5.8.09
Los Angeles 

On Saturday, May 2nd 2009, I returned to prison. Again.

Tom Morello, Jerry Cantrell, Billy Bragg, Perry Farrell & Etty Lau Farrell, Gilby Clarke, Boots Riley, Carl Restivo, Dave Gibbs, Don Was, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Eric Gardner and the Road Recovery staff went with me. The prison was the infamous Sing Sing maximum-security facility in Ossining, New York. I talked with the prisoners and we played music for them.
      
          
             


And we went in with the blessing of the New York State Department of Corrections to inaugurate a new program focusing on inmate rehabilitation. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think it would happen. I could not have been more wrong. We had all played a concert the night before in Manhattan for Road Recovery, a non-profit organization that works with at-risk kids. The show was sold out with the help of my comrade Iggy Pop and it was a resounding success.

The Sing Sing show was a bonus. To say it was memorable would be a massive understatement. As would be understating the importance of reaching out to the people on the receiving end of the greatest failure of social policy in America’s domestic history.

You would have to be living on the moon to not know what a disaster the “War On Drugs” has been. Twenty billion dollars a year for the last 30 years, two million Americans in prison — 60% of them non-violent drug offenders — and you can go out on any American street corner and buy cheaper, higher quality heroin and cocaine than you could anywhere in America 30 years ago. The political expediency of “get tough on crime” along with the sure-fire vote getting “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality has successfully created the highly profitable Prison Industrial Complex.


                            

On Saturday, I asked a corrections officer at Sing Sing what the prisoner population in New York State is right now. “Just over 50,000,” she replied. Then, it occurred to me: When I was imprisoned for drug offences in the 1970s, the entire Federal Prison population totaled just over 50,000 inmates. Then the C.O. added that, when she started her career in corrections 20 years ago, there were 23 prisons in New York State. As I write this today, there are over 60!

Crime stats have stayed consistent over the last 30 years, but incarceration rates have more than quadrupled. It’s the human cost that has been the most damaging. I’m talking about non-violent drug offenders. Countless families broken up, the marriages destroyed, three generations of kids with fathers (and mothers) in and out of the system. These are mostly brown and black people. People from America’s cities who, as screenwriter David Simon describes them, “Leftover people. People who were necessary in an industrial America but who are of no use to the economy today.” Non-violent drug offenders who are locked up are people who are pawns in urban political gamesmanship. Nobody talks about them. There’s no political will to look at it. There’s no political capital in it. It’s a no-winner. But, there’s certainly money in prison building and guard hiring.

Out here in California, the prison guards union is one of the most powerful political lobbies in the state. I don’t have any naive ideas about this changing anytime soon. Make no mistake, though, this situation is a crime against humanity. Government should be helping, but it’s not. Instead, it has created a self-fulfilling monster that eats humans whose judgment has been, at one time in their lives, critically flawed and then the monster shits out profit and political gain.

What I can do as an artist is the same thing you can do as a friend and neighbor — stand up. Speak out. Get involved.

At Sing Sing, I talked to men who had been locked up for eight, 10, 17, 30 years but had somehow managed to hold on to hope. Men who sang along with Billy Bragg on Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” still had hopes and dreams. Their spirit was strong. I doubt any of them ever heard of the MC5 or Jane’s Addiction or Audioslave, but it didn’t matter one bit. They all connected with the music. What mattered was they knew, by our simple presence, that not everyone has thrown them away. I certainly haven’t. Neither have all the musicians who went with me to this historic visit. Not everyone in this country believes in the Draconian approach to drug enforcement that has been the status quo for the last 30 years.

Kudos to Gov. Paterson and the NY Dept. of Corrections for inviting us in. Maybe other governors will start to wake up to the economic and human disaster that is their failed policy. Maybe Barack Obama can step up and bring justice and reason to one of our nation’s greatest failures.

Handsome Dick wrote to me the following day, “Seeing those prisoners slowly shuffle back through that door, and go back to jail, got to me. Can’t stop thinking about it. And me being free...and...how much I appreciate everything I have.” Tru dat, Richard.

Yesterday’s HuffPost ran the headline “White House Czar Calls For End to War On Drugs.” Sounds good. Now let’s see who steps up.

3. 31. 2009
Los Angeles, CA

The Day of Sharing

To Bono and John Mellencamp and all of my fellow musicians who winge about the sorry state of the music business: OK, enough already! You’re missing the point. The solution is right under our noses.

That the recording industry is in the toilet is no surprise. I don’t disagree with all the arguments about label greed and lack of vision, but this is an old story now and one that distracts from the real crisis and the solution. What kills me is these folks are supposed to be smart, industry professionals and they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off wondering what the “New Paradigm” will be. How is it that they don’t see the solution?

Greg Sandoval reported in CNET Digital Media on March 24th 2009:  “AT&T, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers, confirmed on Tuesday the company is working with the recording industry to combat illegal file sharing. At a digital music conference in Nashville, Jim Cicconi, a senior executive for AT&T told the audience that the ISP has begun issuing takedown notices to people accused of pirating music by the Recording Industry Association of America....”  Unfucking believable. The CEOs of the world’s ISPs are brilliant. Making billions on our entertainment and not paying a dime for it, they bring new meaning to the word obfuscate. It’s the perfect crime. This guy Cicconi is playing a shell game with the public and the future of the entertainment industry; a subterfuge of the highest order that consists of a diversion of attention from the real issue. The real issue is that content providers aren’t getting paid for their work.

The artists, writers, publishers and producers of all that wonderful music and programming on the Internet are going broke. The word “shared” in this context is as fine a piece of language re-definition as I have heard in my life, a masterful bit of re-branding.

If this is the new definition of “sharing,” then I and some of my fellow artists propose that November 27th, 2009, be the official Day of Sharing. Every single person all over the world — no matter where you live, what you do for a living, what your hobbies are — now has the right to acquire anything he/she wants from any store, restaurant, car dealership or similar commercial establishment without a single penny changing hands. You want to share, then let’s really share.  We will all be “sharing:" http://www.thedayofsharing.com/

There is now an entire generation that has grown into adulthood believing that art should be free on the Internet. I have no problem with this idea. Let everyone enjoy the fruits of our labor, but when someone is getting paid, and it’s not the people who are actually doing the work, and instead it’s the folks who own the delivery system, then this is a big problem. But I don’t think the problem is insurmountable. Sure, the ISPs deserve a share, but as it stands now, they’re getting it all. As in every industry, labor needs to be paid or eventually production comes to a grinding halt. Labor has the right to be paid, but suing consumers will never accomplish that. Since Internet subscribers are already paying a handsome sum for their monthly DSL/cable/phone bills, the money is already available to pay for the content.

Follow the money and you’ll see it’s going to the ISPs! Check this out:  With 91 million subscribers in the USA alone paying (for sake of argument and based on Pew Research figures from June, 2005) $38.00 a month for DSL service, here’s a simple example to help grasp the enormity of the profit received by the ISPs.
91,000,000 subscribers X
$38.00 per month fees =
$3,458,000,000.
Multiply that number ($3,458,000,000) by 12 months and there has been $41,496,000,000 generated for the ISPs. That’s a lot of money -- 41 and a half billion dollars -- and I didn’t even factor in cell phone fees, which is where most music downloads travel to in ring tones for a separate price.

How much would need to be added to this bill to pay for the content? Two dollars? Five dollars? Then just go ahead and give it all away. Let folks download what ever they want. Everyone is anyway and you’ll never get the toothpaste back in the tube. Go to the source. It’s the ISPs. It’s time to sort this mess out and this is the way to do it.
I’m not saying it will be easy. It won’t be. It will take unprecedented action from the government. This will require new federal laws and regulations. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Cox, Dish Network, Bell Systems et al are international mega corporations with lobbying armies and huge war chests. They will not part with a share of the pie with out being forced to do so. But force them we must. There is no other way to resolve this problem. DRM and record company policing will never find a way out of this. That’s a joke that’s not really funny.

