone.  I still can't believe it.

 

Sinclair

Since Wayne passed in February we lost John Sinclair on April 2 and Dennis Thompson on May 9.  The original MC5 are all gone... just in time to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame in October (so typical of that ham-fisted organization).  The band had been on the ballot 6 times but never got enough votes so this year the Hall did and end run and inducted them in the non-voting "Musical Excellence Award" category along with (wait for it...) Dionne Warwick and Jimmy Buffet.  So. F**king. Lame. 

Thompson

 

Enough of that negativity.  Needless to say, I'm very glad I went to that Heavy Lifting Tour show and I'm optimistic about We Are All MC5 should it ever be released.  Putting this post together has given me an even greater appreciation of Wayne Kramer and his ongoing musical legacy.  

Thank you Brother Wayne Kramer...

 

Click the link below to stream/download this week's show:

ALL KINDSA GIRLS #182 WAYNE KRAMER TRIBUTE