mc5

a few yrs back, i did a lot of research and scrawl on dee-troit bands of the late '60s/early '70s like the stooges 'n' mc5. back then, i was in contact a lot with david c. thomas, a chicago-based filmmaker who was working on a documentary film about the band, mc5: a true testimonial. since then, that project has been scuttled in welters of acrimony and litigation between the filmmakers and band founder/gtr terrorist wayne kramer -- withdrawn from release and still tied up in the courts. pity. i recently got to see the flick and it's every bit as good as the 7-minute trailer i caught at sxsw in '99 indicated it would be. the filmmakers do a worthy job of telling the band's compelling story, replete with flash, high energy, police harassment, riots, drug addiction, betrayal, and a sense of historical moment. it's a gas to see the live footage of the band in action, the young wayne like a white james brown; lead singer rob tyner the geeky sci fi-beatnik-boho jazzfan nerd transmogrified into an avatar of pure, unselfconscious joy; gtrist fred "sonic" smith both with and without his superhero costume -- in their moment, these guys delivered the goods. listening to the latter-day interviews with the surviving bandmembers (rob and fred both checked out in the early '90s, r.i.p.), it's hard to be unimpressed by both their intelligence and the different ways in which they've handled the loss of that moment: wayne the polished raconteur and mythologist, drummer dennis "machine gun" thompson still embittered over events 30 yrs past, bassist michael davis seeming to have attained the greatest sense of acceptance and peace. every band starts out as a little utopia, and the inevitable fall is often accompanied by a sense of betrayal and loss. the five raised the stakes higher than most, then and especially now, and so perhaps it's inevitable that the fallout from their demise would have a longer half-life. while i still think the stooges' music has stood the test of time better (dennis thompson: "they couldn't even play their instruments! raw power? blow me!"), the five managed to epitomize better than any other band both the promise and the ultimate failure of the '60s counterculcha. they earned every bit of the approbation they've belatedly received.