Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Leni & John Sinclair Kick Out The Jams Motherfucker!

Leni & John Sinclair Kick Out The Jams Motherfucker!

On October 30th and 31st of 1968, Detroit’s MC5 recorded what would become their debut album “Kick Out the Jams” at The Grande Ballroom. The live album would capture Rob Tyner, Wayne Kramer, Fred “Sonic” Smith, Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson and Mike Davis at their primal best, in front of a rabid hometown crowd at Russ Gibb’s San Francisco-style ballroom. Playing alongside the second wave of British invasion bands like Led Zeppelin, Cream and The Who, word spread that the Grande’s house band wouldn’t let anyone come to Detroit and show them up. For touring bands it was “Kick Out The Jams MOTHERFUCKER!” or get off the fucking stage. Friendly competition. Call it what you want to call it. The MC5 essentially created protopunk as they blended blues, garage and psychedelic, bearers of the rock and roll torch, with performances, a live presentation and attitude that made each show a one of a kind experience for concert goers. With “Kick Out The Jams” the band found themselves with a national voice and an image of themselves revolutionaries in post-riot Detroit as the 1960s seethed with racial, economic and military tensions.

Detroit writer, poet and activist John Sinclair would be at the center of it all, as he would meet the MC5 after being released from a 6-month sentence at the Detroit House of Correction for possession of marijuana. He became friends with the band and, a year later, their manager as they found themselves on a national scale through the late 60s psychedelic music scene. John would help provide the revolutionary rhetoric, while his wife at the time Leni Sinclair, would be the one behind the camera.  She captured not only the band, and the subsequent trials and tribulations of the White Panther Party, as well as John’s two landmark court cases, but iconic views into the civil rights movement, burgeoning national jazz scene and much more throughout the city of Detroit and national underground culture at large.


During the 2-1/2 years John infamously sat in prison for giving two joints to an undercover cop, Leni fought to bring attention to the case and harsh sentencing John had received. John Lennon and Yoko Ono took notice of John’s case and Lennon would write the jangly “John Sinclair” in an effort to help bring attention to the case nationally. It worked as John was released three days after The John Sinclair Freedom Rally, which featured performances Lennon and Ono alongside Stevie Wonder, Bob Seger, Allen Ginsberg and more.

On October 18th, 2016, The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame announced that the MC5 were among this year’s candidates for induction.  The entire story of The MC5, along with John and Leni Sinclair can’t be fully run down here, but we did catch up with them to talk about Leni’s iconic gate fold photo and John’s incendiary liner notes of “Kick Out The Jams.” Both the 
Kick Out The Jams Uncensored Gate Fold and John’s original typewritten Kick Out The Jams Liner Notes were recreated by the team at 1xRUN with the help of Signal Return, to create two unique limited editions with fine art archival pigment and letter press printing, done right here in Detroit, Michigan.
https://news.1xrun.com/leni-john-sinclair-kick-out-the-jams-motherfucker/


FATTENING BLOGS FOR SNAKES 2016

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Thank you for reading, and for your feedback. Please support John Sinclair. Love, steve