Brother Wayne Kramer has left the building. As part of the MC5, his guitar squall with Fred “Sonic” Smith added feedback and Pentecostal fury to the musical arm of the White Panther Party, John Sinclair’s pioneering ‘60s radical anti-racist political movement. Fueled by psychedelia and Sun Ra records, the MC5 represent American rock & roll as a radical proposition.
I met Kramer many years later, in 2018 when, at the age of 70, he was touring with MC50, a supergroup featuring Zen Guerrilla singer Marcus Durant, bassist Billy Gould of Faith No More, Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, and Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil performing Kick Out of the Jams in honor of its 50th anniversary. He’d recently written a book, The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities, documenting his tragic youth, stint in prison, and rebirth as a late-in-life family man, recording artist, and activist with Jail Guitar Doors, a 501(c)3 he co-founded with Billy Bragg to provide musical mentorship to the incarcerated.
We met at the Marquee Theatre, perhaps my least favorite music venue in existence, but the accommodations were nice enough backstage where we taped a post-soundcheck interview, which was published under the headline “A Visit to Wayne Kramer’s America” by FLOOD Magazine. I’m struck by his eloquence here:
“The enemy is not the capitalists, or the Republicans, or even Donald Trump. The enemy is my own cynicism. My own apathy. My own laziness. That’s the enemy."
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