Artists and content providers must join together to man up in an unprecedented way if they want to survive. Congress will need to mandate fees that pay for these rights directly from ISP fees. There is no other way this will work. A formula can be devised to distribute according to usage. (The idea that the ISPs are going to help police illegal downloads is a surrealist version of the fox guarding the hen house.)

Our neighbors in Canada are way ahead of us on this effort. They have put together a well-considered solution that is now working its way through the Canadian courts and should be adopted as a model for us. Kudos to them. Check out their proposed solution here: http://www.songwriters.ca/studio/proposal.php  Also from their web site:
“This is a pipe dream! It’ll never happen." That’s what many of his fellow writers told Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais (author of “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro”) before he wrested ownership of his plays from the hands of the theatre production companies. By finessing Author’s Rights into law in France in 1793, Beaumarchais established the simple but profound principle that creators have inherent ownership and moral rights in their creations. This idea is at the very heart of copyright. Beaumarchais’ “pipe dream” became reality around the world!”

Wayne Kramer, Los Angeles, March 31, 2009

8.27.2008
Denver, Colorado

The DNC is an infomercial. It promotes the democratic party brand and product just about as well as any brand and product is marketed in America today. The orchestrators are among the best in the business and could apply their skills to almost any consumer product on earth. Wash machines, cars, blackberries, weight loss programs, you name it they can sell it. The same is going to true for the competition, the republicans. But this is not their year. They have some formidable problems to spin off the table; 8 years of gross incompetence verging on indictable war crimes and a candidate who is less than qualified for the job he’s running for. Not that he doesn’t have a shot at it. There are a lot of folks in the country who will vote his way and I’m not Pollyannaish enough to think a McCain win is impossible. But it don’t look good for them.

But to be here in Denver to perform with my comrades Rage Against The Machine has a poetic and historical significance for me. 40 years ago my band, the MC5 was the only band to play the DNC in Chicago. It wasn’t that big a deal for us. We did this kind of thing as a matter of course. We were part of an entire generation that believed the country was going in the wrong direction. We came to Chicago to protest the war in Vietnam. A war we had been lied into. An illegal war. And an unbelievably damaging war. Young people took to the streets in Chicago and had terrible violent confrontations with the Chicago police. It was a wake up call for the political structure. It sent a message that help change America.

Wayne Kramer, Denver Colorado, August, 2008

1.27.2007
Belfast, Northern Ireland

The DKT winter Euro Tour was enjoyable. The band played well and the crowds were enthusiastic. I am still fascinated that the music of the MC5 has remained popular all these years. In fact, the music is more popular now than it ever was. Probably due in some part to the steady touring and other activities that we have been involved in over the last ten years.

Touring is, by its very nature, hard work for me. It’s a young mans game and except for the special guests on the band we ain’t all that young no mo. I’m not “old” but I’m not “young” either. I think that’s why it’s called “middle-age.”
 
Even if you’re in the Rolling Stones or Pearl Jam the work is essentially the same. You must get to the next gig; you must perform the music with enthusiasm and maintain an irregular schedule of sleeping, eating and all the other basic functions of life. All while in constant motion. I can see how young cats really dig this kind of lifestyle. It can be exciting and was when I was in my 20’s, 30’s and even into my 40’s. But after a couple of weeks of it, your reporter starts longing for his own bed and regular routine back in LA. The super stars may do it more comfortably but they still have to do the same things I do out there.

It’s not as hard as hot-tar roofing in Brooklyn in the winter, something I have done to pay the rent before, but it’s no walk in the park either. If it sounds like I’m complaining, forget it. I’m not. I have nothing to whine about. Which brings me to the point of this report.

There are substantial benefits to world travel. Being invited to play your music isn’t the only thing. Meeting new people and seeing how others live on this planet is important to me. On this last trip it became the most important thing about the trip.

Our main promoter in Ireland was my friend David Holmes. David and his partners in Belfast set up the appearance there and did a fantastic job of it. The gig was the finale of the tour and the crowd was the best we have played for in a long time. Maybe ever. They were a skeptical bunch and stood with their arms folded giving us the “show me” attitude. I like crowds like this because we do “show them”. We work hard to entertain folks and nights like this it really pays off. They went nuts. Roaring cheers, folks dancing and having a ball. Good stuff.

Paul Brown, David’s partner, asked if I would be interested in a tour of Belfast. I said yes. I thought it might be the usual scenic/historic stuff. Castles, the harbor, the countryside, that kind of thing. I couldn’t have missed the mark more. Originally most of the band was interested but on the day of the tour it was just Mark Arm and I.

We were picked up in front of our hotel. It was a cold grey day with a little drizzle. Our tour guide introduced himself and quickly informed us that he “doesn’t do tours, but he believed it was important to show us what’s going on with the “troubles” in Northern Ireland.” He identified himself as a republican and former “H Block” prisoner of war. He was pleasant enough but he was a serious man and we both knew pretty quickly this wasn’t going to be a tour of leprechauns and beautiful old homes.

For the next 3 hours our man talked non-stop. He gave us a running tally of murder and mayhem on the streets and in the homes of his friends and comrades across Belfast. In uncanny detail he recounted the intrigues and plots, crosses and double crosses that run through the police, loyalist and republican relationships over the last 35+ years.
We drove through the Falls Road, the Shankill Road and different neighborhoods all around Belfast. I was struck at how small the town was. How all this violence was contained in such a small area. He pointed out British Army observation posts. Some on the tops of high-rise apartment buildings others on the hills up above the city. The Army uses ultra high-powered surveillance equipment to watch the comings and goings of everybody in the neighborhoods. Of course, the people don’t appreciate this kind of oversight and it adds further resentment to the mix. Police stations were bizarre. They looked like hard-core, walled penitentiaries here in the states. They're surrounded by giant walls topped with razor wire and netting. “That’s to prevent rocket attacks on the station house,” our guide explained. We drove past Sinn Fein’s offices and were told of the assination attempt on Gerry Adams in the middle of the day on a downtown Belfast Street. He survived.

The “troubles” in Northern Ireland may be off the front pages but I didn’t get the sense that peace was in effect. The IRA has not disarmed. And either has anyone else. No one has given up their weapons. Not the loyalists, not the republicans and certainly not the police or army. The focus of the discourse at the moment is policing. They are trying to sort out how to have a police department that is free of the decades old grip of vendetta. The police consider themselves a wounded party with scores to settle of their own. The factions may hate each other but they all hate the police and British army more.

We saw neighborhoods divided by 30 ft. “peace walls” that ran for blocks to sealed checkpoints. They looked like the walls the Israelis are building in the West Bank. Our host explained that some local children have never seen the other side of the walls. The kids on one side throw rocks over the wall not knowing that there in nothing on the other side. Just an empty street and a vacant lot. At one point there was wire netting from the tops of the houses along the wall down to the base of the wall. “So fire bombs don’t land on the roofs. They just roll down the net and burn up without doing any real damage.” 

On and on it went. One neighborhood against the other. It struck me that the houses looked the same, the cars looked the same, the kids playing soccer in the street looked the same, and the adults looked the same. I just couldn’t see the difference in them. Their conflicts were not visible.

We saw massive murals in every neighborhood. All celebrating the martyrdom of young men and women from that area. The names of the dead listed on the walls. We saw houses freshly burned out with “tout” (informer) scrawled on the ruins. We stopped for a quick meeting with a reporter from the local newspaper in one of the numerous “martyrs gardens” that have been built in every neighborhood.

The darkest fact to come out was that today the political violence of the past has now started morphing into pure gangsterism. Today the battles being fought are over turf and control of the always-profitable drug trade. Same as it ever was. Catholic vs. Protestant becomes Bloods vs. Crips or Jamaican posses vs. Colombian cartels. There is sameness about sectarian violence whether it’s Sunni vs. Shia or Hamas vs. PLO or Mexican Mafia vs. La Famila or Arian Brotherhood vs. Black Guerrilla Army. In the end it’s for power and profit.

