The MC-5 is a whole thing. There is no way to get at the music without taking in the whole context of the music too- there is no separation. We say the MC-5 is the solution to the problem of separation, because they are so together. The MC-5 is totally committed to the revolution, as the revolution is totally committed to driving people out of their separate shells and into each other's arms.
I'm talking about unity, brothers and sisters, because we have to get it together. We are the solution to the problem, if we will just be that. If we can feel it, LeRoi Jones said, "feeling predicts intelligence." The MC-5 will make you feel it, or leave the room. The MC-5 will drive you crazy out of your head into your body. The MC-5 is rock and roll. Rock and roll is the music of our bodies, of our whole lives- the resensifier (sic), Rob Tyner calls it. We have to come together, people, "build to a gathering," or else. Or else you are dead, and gone.
The MC-5 bring you back to your senses from wherever you have been taken to hide. They are bad. Their whole lives are totally given to this music. They are a whole thing. they are a working model of the new paleo-cybernetic culture in action. There is no separation. They live together to work together, they eat together, fuck together, get high together, walk down the street and through the world together. There is no separation. Just as the music will bring you together like that, if you hear it. If you will live it. And we will make sure you hear it, because we know you need it as bad as we do. We have to have it.
The music is the source and the effect of our spirit flesh. The MC-5 is the source and effect of the music, just as you are. Just as I am. Just to hear the music and have it be ourselves, is what we want. What we need. We are a lonely desperate people, pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition, and we need the music to hold us together. Separation is doom. We are free men, and we demand a free music, a free high energy source that will drive us wild into the streets of America yelling and screaming and tearing down everything that would keep people slaves.
The MC-5 is that source. The MC-5 is the revolution, in all its applications. There is no separation. Everything is everything. There is no thing to fear. The music will make you strong, as it is strong, and there is now way it can be stopped now. All power to the people! The MC-5 is here now for you to hear and see and feel now! Give it up- come together- get down, brothers and sisters, it's time to testify, and what you have in your hands is a living testimonial to the absolute power and strength of these men. Go wild! The world is yours! Take it now and be one with it! Kick out the jams, motherfucker! And stay alive with the MC-5!
----John Sinclair, 1968 used by special personal permission of author
Our program is Cultural Revolution through a total assault on the culture, which makes us use every tool, every energy and any media we can get our collective hands on. We take our program with us everywhere we go and use any means necessary to expose people to it.
Our culture, our art, the music, newspapers, books, posters, our clothing, our homes, the way we walk and talk, the way our hair grows, the way we smoke dope and fuck and eat and sleep - it is all one message, and the message is FREEDOM!
We are the mother country madmen in charge of our own lives and we are taking this freedom to the people of America, in streets, in the ballrooms and teenclubs, in their front rooms watching TV, in their bedrooms reading underground newspapers, or masturbating, or smoking secret dope, in their schools where we come and talk to them or make our music, in their weird gymnasiums - they love it- We represent the only contemporary life-style in America for its kids and it should be known that THESE KIDS ARE READY !
They are ready to move but they don't know how, and all we do is show them that they can get away with it. BE FREE, goddamnit, and fuck them old dudes, is what we tell them, and they can see that we mean it. The only influences we have, the only thing that touches them, is that we are for real. We are FREE. We are a bunch of arrogant motherfuckers and we don't give a damn for any cop or any phony-ass authority control-addict creeps who want to put us down. For the first time in America there is a generation of visionary maniac white motherfucker country dope fiend rock and roll freaks who are ready to get down and kick out the jams - ALL THE JAMS - break everything loose and free everybody from their very real and imaginary prisons - even the chumps and punks and honkies who are always fucking with us. We demand total freedom for everybody! And we will not be stopped until we get it.
We are bad.
There's only two kinds of people on the planet: those who make up the problem and those who make up the solution. WE ARE THE SOLUTION. We have no problems. Everything is free for everybody. Money sucks. Leaders suck. School sucks. The white honkie culture that has been handed to us on a silver platter is meaningless to us! We don't want it!
Our program of rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets is a program of total freedom for everyone. We are totally committed to carrying out our program. We breathe revolution. We are LSD driven total maniacs of the universe. We will do anything we can to drive people crazy out of their heads and into their bodies.
ROCK AND ROLL music is the spearhead of our attack because it is so effective and so much fun. We have developed organic high-energy guerrilla bands who are infiltrating the popular culture and destroying millions of minds in the process. With our music and our economic genius we plunder the unsuspecting straight world for money and the means to carry out our program, and revolutionize its children at the same time.
And with our entrance into the straight media we have demonstrated to the honkies that anything they do to fuck with us will be exposed to their children. We don't need to get rid of all the honkies, you just rob them of their replacements and let the breed atrophy and die out.
We don't have guns yet - not all of us anyway - because we have more powerful weapons - direct access to millions of teenagers is one of our most potent, and their belief in us is another. But we will use guns if we have to - we will do anything - if we have to.
We have no illusions. Knowing the power of symbols in the abstract world of Americans we have taken the White Panther as our mark to symbolize our strength and arrogance.
We're bad.
---John Sinclair, MC-5 manager and White Panther Party Minister of Information, Trans-love Energies, 1968. Used by special personal permission of the author.
~RAUK'97
Used by special personal permission of the author.
@Copyright retained by original owners, used here for criticism, comment, scholarship, satire, and research. Artwork @Gary Grimshaw