![]() ![]() Kramer spent some of punk rock’s best years in prison, and in discussing his reentry into the music business afterward, he struggles to find any meaningful difference among the punk acts he’s encountered. He devotes literally just one page to Iggy Pop, even though their Michigan days and musical rise basically coincided and they orbited each other for years. Yet in the memoir, Kramer spends the majority of his musical attention making the case for free jazz as the most superior form of composition for both its improvisational and its collaborative capacities. ![]() The main line of cultural wisdom is that this band is the progenitor of all punk rock music. Like all things made by or affiliated with MC5, guitarist Wayne Kramer’s new memoir, The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5 & My Life of Impossibilities, leaves one wondering, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” This in turn begets an even more essential question: What is the MC5, and what is its legacy? As the last man standing, Kramer is responsible for answering these questions and I honestly can’t tell you if he’s doing it well. ![]()
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