Our solder/guide mentioned how the Canadian government recently gave him a hard time getting into the country. “Considering I haven’t been to prison in 30 years,” I told him I had the same experience.

We went to the grave of Bobby Sands. We walked past and rows upon rows of others who were killed in the violence. Most in their teens and early twenties. Many markers had small photos on them showing the seventies haircuts and fashions of the day.

It was heartbreaking.

I have the feeling if they integrated the schools, allowing children to see that they are really not different at all, and if they did not forbid intermarriages, the “troubles” would be over in one generation. There are no “catholic children” or “protestant children” only catholic parents and protestant parents. Little kids can’t understand the history of their parents and grandparents’ conflicts and blood feuds. Why force it on them? Parents are “Loyalist” or “Republican” kids are kids.

There is a building boom under way in Belfast. They have a mall now and the clubs are thriving. Everyone loves football. (But even this has a political dimension to it.) There are all the other amenities of modern life. But the culture of violence dominates.

I am grateful for the tour of Belfast. It was illuminating.

Wayne Kramer, Belfast, North Ireland, January, 2007
 

8. 23. 2006
Los Angeles, CA

MY NIGHT AS A TONE SCIENTIST

In the half-between world,
Dwell they: The Tone Scientists
In notes and tone
They speak of many things...
The tone scientists:
Architects of planes of discipline
Mathematically precise are they:
The tone-scientists
(Sun Ra)

Brazilian percussionist Elson Nascimento called last week and invited me to sit in with The Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of Marshall Allen. They were Saturday night's ArthurFest headliners, a four-day music festival held here in Los Angeles and curated by Arthur Magazine.

Was I thrilled? That's putting it mildly. I have had a long-time admiration for the work of Sun Ra and his merry band of intergalactic explorers. Still do today.

I was first exposed to them in the 1960s with their ESP Disc, The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra and others. Those records - and the fact that John Sinclair booked us on a concert co-headlining with them at the Community Arts Auditorium at Wayne State University in Detroit - changed the way I would think about music for the rest of my life.

We continued to perform on concerts with The Arkestra over the next few years and I came to spend some time with Sun Ra himself. His ideas about Art, Music and culture helped form my own. In the Modern Age, with the resurgence of interest in the MC5, we have been able to reconnect with The Arkestra for concerts in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Although Sun Ra and some of the other founding members have gone on to Saturn, the band continues to travel the space ways under the able leadership of alto genius Marshall Allen. Many of the players on the band have long-time membership and the spirit remains completely intact.

So when I got the call, it was as if I was at once being asked to enter into a fifth dimension of my own past and future.

When I arrived at the gig, I took some good-natured kidding from the musicians about the traditional black suit and tie I was wearing. (I had just come directly from a TV studio where my current project, The Lexington Artists Workshop Ensemble, had performed a couple of numbers for the Hep C Awareness Telethon.)

 I was informed that, in order to perform with The Arkestra, I would need to be outfitted with the appropriate space uniform. No problem. I put on the dark blue sequined robe and matching headwear with joy.

When I asked Marshall what numbers I should play on he said, "Play it all. Just be ready, because there is no way to know what might happen." This has been my personal attitude for years and here it was being conferred on me by one of the masters. Was I ready? Yes, brother! I have been waiting for this night all my life.

I was talking in the dressing room with trumpeter Fred Adams about the music Sun Ra composed and left to them. He told me they have just scratched the surface on the mother load of unrecorded material. Marshall talked with me about the dilemma of having so much music and so little time to perform it.

I'm not someone who goes for the ritual of a group hug or prayer before a performance, but when I was told to "join-up" right before time to play I was honored to be included. This wasn't a religious rite, but an invocation to recognize together who we were and what we were doing right then and there. That we were about to "create music for a better world. On this planet and all other planets!" And that we were all, "Sun Ra."

I took the stage with the players and never felt more proud to be an artist punching in on the job.


The music was expansive. We played inside and outside the forms. Some tunes I could grasp the basic 16-bar II-V-I structure and others were way too difficult to attempt. I was standing next to bassist Juini Booth and could read some changes from his charts but often they came just too fast and furious for me. Other tunes were deep, deep space grooves that I locked into and worked as relentlessly as I could.

This kind of playing takes a great deal of concentration and my sore wrists reminded me of it later. Marshall was so gracious in granting me a few solo passages. For me, this was Heaven. Of course there were interludes of music that some might call "free music," although this is a misnomer. When and how you play in this context is anything but free. This is about discipline, not freedom, which was one of the principles at the core of Sun Ra's philosophy.

Marshall was a consummate bandleader in directing us through these sections. He was very clear and confident about what he wanted and when he wanted it. The Arkestra played, danced and sang and the audience enjoyed every minute of it.

Arkestra guitarist, David Hotep is a master chordist and I was trying to keep up, but it was like trying to catch a comet.

Dave Davis on trombone showed his great enthusiasm for music throughout the set, along with baritone saxophonist Rey Scott. As usual, drummer Luquman Ali drove the band with cosmic precision. The final notes played were a joyful exchange between Marshall Allen and tenor saxophonist Yahya Abdul-Majid.

Before I realized it, we had played for an hour and 30 minutes and it was time to go. We had traveled the space ways from planet to planet and returned to earth, all the better for it.

Sometimes it just doesn't get any better.

Check it out: http://www.elrarecords.com/band.html

Wayne Kramer, Los Angeles, August, 2006

5.10.2006


[A note from Wayne: Throughout this report, I've had help from Sam Harris' incredible book The End of Faith (a must-read) and recent items from the New York Times in order to help make sense of our present situation.]

Drug policy in America is so irrational that it almost defies description.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration staked out its position on the long-standing controversy over the medical use of marijuana - and infuriated a lot of people. The F.D.A. endorsed a multi-agency study that found that "no animal or human data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical use." This came as an insult to all who know that cannabis is an appropriate treatment for ailments from nausea and vomiting to muscle spasticity and intractable pain, particularly from AIDS wasting.

The penalty of our irrationality on this subject is so egregious that it bears closer examination.

The White house and its personal goon squad the D.E.A. have declared war on sick people and the doctors and pharmacists who treat them. Not only that, but once ensnared in the criminal justice system, you stand a good chance of being branded for life. There are developments on both sides of the issue.

The bad news is made all the more clear by author Sam Harris:

"There are over 400,000 American citizens in state, federal and local jails and prisons for nonviolent drug offenses. Another million are on probation or parole. To get a grip on this figure: This is more than all the people locked up in Western Europe for all crimes whatsoever, and Western Europe has a larger population than the United States."
Congress slipped in the Osama/sudafed connection in the latest version of the homeland security law, so that means they are not only snooping into our health records, but they are also threatening our doctors with prosecution for treating us.

The racism in the enforcement of drug laws is no secret. Our prisons are filled with people of color who make up a minority of the population. What, are no White People doing illegal drugs?

To put this into simple terms, half of the American courts' operating hours are spent on nonviolent drug cases. Also, half of the American police force man hours are consumed in nonviolent drug enforcement. Ask any cop and they'll tell you they are spinning in an absurd cycle of chasing druggies while real, violent criminals - murderers, rapists and child molesters - are regularly paroled to make room for nonviolent drug offenders.

I have been tracking this since the 1960s when marijuana laws were clearly hypocritical compared the actual lethal (and legal) drugs, alcohol and tobacco. The common misperception still exists that illegal drugs kill hundreds of thousands of people, that alcohol kills less than drugs, and that cigarettes kills even fewer. The truth is just the opposite.

The source of our draconian drug policy stems from the religious right's conviction that anything that makes you feel better must be a sin. Their lack of compassion - and empirical evidence - not withstanding, they cling to beliefs that just do not stand up to rational scrutiny. Not only do they believe in their heart of hearts that having help to feel better is a sin, they are also incredibly well organized and have managed to control the laws of the land to successfully create a second - and even a third - generation of disenfranchised Americans. Those caught up in the system have been locked up and, as a result, locked out of the mainstream.

