Mixing revolutionary sloganeering with a high-intensity sound that combined blues and primitive rock’n’roll with guitar pyrotechnics, the Detroit band MC5 created their own blueprint for punk and hard rock. Wayne Kramer, a founder member of the MC5, who has died from pancreatic cancer aged 75, was renowned as a guitarist able to veer from crushing hard rock to atonal adventures recalling the free jazz of Archie Shepp or Albert Ayler.
Emerging in a late-60s America gripped by racial tension and traumatised by the Vietnam war, the MC5 were at the cutting edge of the counterculture. Their explosive live performances mirrored the febrile atmosphere of the era, and it was fitting that their first and best-remembered album, Kick Out the Jams (1969), should have been recorded at their regular live haunt, the Grande Ballroom in Detroit.
