And THIS is how Disco should be played live.

[rahock]

the mc5 is a punk band? wow, i did not know that. better go find john sinclair and tell him.

the 'house' band for the white panther party and radical politics. or so they claimed. just an energetic, hard rock band with an experimental edge imo. i would put the stooges in the same boat but more straight forward.

I find it interesting that the MC5 gets so much notority outside the Detroit area.  I had no idea that were that big outside of the local scene. They never really made  a whole lot of money playing Hard Rock. Before "Kick out the Jams" and politics they were a great cover band doing a lot of Rolling Stones and assorted other good mid 60s rock and roll. I used to jam with their drummer  Dennis Thompson now and then.  Good guy and a good player, but not a real standout. Never knew anyone who hit their drums as hard . It's kind of odd because my old drummer , who was more of a soft touch guy, is the one who taught him to play.
Rick

[nofi]

rick, everyone knows these guys. i bought the monumental live album when it came out down here in atlanta. have had a copy of it most of my live. listening to that record puts you right back in the chaotic political and cultural climate of the time. ramalama fa fa fa.

[Freuds_Cat]

Even over here in lil' ol' Adelaide we have heard of MC5

[uwe]

Like that song, always did. Take away the doublestop bass and it could as well be a hard rock number.

Punk was great at (mis)appropriating bands before its era as "punkfathers". Before the advent of the Sex Pistols (which I considered more punk than US longhairs The Ramones who owed a lot to sixties bubblegum and were largely unpolitical to me), The MC5, The Stooges, The Velvet Underground, Mott the Hoople and The New York Dolls (who are about as punk as the Rolling Stones to which they owe a lot) were all rock or even hard rock bands, suddenly they were godfathers of punk because Malcolm McLaren said so. With the same compelling logic he had declared his erstwhile management protegees The New York Dolls "communist" though I doubt whether Johnny Thunders ever got really far with reading Marx' "The Capital". But the badge stuck, Mclaren was a great packager. In the summer of 1977 former pub bands like Eddie & the Hot Rods would suddenly proclaim to have been avid MC5 and Stooges listeners when in fact they had spent their youth listening to Status Quo, The Sweet (Generation X), Deep Purple (The Stranglers) or even proggies Magma and Gong (a longhaired young man called Johnny Lydon, would you believe). Punk never sold out, it was a hype from the start.

I heard the MC5 first on a double album Warner Brothers sampler called Heavy Metal from the early seventies - in the company of such "punk bands" as Deep Purple, Golden Earring, Uriah Heep, Foghat, T. Rex, Allman Bros, Black Sabbath, The Doors, James Gang and even The Eagles. I was mesmerized at the sheer force of "Kick out the jams", but to this day I consider it closer to what Grand Funk Railroad did on their first few albums than to "Never mind the Bollocks" (which to me had a glam rock/teeny bop Chinn Chapman sound if it hadn't been for Rotten's sneer and even that reminded me of The Heavy Metal Kids' Gary Holton).

[Dave W]

I never understood the appeal of the MC5, but to each his own.

I definitely agree about the naming of certain bands and artists as grandfathers or godfathers of punk. Utterly ridiculous.

[rahock]

Now you guys got me going on all this old stuff. Foghat and earlier Savoy Brown were pretty common faces in my neighborhood back in the day. I grew up with a couple of guys from Frigid Pink (House of the Rising Sun remake) and Savoy Brown used to stay at the bass players house , a couple of blocks from me, whenever they were in town. James Gang were Ohio boys, but they were in  here Michigan as much as they were in Ohio. I had the privledge of doing a little jamming with Joe Walsh when I was still in high school. Through the courtesy of the Frigid Pink crew I got to do a lot of jamming and partying with a lot of people who were just getting their careers off the ground.
There was a local group named Third Power that had a big ole farm out in the  sticks and all kinds of jamming went on out there.
The lead player from Third Power was a great guy and a stick of dynamite player named Drew Abbott who later went on to do some stuff with Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet band. They also had a pretty neat farm but their manager was wise enough to keep the partying down to a minimum and keep Bob away from the local riff raff types (like me).
I apologize for highjacking this thread and I apologize even more for being a freakin' "who's who name dropper" because basically, I hate people who do what I just did......... but when all these names came up , I couldn't help myself .
Rick

[godofthunder]

Disco  can't and should never be played live. Long live the MC5. KOTJMF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[godofthunder]

disco died because Punk rock killed it.

Oh how I wish it had 

[Freuds_Cat]

Uwe, Very eloquent and totally accurate including all of those band names IMHO .

In my world we also had bands early on in the whole punk thing like The Saints, Radio Birdman and The Boys Next door (Nick Cave).

[godofthunder]

 The Pistols took The Ramones sonic model and and used it to their own means. The Ramones were more about a musical revoltion than political and social comment.They wanted to take the airwaves back from the bloated  prog rock and half hour jam bands and get back to the three min song or in their case 1.5 min song.

[Freuds_Cat]

Classic Rock, early Heavy metal, prog rock, half hour jam bands and good punk. I must be strange but I like it all. Just dont make me listen to Dancing Queen ever again pleeeaaase!

[Blazer]

Just dont make me listen to Dancing Queen ever again pleeeaaase!

That's all up to yourself, the song I posted was NOT "Dancing Queen."

[Dave W]

I could listen to Dancing Queen over and over before I could listen to a half hour jam band. All a matter of taste.

Right now I'm listening to Iris DeMent, I think I could listen to her all day. But if you don't like mountain folk music, it might drive you crazy. And that's okay with me, I can't get upset if somebody else's taste is different.

[gweimer]

The Pistols took The Ramones sonic model and and used it to their own means. The Ramones were more about a musical revoltion than political and social comment.They wanted to take the airwaves back from the bloated  prog rock and half hour jam bands and get back to the three min song or in their case 1.5 min song.

Huh?  I think it was Lester Bangs that described them best - Beach Boys music and too much acid (now there's an ironic statement for you).  I prefer to think that The Ramones were brilliant marketers.  And, they were probably laughing at the punk crowd for lapping it all up.  They were still probably the most fun band in the past 20 years, regardless.

My favorite garage band in the past few years are The Hypstrz, who decided to release a 30 year old board tape from a club date in Minneapolis.  Simply fun stuff.  And the bar calendar in the jacket was pretty wild.  I knew a few of the bands listed, and the club had U2 in on a Thursday night.

[Rocker949]

Speaking of ABBA, here is an encouraging story from the UK.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5382884/Girl-three-sings-Mamma-Mia-as-she-comes-round-from-meningitis.html