None of this happened by accident. The federal government has known the truth about drug addiction and alcoholism since the 1940s. At two federal prisons around the country (most notably my alma mater, Lexington FCI), research was conducted to learn all that could be gleaned about the whys and hows of addiction.

The CIA had a hand in this work. They were looking for the James Bond "truth serum" that they could use on the Russian spies. That didn't work out so well. They fried men's brains with LSD for months at a time, finally abandoning these experiments along with the Tuskegee syphilis experiments on African Americans. Some good came out of these studies, though, like the methadone maintenance programs, but the government turned their back on the results of their own research.

Instead of creating a humanitarian and successful approach to the social problem of addiction, they gave into the perfect political logic that they would protect us from something that they themselves created. The Cold War was saving us from the Commies and the Drug War was saving us from the Druggies. They ignored the recommendations of their own scientists and made drug policy a police/court/prison issue, not a medical/social issue. They, in fact, created the drug dilemma in this country.

If there were justice, those decision makers would all be in The Hague charged with crimes against humanity. We look to our government to guide us as a good parent might. At the rate their parenting skills are failing, they could be charged with child abuse.

The cost in dollars has been outrageous. How will this stack up when the next attack hits?
Read Sam Harris:

"For example, the US government spends, at the federal level alone, nearly $20 billion annually on the drug war. The total cost of our drug laws - when one factors in the expense to state and local governments and the tax revenue lost by our failure to regulate the sale of drugs - could easily be in excess of $100 billion dollars each year. The problem is, that with the prohibition of any desirable commodity comes the conflict of free market forces. The United Nations values the drug trade at $400 billion a year. That's more than the annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense. The irony is that the cost of our drug policy is the market that they have created has become a steady stream of income for terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Shining Path and others.

Even if we acknowledge that stopping drug abuse is a justifiable social goal, how does the financial cost of the war on drugs appear in light of the other challenges we face? It would take a one-time expenditure of $2 billion to secure our commercial ports against smuggled nuclear weapons. At present we have allocated a mere $93 million for this purpose. The war on marijuana costs $4 billion annually!"
I have seen some good news in the NY Times, though.

"Crippled by soaring corrections costs, three cities - Boston, Chicago and San Francisco - are re-examining policies that drive ex-offenders right back to prison by barring them from employment. Locked out of the mainstream, ex-felons mostly drug offenders) can become burdens to their families, their communities and the nation as a whole. These cities have taken groundbreaking steps aimed at de-emphasizing criminal histories for qualified applicants for city jobs, except where people with convictions are specifically barred by statute."

Drug courts in California are also taking a step in the right direction. The 60% of offenders now in prisons could be held accountable in community-based correction/treatment options. Cali leads the nation on this, and we should. Our state prison system is a giant corrupt monster running amok.

These developments symbolize a step forward in terms of fairness for law-abiding ex-offenders, who are often barred from entire occupations because of draconian drug laws and minor crimes committed in the distant past. It should be clear to all of us by now that confining those people to the ranks of the unemployed makes it more likely that they will commit new crimes, return to prison and become a permanent burden to society.

And finally for this Report, another little-discussed aspect of the drug wars: Voting and the ex-offender.

"The right to vote should never be curtailed in a way that disenfranchises a whole class of people. This view is gaining traction even in the Deep South, which pioneered the shameful state laws that barred nearly four million ex-felons, parolees and probationers from voting in the last national election. It's heartening to see those laws being modified or repealed across the country. Many men and women who have paid their debts to society remain disenfranchised, even in states that guarantee them the right to vote." [NY Times]

I didn't know this myself and did not vote for years after my own incarceration. Fortunately, I coincidentally met a get-out-the-vote worker at a local supermarket who recognized me as a musician and he took the time to explain the law to me. No one ever went over this with me and I had no idea that I could vote again. I re-registered to vote that day and have voted ever since. I would vote every day if they would let me.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 11:52 AM

9.28.2005

 

I struggle with cynicism.

It's an ongoing challenge to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions before all factors are considered. It probably comes from an over-inflated sense of my ability to understand the world around me. It's certainly connected to my ego. I also tend to go to the worst-case scenario automatically.

Sometimes, though, I get it right.

Case in point:

I am returning to L.A. now on a flight from Washington D.C. where I participated in a colossal anti-war march and concert. By colossal I mean 150,000 people. I can call that number because I have seen enough of crowds of this size to recognize it and put a pretty accurate figure on it. In DKT/MC5 over the last two years we have played a dozen or so huge outdoor rock festivals and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to estimate crowd sizes.

The Thievery Corporation organized the event. Eric Hilton and his partner Rob Garza stepped up big time. It took a masterful piece of grass roots organizing to bring together Operation Ceasefire and United for Peace and Justice, two of the many groups in the D.C. area concerned with social justice. It really speaks to the power of the individual to make a difference. Social justice requires individual participation just as democracy itself requires individual participation. One committed person makes a difference. This is how things can change in the world. One guy (or girl) gets an idea and steps up. When he steps up another says, "If you'll fight, then I'll fight alongside you." Then another steps up and says, "Me too." And before you know it you have a dynamic force for change in motion.

This is what happed last weekend in our nation's capitol. There was no big corporate sponsor. Shamefully, there was no MTV. And there was no Sting, no Brad and no J-Low. No high-profile music or Hollywood mega stars. Underground artists created it. Bands that most folks never heard of came and played because they could. Not because it might be good for record sales or for image polishing. Bands and speakers that were outside the mainstream stepped up and it was beautiful. And it all happened because two young men named Scott Goodstein and his friend Adam Eidinger agreed that they could do it with Thievery Corporation's help and generosity.

 

Every artist that performed brought something unique to the event and the styles and forms of music were as diverse as the crowd. There were moments of sheer brilliance and power by the Bellrays and beautiful harmonic joy from Sweet Honey in the Rock, mad beats and rhymes from Head Roc and a house shaking set by The Coup. Ian McKaye unveiled his new duo The Evens and showed the throng that intensity does not come from volume, but from focus. Steve Earle sang alone and the Thievery Corporation had 100,000 people dancing like maniacs late into the night. I haven't mentioned every artist on the bill because I'm not writing a review, but trust me, everyone who played and danced did so brilliantly. The beauty of it was that this was all in service of a higher principle. It was regular people, and families of soldiers killed in battle and artists exercising their constitutional right to redress their government for what they believe it has done wrong.

Cindy Sheehan got the biggest laugh of the day when she observed that we were in the shadow of the monument named after the father of our county, George Washington, who "was a man who could not tell a lie, and the current president can tell nothing but lies." As it stands now, most of the American people feel this way too. The President's approval rating is the lowest in history. Most Americans now believe the war is wrong and that we were misled into it.

The most powerful moment of the day, for me, was when a delegation of Lakota Indians took the stage with Cindy Sheehan. They had driven to Washington from their home on the Lakota Reservation in South Dakota non-stop for three days to be here. Their leader told the crowd that "in the Lakota tradition, we honor bravery" and that they had made a blanket with a morning star on it for Cindy. Inside the blanket were prayers and they came to Washington to present this blanket to her and to wrap her in it as a symbol of their recognition of her bravery. Then their medicine man sang a song to her and to us.

The Indians brought a dignity and humility that was consistent with the gravity of the reason we were all together on Saturday. To tell those in power that it was time to stop the war. To truly honor our brave young soldiers by bringing them home.

It was one of the most powerful and moving experiences of my life.

Jello Biafra brought on speakers that ran the gamut from Rev. Al Sharpton to journalist Greg Palast. The speakers bracketed the musical artists and everyone rocked, and everyone listened.

Which brings me back around to the cynicism.

