This is important shit , folks: Until now , the MC5 are not in the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame despite the impressive argument that they
have been one of the most influential and , ergo, most important rock
and roll bands in history. In any event, here is a choice cut not
discussed much even my 5 aficionados , James Brown's "It's a Man's
World". Agreed, the song is more than patronizing and winds up placing
women on the damnable pedestal and back in the kitchen at the same time,
but you have to hand to these guys for their odd choice. They loved
black music and their choice of a song only JB could pull off is a
classic punk gesture: "Fuck you guys, we're gonna play this goddamned
song because WE WANT TO." Vocalist Rob Tyner did not, as has been
remarked around a trash can full of burning rubber, give a FLAT FUCK if
he sang worse than a horse thief gagging at the end of a dirty rope of
justice. Rob Tyner sang like a man who had his head wrapped in a thick
sheet of bubble wrap and then had his noggin stuffed into a burlap bag
that reeked of diesel stained wagon timber and mildewed hemp. He sounded
like he'd swallowed his fist in a freak accident that might have
occurred when he he was chewing on his knuckles in macho mechanical panic
while watching an asteroid streak a fiery, smoky path to Cobo Hall. When
he wrapped his crackling squawk to It's A Man's World, satellites stopped broadcasting, and Gabriel
drove over his trumpet in a huff of overriding despair. His was the
voice of percolating whiteness, personified grieving love handles with a
microphone. There was a time when an attitude like that would inspire
otherwise stoned and clueless teens , all of them too late for the
absurd counter-culture vanities of Haight Ashbery and Greenwich Village,
to yell "fuck yeah" and babble their rendition of dumb cliches about
offing the pigs and serving the people. So yeah, the MC5 were really
punks, macho black bad boy wannabes and crazy mofos in their right who
were willing to stick it in your eye." Hah. Hit me again." The rest of the guys crammed their guitars into the cones of their amps and ground their strings against the microphone stands.The drummer, Dennis Thompson, rattled on over the snare, performed an encyclopedia's worth of imagined sexual amnesia drills over the head of the snare drum and punched a hole in the base drum with nothing apart from a random disease he picked up for kicks at the last Room Temperature Ale House he was located within. Someone in the middle of what was left of the audience that wasn't yet unconscious, bleeding or deceased hooted. "SUCK MY DICK" countered Tyner, "GAG ON MY GOODNESS, JARHEAD." After that, it started to get weird.
