The Power of Brother Wayne Kramer
“We are actually fourth dimensional beings in a third dimensional body inhabiting a second dimensional world!”― Neal Cassady
At Warner Bros. Records in the 1990s, I was one of the A&R people who had a reputation for being an easy get-a-meeting target if you were a member of a band of the past. When Chicago’s drummer Danny Seraphine was shopping around some young bands…he found me, and I gladly took the meeting…got him to sign my Chicago Greatest Hits record, one of the first records I asked my parents to get me, which I got for my fourth birthday. When Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes was doing the same, he somehow got to me as well…brought a young band member along to the meeting. Yes, I listened to the demos he threw in the tape player (nothing there), but I also got great stories out of him, my favorite being that in the primordial days of the band…before they were The Cars, when they were looking for a drummer, they sought out David Robinson specifically because he had been in the Modern Lovers. The pre-Cars group loved the Modern Lovers…and Robinson ended up naming the band and being a major influence on their look and sound
But the call that stopped me dead my tracks came one sunny Burbank afternoon, when my assistant walked into my office and said, “David, there is a Wayne Kramer on the line for you.” Could it be Brother Wayne Kramer from the MC5, one of the the greatest and most influential rock ‘n’ roll guitarists of his generation? He had dropped out of the scene years ago, giving up music, doing jail time, and after that just disappearing. Really? Brother Wayne Kramer, with that signature sonic guitar attack and swagger that he baked after mixing musings of the early rock band slingers of the late 50s and early 60s and forcing said goop through an anarchistic grater thus creating the rushing tidal wave sound of the punk rock movement?
I had been a major MC5 fan starting in high school (sish-boom-bah) since an evening where my friend Hector Penalosa (of The Zeros and Flying Color) sat me down to introduce me to the The New York Dolls, The Stooges, and yes the MC5…their first record, Kick Out The Jams (released on Elektra Records 55 years ago this month). The albums opener is a Wayne Kramer-fronted cover of the ole’ Jerry Lee Lewis Sun sesh Ramblin’ Rose (written by Fred Burch & Marijohn Wilkin). Kramer takes the original riff and heavily electrifies it with his signature stadium crushing guitar-drive. It ends as MC5 lead vocalist Rob Tyner hits the stage, leading the band into their motherfuck(ing) (their words not mine) iconic album title track, Kick Out The Jams, which bears to witness even more Kramer guitar mayhem (as does the rest of the record up, with his fellow guitar voyager Fred “Sonic” Smith lock step all the way, to and through the Sun Ra inspired Starship…where reality is destroyed by the MC5’s aurally audacious pillaging). Kick Out The Jams is such a damn power-full explosive record.
I picked up the phone, “Is this…Brother (I felt so cool even saying it) Wayne Kramer?” It was. I actually didn’t know what I should say next, “um…I can’t tell you how nice it is to talk to you. (ugh)” Wayne had not only come back to Los Angeles and was ready for the next phase of his music career, but he had a new record he had brought with him and wanted to play it for someone. He knew it was probably not major label material, but wanted some other ears on it. Would I be willing to give it a listen? We decided to meet at my house (!!!) that evening for some take-out Chinese from Twin Dragon followed by a listening session. I hung up the phone with him, called my friend Don Waller (of the proto-punk band The Imperial Dogs and the Backdoor Man fanzine) and invited him over as well.
The three of us met at in my small apartment in the outer crust of Beverly Hills and started by just shooting the shit…getting to know each other…me barely able to digest having Kramer mere feet away. Don, who was not phased by anyone or any situation, and was an actual music reporter, was the perfect foil interviewer, helping unlock Wayne’s story which he was very open to discussing: the falling apart of the MC5 leading to the drug bust and incarceration, finding Charley Parker sideman trumpeter Red Rodney in prison…getting lessons from him…and how that friendship changed his life….his messy (brief) days in Gang War with fellow legendary slinger, yet pitifully strung out, Johnny Thunders…his experience with Sun Ra—Ra’s influence in further freeing interstellarly the MC5’s sound—and the incredible music scene the MC5 was a part of back in the White Panther daze of Motor City Michigan. I has so many questions about the White Panther party, and Wayne was happy to discuss, about it’s formation (it was a positive reaction to a Huey Newton speech) and its anti-racist stances…and the power of its leader, John Sinclair. While these stories are well known now, they were not back in the 90s. Each was a found puzzle piece in one of the most important rock ‘n’ roll stories I had been searching for.
Wayne and I never worked together, although I followed his career and went to see him live a number of times, the highlight being when Mark Arm and Roy Loney took singing duties for the first MC5 reunion. But after that first night, we were good acquaintances…running into each other every so often…grabbing a call every once in a while when some strange project was brewing. When Barb and I were working on the 40th Anniversary project for Sun Ra’s Space is the Place, and started an on-line campaign to help fund a pretty expensive-to-make book, Wayne Kramer came out of nowhere as the first to fund at the top-producer level. He never stopped supporting the musicians and the people he respected. And what I learned through my friend Scott Goodstein, a political activist and movement maven he always lent his name and music to any fight against political corruption and wrongdoers, and through his work with the non-profit organization Jail Guitar Door, raised money to buy inmates guitars so that they might find rehabilitation in prison via music as he did with Red Rodney.