Here was an event full of deep, historical significance, but I have this nagging voice in the back of my head saying no one will ever hear about this day. Only the people here today will ever know it happened. I try to balance my enthusiasm for the efforts of regular Americans with the reality of political life in America today. It would be foolish to underestimate the powers of those in office today. The handful of men (and a few women) that reign in America are serious about what they're doing. They have taken power both legitimately and arguably, illegitimately. Unlike the rest of us who do what we can, when we can, to participate in the democratic process, they're on it all day, everyday. 24-7. The people in power right now have been working at this positioning for decades. Karl Rove is indeed a formidable foe. Together they have created a completely symbiotic organism in which to grow even stronger.

Led by his insatiable appetite for glory, G.W. Bush reveals a naked, almost biblical, fixation on outdoing his father. In his case, emotional and intellectual depth is not only unnecessary, but would be an impediment. He needs only a pure belief that 1) he is right and 2) that his self will alone can force his agenda through. He receives affirmation in great torrents of adulation. It comes from the religious right, because they know that he is their man. And he is supported by the brainpower of Paul Wolfowitz and his Neo-Con think tank with an ideology of changing the face of the Middle East politics by force of arms.

I"m not an expert in any of this stuff, just an interested observer, but it smells suspiciously like an updated version of Churchill and Wilson's carving the territory up after WWII with imperialism cloaked in democratic rhetoric. We have made no efforts to wean ourselves from Arab oil dependence. As it stands today, we are paying for both sides of this war. I have kept an open mind to developments, but it just doesn't look like the Western-style democracy they're pushing is taking hold out there.

Maybe it's too soon to tell, but whatever time it takes, we should observe it and assist, but as Thomas Jefferson said, "from the water's edge." Sure, we can help if we are asked to help. And so far, we haven't been asked. These are grim people in the White House, and the fact that they sacrifice young American and Arab lives in the service of a personal agenda cannot be taken lightly. The cost in lives and dollars is much too high.

All we are saying is give us the exit strategy. Give us a date when we'll wrap this all up. You could even move the date if need be. Anyone that ever had construction done knows that things can take a little longer than planned. But let us join with those who are reasonable in demanding a date for the war to end. There is no honor in more young lives on either side being sacrificed. We are now at the end game. Changing the direction of this juggernaught is not easy. This is the not so glamorous part of democracy. Write your congressman, bring some pressure to bear. This is the power of the people.

My cynicism surfaces, too, when it registers that this is the most information controlling administration in American history. They are genius at spinning information to their benefit. In fact, they have done it so much that even average folks like those in the audience on Saturday are no longer swallowing the propaganda whole. So when I see 150,000 people protesting their policies, I start wondering just if and how this news will reach the information hungry people of our country.

 

Right now, media bosses and government regulators agree ideologically and it's a dangerous intersection. It's chilling that major media outlets are run by men (mostly) with political views which conform more to whatever will keep their licenses than the constitutional guarantee (and requirement) of a free press. Where are all those muckraking newspapermen that kicked the British out in the first place? Where are all those thorns under the saddle of the powerful and arrogant? Who's keeping them honest if not the press? Where is the coverage of this historic event?

I get back to my hotel about midnight and tune in C-SPAN (my favorite TV channel when I'm not watching "The Wire" on HBO) and what do I see? Coverage from the speaker's stand in front of the White House where 12 people remain from the throng of 100,000. The entire crowd had departed to participate in the march. Except for Ralph Nader, who kicked ass as usual, the speakers were talking to a dozen or so stragglers. It looked pathetic and it was misleading. I was disappointed, but not surprised. C-SPAN ran this in a loop over and over for the next day and a half, effectively distorting the perception of the event.

The newspapers the next day relegated the story to the middle of the first section saying "tens of thousands" marched. The network TV coverage likewise showed 5-10 seconds of marchers in the street and then another sequence of the "supporting our troops" folks. Let's see, a few dozen pro-Bush people versus 150,000 anti-war demonstrators, but on TV it looks about even. Hmnn. Fair and balanced? You bet! Now my cynicism has turned to sarcasm.

I am not a conspiracy nut, but it seemed just a little too convenient that the trains from New York were disabled for "maintenance" on the day of the event. If one wanted to control the size of an event and had the ability to do so... I guess you could say -- based on the track record of this administration -- I just don't trust them.

For me, the day was not without a few wonderfully surreal moments. Like standing backstage just before I played talking to one of my intellectual heroes, Dr. Cornel West. And having Julian Bond stop over to say Hi and remind me he testified for John Sinclair in front of Congress back in the day. Then looking over my shoulder and seeing Al Sharpton talking to Jello Biafra while Maxine Waters listened in. Then to hit the stage with the mighty BellRays.

 

Sometimes, in spite of my cynicism, I think my life just couldn't get any better.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 10:29 AM  

 

8.17.2005 

I'm a lucky guy. I have a pretty good job. Not as good as some, a little better than others. In fact, crazy as I am, I'm grateful to have a job at all. Many folks don't have work at all or have work that's backbreaking. Hard work to me is hot-tar roofing in the winter in Brooklyn, something I did for a while back in the 80s. Factory work is hard. Farm work is hard. Retail is hard, too. I guess that's why it's called labor. Believe me, I'm not complaining. My job today is nowhere near that hard.

One of the conditions of my line of work is that I, from time to time, travel a lot. This has been a most rewarding fringe benefit and a curse at the same time. The curse part is that I really love my life at home. I miss it when I'm gone. I like consistency. I like the people in my life, my friends and associates and I like the activities I participate in. I like sleeping in my own bed. Fact is, I'm 57 years old now and "getting in the van" just doesn't have that magical attraction to it that it did when I was a bit younger. That, and the fact that international travel kicks my ass, it usually takes two days to regroup.

I have been able to see a fair amount of the larger world we live in, other countries and cultures. I still haven't seen Africa or China or the Middle East (although a trip there is in the planning). I also have never been to Russia or Singapore or Hong Kong. But I'm still healthy, so there's always the possibility & I bring this all up because there are places where people do things different than we do here in the United States. I like the experience of this. Sometimes it's the high-ticket items, like refusing to go along with the illegal and immoral Iraq war George Bush and his gang have perpetrated. And other big-ticket items like national health care come to mind.

I was recently in Finland and one of my prescriptions cracked open in my luggage. (At my age these are the drugs that are important, not the oh so passé© cocaine/heroin/booze. Bladder, kidney, nasal, vision, etc. are my drugs of choice today.) Anyway, I walked around the corner from my hotel to a local hospital, explained my dilemma to the emergency room doctor who sent me to one of his colleagues who took my info, looked up the Finnish equivalent of my medication and wrote me a prescription.

When we finished, I asked what I should pay him and he said he wasn't sure and would check. He returned a minute later and said "No, there's no charge." Can you imagine that happening here? Free health care for a foreigner! (By the way, this doctor had no idea who I am or that I sing and play the guitar.)

Sometimes the differences are the smaller things, like how people greet each other. The Brazilians are really into kissing. It's kind of nice. I'm a pretty huggy fellow but the regularity of all that kissing took a little adjusting to. Americans are generally a little too uptight for all this affection.

Then I got to thinking. Living in the U.S. can give a person a distorted view of the rest of the world. Not that most Americans ever consider what the rest of the world might be really like, but America is really an island on earth happily cruising along under its own power, oblivious to anyone and anything that doesn't touch us personally or at least show up on our TV screens. Sometimes I think people are more affected by TV than their real lives, which is a testament to the power of creative marketing.

Much of the rest of the western world has CNN too, but there's something else going on out there that Americans miss. It's each other. The rest of the world has a sense of being connected to other countries and other cultures. They have a feeling for their neighbors. The English have been vacationing in Spain forever. The Germans are traveling all over, the French come to America (then go back to Paris and bitch about us). An acceptance of other cultures is admirable. They have their differences but the truth is they are all more alike than unalike. They all seem to live together with their differences.

