Review of MC5: Kick out the Jams

Get ready for a thrilling ride through music history! In the last four episodes, we’ve been grooving to the catchy tunes of one-hit wonders. But now, hold on to your seats because we’re shifting gears. Our very own music aficionado and Sonic Collective member, Darren Scott, has taken us on a journey back to the world of influential albums.

This time, we’re diving headfirst into the debut album of the incomparable Tracy Chapman. Picture this: soul-stirring lyrics, mesmerizing melodies, and a voice that’ll give you goosebumps. We’ve gathered around to dissect this musical masterpiece and explore how it still holds up today.

October 2023 saw us dive into the very first punk album of all time. It’s so the first that it wasn’t even classified as punk at the time. MC5 recorded this, their first album live and we all felt the sound recording and quality was pretty darn good considering how long ago this was done. It stands up.

But when we really got into the music, things took a bit of a turn. We enjoyed a few of the sounds, notably the title track, but found overall this album just became noisy after a couple of tracks and started to down-right irritate some of us. Scott G enjoyed it the most but the rest of us found getting through in one listen a bit of work.

That said, we’re glad we had the experience, as this was really the beginnings of punk and an entirely new sound to the world. We’ve widened our musical knowledge and scope.

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MC5 – Kick Out the Jams

This month we’re tackling an album I’ve been aware of for a long time, never listened to, but the time has come.

Kick Out the Jams by MC5 was released in February 1969 and has been classified as proto-punk. While the band formed in 1963, it took a few years for their debut album to come into form, and uniquely, it was recorded live over two nights at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in 1968. Typically bands release a live album well into their career but MC5 uniquely opted to do so out of the gates.

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