Not on any studio album, I Just Don’t Know earns its place among the best MC5 songs as a highlight of the much-revered Babes In Arms rarities compilation. Inspired by the band’s British Invasion idols John Lennon and Pete Townshend, the experimental use of feedback is pretty early for a 1966 recording. Provided to YouTube by Rhino AtlanticThe American Ruse The MC5Back In The USA 1970 Atlantic Recording Corporation for the United States and WEA Internatio.
Based around a Bo Diddley rhythm being destroyed by everything around it, the one-two power-chord punches from guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith are solely designed to knock you off your feet. A B-side released in 1969, three years after it was recorded, the song’s overlooked position in the band’s legacy belies its full-to-the-brim rock’n’roll bravado. In The American Ruse, Tyner summed up the nation as a police state (They beat me bloody down at the station), a democracy on life support (’69 America in terminal stasis) everything on Kick Out the Jams packed into two-and-a-half minutes. MC5’s early garage band days are firmly exposed on this slice of snarling 60s proto-punk. The rest of the compilation is split evenly between crunchy psychedelic rock of the late ’60s, and bar-band blues of the turn of the ’70s. To paraphrase the immortal words of the group’s “spiritual advisor”, Brother JC Crawford, we give you a testimonial – the MC5! The Big Bang Best Of The MC5 (2000) The only songs that could be considered their signature tunes are Kick Out the Jams and The American Ruse.
The house band of revolution rock, the forebears of the entire punk movement… The Detroit ramalama garage rock’n’roll five-piece went further than any of their countercultural rivals, and the best MC5 songs still have the power to start riots. so thick its like drowning in molasses Im sick and tired of paying these dues And Im finally getting hip to the American ruse I learned to say the pledge of allegiance Before they beat me bloody down at the station They havent got a word out of me since I got a billion years probation Sixty nine America in.