Same with the Brazilians. I'm writing this on the plane returning from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Sao Paulo dwarfs most American cities. I did a little research on the Net before going. I had heard the reports about crime being out of control down there and how gangs of police are murdering street children, etc. I am susceptible to the media too. I saw "City of God" and "Pixote." What I found was a city and a people who were much the same as my fellow Angelenos and me. Sao Paulo is one big-assed, hard-charging and very alive town full of ambitious, smart and creative music and film fans who are actually into the doing part of work.

LA and Sao Paulo are almost the same size (12-14 million populations in each). There is a kind of TV/movie created mindset that I hear from friends around the world about Los Angeles. They think the city is non-stop drive-by shootings and gang bangers on every corner. To be sure, Sao Paulo was funkier and more extreme, but it definitely wasn't the living hell I thought it was going to be. I'm not saying that you're any more secure walking down a dark street at 2am in a bad neighborhood in Sao Paulo than you are in Paris or Athens or New York or Detroit, but let's not be Pollyannaish. For Christ's sake, let's use the brains God gave us. The image I had of Brazil before I actually went there versus the reality of the place was really enlightening.

Just before I left the States, there was a report in the NY Times that Brazil had found a way to make ethanol out of sugar cane and, in the last 20 years, had reduced their dependency on Arab oil by 50 percent. 50%! They have also reduced emissions and improved gas economy in the automobiles ahead of the U.S. Of course, this is way too radical of an idea for the oil interests around here. Yesterday I read a report that the President's new energy bill will exclude the biggest SUVs from new emission controls. Like we really need those Hummers and Escalades. If you can afford them, good for you, but to give them a pass is another typical concession from the White House. The administration has also has banned importing Brazilian sugar cane, which is no surprise since we're not really looking for a way to cut down American dependence on Arab oil. Plus, when I remembered how Brazilian health officials stood up to the big U.S. drug companies about the cost of AIDS drugs I liked the Brazilians even more.

There are other more important benefits to understanding the human race tied to travel. One is that everyone in the world, as near as I can determine, wants the same things: To have a home and to be healthy, to have work and family, to be educated and to contribute to the world around them, to participate in the social fabric of their communities, to be part of something, to believe, or not believe, in the God of their choice. We have so much more in common with the rest of the world than most people think. It's a shame that so much is made of our differences. The differences are smaller than you might ever imagine.

And there are subtler benefits to worldwide travel and that's friends. One of the things I value most in life is my relationship with others. I have wonderful friends all over the world. Indeed, we are all part of a new world order, a new global tribe of artists and doers and thinkers and creative people who are trying to do things that matter. The Internet allows us to stay connected. We're always conspiring on some project or another. Many are business partners we've made over the years and will continue to be involved with as long as I live.

One of my smartest and most prolific friends is Julian Cope. We had a ball together a few weeks ago in Oxford, England at a DKT/MC5 show with a great support band Case Suitable for Treatment. Julian and his wife Dorian have a fascinating web site. Check them out here.

Like people everywhere, we talk a lot about the world we live in and I've found a real sense of disbelief among my friends --- and the public at large living outside the United States - when we discuss decisions made by the US government. People simply cannot grasp what has happened to America. I'm often asked by journalists as well, how and why we let the current situation get so out of hand? They're not America bashers. For the most part, they're not political radicals either. They are people who have admired America from afar. They love our culture and have wanted to do -- and be -- like us. The just can't get their heads around this president. When you see him through the eyes of another country that is not subject to the hyper-slick manipulations of the religious right political juggernaut, you can gain a wholly new view of the world.

On September 24th, in Washington D.C., I will join with United for Peace and Justice in a daylong event known as Operation Ceasefire at the Washington Monument to carry a message to the government that time has come to end the war. I will be playing with the mighty BellRays. (I am an honorary BellRay in at least a spiritual sense and this day I'll get to be a real one.) The list of other performers is growing daily, so check out the website for more info.

We're joining together with families of soldiers and with veterans of the Iraq war who are believe that the time to end this is now and bring their fellow troops home.

The struggle continues. You fight and lose, fight and lose, fight and lose. Then you win. Then you fight and lose some more. It's a never-ending thing. Democracy demands participation. It is required and it is the highest form of patriotism. We are not sheep and we will not go along quietly.

There is a big world out there and it's watching our country very closely.

Wayne Kramer
Sao Paulo to LA
August, 2005

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 7:09 AM  

 

3.22.2005 

From time to time I am blessed with what I call peak moments. These are times when the truth of a particular instant registers with me clearly. When there is no confusion or ambiguity whatsoever. When all distractions are stripped away and the moment merges with the feeling. They are the times when I know it just doesn't get any better than it is right now.

Last month at London's Royal Festival Hall I had one of those peak moments.

The music and socio/spiritual/educational/political philosophies of Sun Ra have been a pillar of my thinking for almost four decades. I first was introduced to them in the late sixties by my friend John Sinclair. I had moved out of my mother's house on Detroit's northwest side and into an apartment down in the Cass Corridor around Wayne State University. Sinclair and I had become friends and he became a mentor for me. He was older, better educated and possessed a worldview that intrigued me. Sinclair had a way of seeing things that made a lot more sense to me than what I was able to put together myself up to that point. We discussed everything from God to the blues and all points in-between. He was particularly well informed about music and musicians and the problems that go along with this kind of life. These were subjects that I was drawn to in an almost obsessive way.

We talked about what music means to people and what role it plays in our lives. We discussed how the music we gravitate to informs our lives and reflects them at the same time. I questioned what the connection between the musician and the listener is and how does it work beyond just the surface level. We talked a great deal and he turned me on to some music that changed everything for me. Some of this music was Sun Ra's.

The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra on ESP Disc was the record that opened the door to a whole new life for me. It's peculiar that sometimes folks tell me a piece of music I made changed their life. I find it hard to believe, but this is exactly what happened to me. Time and time again.

Sun Ra was just what I was looking for. I have always been drawn to the next thing. The current thing only holds my interest for a short while. No matter what it is, could be trains or cooking shows. I think I'm a little better at staying in one place and enjoying the moment today but I am still inexplicably drawn to moving ahead.

Sun Ra was--and still is--way ahead of me. He has been another mentor of mine. He was also way ahead of most of the leading edge musicians of the day. These were not slackers either. In the day of Monk, Mingus and Coltrane, saxophonist John Gilmore chose Sun Ra's band as the most "stretched-out" of the lot. Gilmore had offers to join the others' bands and chose the Arkestra. This tells me, in effect, that Sun Ra was able to advance the entire context of western music into a larger more resonate expression. Personally, I place him in the pantheon of most important artists with da Vinci, Bach, Mozart, Picasso or Pollack.

I took dozens of acid trips with Sun Ra's music. I suppose one could say this undermines my credibility, but I don't care. I got deep, deep into what he and his fellows were doing. I heard what it was he was telling me. Us. That music can be limitless, that its expression is only limited by our own limited human thoughts and if we can get beyond self, then we can find a land "Where the sun shines eternally." That the message is to make it your message.

Sun Ra died in May of 1993 and a few of the center core players like the aforementioned tenor giant Gilmore and baritone saxophonist Pat Patrick, vocalist and dancer June Tyson have also died, but the band has carried on bravely under the able leadership of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen. Who, at 70, is blowing like a teenager from Mars, which I suspect he actually is.

When we first started DKT-MC5 it was with the understanding that the band was an experiment and would have to be considered a "work-in-progress" concept. Any old ideas of what our band was or how our band might operate would have to be jettisoned in favor of a more flexible and adventurous platform to work on...if it was going to work at all. I actually wasn't sure it could. It had been a long time since I played with Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis and a lot of water had passed under those bridges.

After the pleasant discovery that we could not only improve our ability to play together and even tour together quite successfully, I reached the conclusion: So what? Why are we doing this? To carry the message of the music of the MC5 to a new generation of fans? Sure, but the answer is ultimately bigger than that. It's because we need to continue to do something creative. Doing things that push the boundaries of what a band is, and what the art of performing music might become given a little encouragement, DKT/MC5 is just that kind of vehicle.