Wayne Kramer passed this past Friday after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. A month ago he was finishing up a new record, probably preparing a tour…ready to bring his art to the world again. And then the death sentence diagnosis which brought down, as Goodstein reminded me, someone who had survived jail…survived being a drug addict and all that came with it. Fuck Cancer.
Wayne Kramer was one of the good guys. He was so accessible that it was almost (almost) easy to forget that he was one of the most important guitarists in the evolution of rock n roll…in one of the most important bands of all time. Hail hail Rock ‘n’ Roll…the MC5 and Brother Wayne Kramer. May he rest in power.
Click here for my favorite video of the MC5 which includes some of the greatest showmanship from Wayne Kramer, playing through Ramblin’ Rose, Kick Out The Jams and another classic, Looking At You. And if you want to hear what I consider to be one of the MC5’s most influential pieces…were Wayne and Sonic are locked into a groove that birthed the Spacemen 3 and so many others, listen to Black To Comm (which was never on a proper MC5 record. You can see a piece of it from a German TV clip here at 26:30). And finally, click here for a great interview done by my friend Cary Baker and Mr. Kramer near the end of last year.
James Joyce Insisted That Cover of “Ulysses” Be the Blue of Greek Flag
I am sure John Bishop mentioned this in my Joyce seminar at Berkeley, but I totally forgot: “(Joyce)…was a great admirer of all things Greek to the point that he learned how to speak Modern Greek while he was writing Ulysses. He was even known to cap off all his birthday celebrations with a rousing rendition of the Greek national anthem, the ‘Hymn to Liberty.’’I spoke…modern Greek not too badly and have spent a great deal of time with Greeks of all kinds from noblemen down to onion sellers, chiefly the latter,’ Joyce once said. ‘I am superstitious about them. They bring me luck.’”
Big congrats to Laurie. My dear friend, fellow A&R staff member Karen Berg (RIP) signed Anderson to Warner Bros. I love her mention in the article: “Karin repeatedly said ‘Let’s make a record,’ but I didn’t want to make a record…It was only when I had to make a lot of records suddenly – when I got a call from London saying that they needed 40,000 copies of the original ‘O Superman’ – and I had been putting them out myself. I had about 12 copies of the record at a time, and I’d just walk to the post office and send it out myself. So, my life changed a lot, even though I pretended that it made no difference.”
NEW YORK’S RUBIN MUSEUM TO SHUTTER, PURSUE DECENTRALIZED MODEL
VERY sad. The Rubin is a beautiful museum…with incredible curation. Barb and I caught the phenomenal show from last year looking at death and evil through the lens of Buddhist and Christian artworks from the centuries just last year. The Executive Director posted a letter about the upcoming change on the Rubin’s website recently, explaining that the institution will still carry on, with its mission to display Himalayan art. But this is a big big change. The museum closes in October. There is still a chance to visit for a truly unique art experience…
Four Men Keeping company with outdoor people
What else are you going to do on a rainy day (if it is storming where you are)? I just came upon this recent William Vollmann piece. This time Vollmann is visiting Reno, on the hunt for three homeless people he can pay to speak to. The conversations…with the subjects he finds….with himself…offer great insight not only into the issues of the “outdoor people” but of the character of the journalist. Just a brilliant read.
Horror Alert: The First Trailer For Oz Perkins' LONGLEGS Is Finally Here
Oh yeah….
Plumbed statue of man urinating thought to be earliest known example of its kind in Australia
And now for something completely different: "You have to start to wonder, who so disliked this person they would actually commission someone not just to do a pen and ink sketch in a contemptible pose, but rather sculpt out of sandstone," Mr Tassell said, “And sculpted in remarkable detail, this figure in this pose – it is literally unbelievable. We can't find a comparable example before the 20th century."
Encounter in the Local Pub
By: Eleanor Wilner
Unlike Francis Bacon, we no longer believe in the little patterns we make of the chaos of history.
— Overheard remark
As he looked up from his glass, its quickly melting ice,
into the bisected glowing demonic eyes of the goat,
he sensed that something fundamental had shifted,
or was done. As if, after a life of enchantment, he
had awakened, like Bottom, wearing the ears of an ass,
and the only light was a lanthorn, an ersatz moon.
It was not that the calendar hadn"t numbered the days
with an orbital accuracy, its calculations
exact, but like a man who wants to hang a hammock
in his yard, to let its bright net cradle him, but only
has one tree, so he — wild and aware of it — knew
he had lost the order he required, and with it, rest —
his thoughts only a sagging bundle of loose ends,
and the heart, a naked animal in search of a pelt,
that once fell for every Large Meaning it could
wrap itself in, as organs are packed in ice for transit
from one ending to the next, an afterlife of parts — and
the whole? Exorbitant claim — not less than all,
and oddly spelled; its ear rhyme is its opposite,
the great hole in the heart of things. The goat,
he noticed, had a rank smell, feral. Unnerved,
he looks away, watches the last of his ice
as it melts, the way some godlike eye might see
the mighty glaciers in a slow dissolve back into sea.
He notes how incommensurate the simile, a last
attempt to dignify his shaking gaze, and reaches
for the bill; he"s damned if the goat will pay.
Great one Dave. XO
Thanks for sharing your memories of Wayne Kramer. I'm 65, & it shouldn't bother me that most people under 50 years of age don't know of Wayne & the MC5, but it does. I couldn't agree more with your comment...FUCKCANCER! Keep up the good work. 🤘😎🤘