The concert at Royal Festival Hall was the realization of just such a plan. It doesn't come without a great deal of work by a lot of people. Once the idea had been hatched we were able to tie together some unfulfilled commitments from last summer's 66-city world tour.

I assembled a new line-up of the band featuring our old friend Handsome Dick Manitoba, guitar hero Gilby Clarke and the incomparable Lisa Kekaula. We set up a short European tour to bracket the event. We had five shows across Spain and France to get ourselves together for the London concert. Being in a band is not a destination, it's a process. The process takes a few runs-through to tune itself up for the performances. Five was a good number and by the time we hit London everyone felt pretty secure in their roles.

We were joined in London by my friend David Thomas. David and I put in some extra time in the dressing room working out the timing on the countdown section of "Starship." It is a complicated bit of vocalizing, and it took some effort to master.

The sound checks went down fine and we were all running around from task to task like chickens with their heads cut off. There was a considerable press commitment for the day and I kept up my end by sitting for two filmings and a handful of print interviews. One film, incidentally, is a new documentary film by Don Letts on Sun Ra.

The Arkestra's performance was a joy to my ears. The wonderful cacophony of multiple horns, bass, drums and electric guitar were fresh and sparkling. The Arkestra looked great too. The Sun Ra Arkestra doesn't often get credit for their contribution to the art of performance in dance and theater, which is considerable. I'm not sure who influenced whom, but back in the 60s when we were first playing with them in Detroit they wore afro/dashiki types of clothes. We had just begun to experiment with sequins and gold lame and other metallic types of materials, so I am going out on a limb here to say that Sun Ra saw these bright flashy clothes on these crazy boys in Detroit and incorporated them into his presentation. Did we get it from him? Did he get it from us? Doesn't matter. We all got it and tonight the Arkestra was shimmering and shining forth beautifully. The stage lighting really helped amplify the bright reds and blues of the sequins and bangles. The dancing was superb. Free and joyous.

We took the stage at our appointed time and played a focused set of straight down the center rock material from the MC5 book. We were closing in on the moment. As it approached, I started to feel a real excitement about what we were about to get into. All through the planning stages I kept calm and only allowed myself to be excited in an intellectual sense, as in, this a good idea among many other good ideas. But now it was real. It was palatable. I could feel it. I was giddy.

I said a few words to the audience about what Sun Ra meant to me and the band. I introduced Marshall Allen and the fellows. I introduced David Thomas and Dr. Charles Moore and we began playing "Starship." I had a simple outline for the performance which was to start easy and free. Start small and build gradually into the actual song portion of the performance and then let's just see what happens. What happened exceeded my wildest expectations. Each little sound I made with my guitar in the intro, someone in the Arkestra answered. I got a great exchange going with trumpeter Michael Ray.

When Dennis would lay down a rhythmic feel on drums, everybody joined in with him. The music was totally free and totally controlled at the same time. This is the lesson of freedom, its not free. For each freedom there is a responsibility, in music and in everything else. We explored theme after theme in a glorious and joyous fashion. I only wish we could have stayed with one rhythmic feel longer to see what's over the next hill. Across the next valley. Over in the next galaxy.

I realized that, because of the stage volume, David Thomas couldn't discern the timing on the opening chords, so I jumped in to sing the opening lines with him. "Starship...Starship take me..." All Aboard.

The Arkestra joined in with a spontaneous counterpoint to the rock chord changes and we rounded the corner to the countdown section. The thing that makes this part so difficult is that it is absolutely set and cannot be changed. It comes at an accelerated velocity and has a lot of rhythmical words to get out at a really fast clip.

"Ten. For the gravity. Checkpoint! Nine for polarity. Checkpoint! ..."

Made it! We're leaving the power of earth's gravitational pull and heading into zero G.

"Out there amongst the planets..."

Here the Arkestra were in familiar territory. After all, space is their place. We cruised the galaxies and generally enjoyed the view for a while.

Earlier I had discussed with Marshall the possibilities of us all singing, "We travel the spaceways..." or, "If you find Earth boring, it's the same old same thing, come on sign up with Outerspaceways Incorporated" together, and he was all for it.

We all sang together and I never felt so at home as I did in that moment. I have been singing variations of this tune for 30 years and right there in that moment it just all seemed to fit perfectly. Right there in that instant, it was all there. From way back then with John Sinclair in the kitchen of his apartment on Warren Ave. in Detroit to right now here in London England, in an instant, time was suspended. The peak moment.

We all danced outrageous party dances from space ballet to the funky chicken. It was a full body/spirit/mind celebration. Just then, David Thomas began his Tuvian cum Venusian throat singing. We soared and roared and clicked and clacked, binked and bonked our way through the night finally ending in a drone of feedback that segued into a funky New Orleans second line march from the stage for all the voyagers. Naturally, these moments do not last.

You can't hold on to joy. You just grab a kiss as it passes by.

I'm pretty sure the crowd went nuts but I was overwhelmed myself at the fun we just had. It wasn't the music or the lights or the crowd, it was the experience of being alive. The backstage scene was pandemonium with good friends old and new showing up to check in.

Blissful, we left London at four in the morning en route to Italy and the remainder of the tour.

Oh yea, we filmed and recorded it too. Can't wait to see what we got along with the hundreds of hours of footage from last year's tour. Who knows? More will be revealed.

But the best news is we will do it again soon.

"We came from nowhere here. Why can’t we go somewhere there?" -- Sun Ra

I couldn't agree more.

Best, w

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 4:00 PM  

12.17.2004
New York City 

NYC. Back in New York this week for some business meetings and it's ass-freezing cold. I know it's been a few years since I've endured a real winter and this weather reminds me of one of the reasons I live in southern California.

I had some time to check in with our good friend and great producer Hal Willner. Hal told me about a protest that was happening downtown and did I want to go with him? Protest? Hell yes!

We met down on Leonard St. for a demonstration in front of the Knitting Factory. As I turned the corner up the block, I could hear the street echoing with the sounds of trumpets, trombones and drums. It was a joyful noise. It vibrated up the faces of Manhattans buildings and down the corridors of the Financial District. There were, maybe, 100 people carrying signs and marching up and down Leonard. The deal was that the Knitting Factory management sold the club and sold out the musicians who have worked there, many of whom recorded for their label.

Word was they also destroyed all the remaining inventory of CD's belonging to the artists who are the heart and soul of NYC's downtown experimental music scene and who have kept experimental music alive there. The Knitting Factory was the axis of a great creative sphere. As with most things, the center never holds and it had all come apart.

As is usually the case, the musicians got no consideration whatsoever for their contributions. All their recording contracts were cancelled in one fell swoop. This was wrong. Not unusual, but most definitely wrong. But they weren't taking this affront lying down. My old comrade Mark Ribot and his downtown partners pulled this event together to stand up for their rights. It was exciting to be there and to participate.

Mark had a giant rat out on the sidewalk in front of the club. When I say giant, I mean Giant--as in 20-feet tall--clearly representing the musicians' view of the true character of the Knitting Factory management. It was a funny editorial statement.

The cats on the protest line were playing some loose gospel and second-line tunes interspersed with speeches by the president of the NYC musicians Local Union #802. Many musicians and other city officials stood with the artists for justice and we demanded it. Ribot did a song or two and I was compelled to raise my own voice up in protest. I sang "Broken Promise" for the demonstrators. The lines "the deal is sold out, and the sidewalk's cold out in the Promised Land" hit home with the assembly. I was honored to be able to represent for all the Detroit and Los Angeles musicians and I told the crowd that we were all with them in total solidarity. There's power in unity.

As the event progressed, we started getting reports that, as a result of our being out there, the Knitting Factory management had entered into negotiations with the musicians and they were willing to work something out. We all dug in for a long afternoon. Everybody was carrying signs and enjoying each other's company. It isn't that often that you'll see a collection of cutting-edge musicians out on the street in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon in 20-degree weather. We all caught up on our news and exchanged numbers and sang along with the wonderfully powerful NYC vocalist, Dean Bowman as he improvised a field holler of protest. Syd Straw was there and she promised to sing on my new record. After a couple of hours in the brutal cold, the Union president announced that an agreement had been reached! It included a cash payout for all the musicians involved and a reasonable artist buy-back price of $2.00 per CD on the stock. Victory!

It was truly a sweet moment. Musicians had banded together and took it to the streets to protest getting fucked over. Getting the short end of the stick is nothing new for working musicians, but this was the first time I was ever involved in a real job action that got immediate results. My hat is off to all the NYC downtown brothers and sisters who stepped up.

Power to the workers.

Have a peaceful New Year.

Wayne

December, 2004

New York City

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 3:00 PM  

 

 

7.28.2004
Sydney, Australia

What the hell kind of world do we live in?

This morning I went to breakfast down the street from my hotel here in Sydney, Australia. I picked up the local newspaper and read the headline: 6 SOULS LOST! It was the story of an Australian family killed in a small plane crash. I was encouraged that the headlines were not the usual American shock horror crime feature. Of course, it was a tragic loss and a heartbreaking story, but as I leafed through the paper I happened on a small blurb on page 16 at the bottom of the page.

There was a small story: VILLAGERS BURNED ALIVE. The story was a report from Darfur about the ongoing crisis in the Sudan. The story recounted how "Arab mercenaries" had herded villagers up and burned them alive. The story went on to say that thus far 30,000 people have been killed there.

30,000 PEOPLE. LET ME SAY THIS AGAIN. THIRTY THOUSAND PEOPLE HAVE BEEN KILLED!

What the hell is going on here? I don't believe myself to be naive or Pollyannaish about the world we live in but this really hit me this morning.

Let me see if I got this right. America is turned upside down, wars are prosecuted in Iraq and Afghanistan, tens of thousands killed in the name of democracy and we're told it's because terrorists murdered 3,000-plus Americans on Sept. 11th. Who could deny the terrible losses of Sept 11th? This was an unspeakable crime, but check the numbers here: THIRTY THOUSAND. It's an epidemic in the Western World. Thirty thousand African lives are erased and it only rates a small blurb buried in the middle of the paper.

Are African lives worth less than American lives? Or, since I'm down here, Australian lives? Apparently so. Where is the outrage? Where are the champions of democracy? Is democracy only for oil-producing countries? Is it that the only countries that are strategically located deserve help?

Or is it that 30,000 African lives just don't fit into the neo-con ideology of Richard Pearle, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney and their shill George Bush? I just don't get it and I'm looking for answers. How do things like this happen in this world today and no one says anything?

I got back to my room and did a little research. The New York Times reports that Colin Powell is threatening sanctions against Sudan unless they stop the killing and let relief workers enter the area. This sounds good, but since when did anyone listen to Colin Powell? This is the guy that the administration trots out as the voice of conscience when they are too busy with their real business to bother with actually helping somebody in the world. Unlike his bosses, I think he cares, but he's powerless. Also, unlike his bosses, he is a soldier and knows what killing really means. But, so far this is all falling on deaf ears.

Where are the rest of the world leaders at a time like this?

Where are all the big mouth politicians proclaiming God is on their side?

Where is Tony Blair? Where are they all?

Faith without works is worthless.

Politicians can justify ignoring a genocide that is clearly in process because good men say and do nothing to hold them accountable.

Does an African husband grieve the murder of his wife and child less than an American? Does an African orphan need care any less than a European? Did the people who were burned alive in Africa suffer less than those in the World Trade Center? It just doesn't add up.

One of my political idols Noam Chomsky says the best way to fight terrorism is "not to participate in it." If we allow what's happening to the people of Darfur to happen, we are endorsing terrorism by omission.

Do we not have a say in any of this? Can something be done right now to stop what will surely get worse and worse? Of course something can be done, but will George Bush or Tony Blair or any of their partners do it?

Don't hold your breath. Self interest rules with these guys. Only when their jobs are threatened will they take action and I haven't seen any evidence that any of them are willing to put their careers on the line to help save African lives.

Call somebody, write some letters, and shout it from the rooftops.

This is wrong, this is horrible and worst of all it doesn't have to be this way.

Rise up, Rise up, and Rise up.

Wayne

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 9:33 PM  

4.13.2004

The arc of bands is always the same. It is astounding that no one ever really looks at it. I mean really looks at it. What in the hell happens to all those bands? Where do they go?

Every week there’s a new band being hyped. Most are never heard from again. They are usually very young people and most of them will bounce back after their fling and find a life that makes sense. They will look back on their days in the band as a great rite of passage with fond memories. But that won’t happen to the ones that get a taste of success.

I’ve talked about this a few times before and mentioned the bureau of labor and statistics web site as the truth of what a professional musicians life really is in terms of dollars and cents. Today, though, I’m looking deeper into fame itself and the high price it can exact.

We’ve all seen “Behind the Music” re-runs ad nauseum, and there are hundreds of tell-all books, and yet the bands keep coming out of the woodwork asking for more. It’s a tribute to the power of the Hollywood myth machine that young people just keep arriving ready and willing to sign up. There’s a daily influx at the bus station, airport and by car from all over the country and the world. They all want to pick up the golden horseshoe. They want to be delivered to the Promised Land and they’re ready to walk with or walk on, fuck or fuck over anyone they think can help them succeed.

They all start at a tender young age with their best friends, teenagers or early twenties at their latest. They dream and scheme and they work insanely hard for a few years and, if they’re really committed, they’ll make a record. If it’s a very good record, exciting things can start to happen. Did for me.

But what starts out to be a dream come true eventually becomes a nightmare. This is the story for 99.99% of those who take this journey. It is a ride that can last three or four years and will leave you broke with a trail of damage in your wake. Very few have avoided this. Even fewer are the ones that parlayed their seconds in the spotlight into an actual life-long career. At the risk of being overly dramatic, this is a brutal business. It exacts a toll on individuals and it really wreaks havoc on relationships.

I don’t say these things to discourage anyone from pursuing a career in the arts. If this is what you want to do, I can’t discourage you. I encourage young people to invent their own lives, just don’t be naive about the dangers.

The artist’s life can have many offerings. One of which is the chance to contribute something of beauty to a world that desperately needs beauty. Always has, always will. An artist’s way of life is punctuated by unexpected twists and a great many challenges. It’s an unorthodox existence but an interesting one. There are even great rewards. But in the artist’s life, the rewards are in the making of the art. Not in the business of fame and glory. And it’s in the latter where the pitfalls are.

This is not the message that Hollywood provides you. Hollywood needs fresh bodies and is willing to go to any lengths to get them. It needs blood, fresh blood.

It’s a cautionary tale I’m telling here and I’m talking about my own experience. But I’m also talking about the experience of a great many of my friends and acquaintances. I know a lot of people around the world and I see the same patterns over and over.

“We’re gonna make it.”

“We’re special.”

I don’t know where this idea of being “special” came from, but there sure are a lot of people who buy into it. Rehabs are full of “special” people.

This is the way it is with almost all bands. The exceptions can be counted on one hand. Bands that survive a brush with fame don’t make it without scars. The list is incredibly long and getting longer every week. I’ve seen them come and I’ve seen them go, and mostly – I’ve seen them go. All record deals go in the toilet. All deals go sour. All bands end up getting dropped from their labels. In fact, it’s the natural way of things. All things must pass.

Anytime a group of artists get together, whether they’re dancers, musicians, filmmakers, writers or actors, the same thing will and must happen. You unite for power and you set mutual goals. A great investment is made in the work and, over a period of time, these aims are met. There is nothing else that can happen next but to have things fall apart. It is the way of all nature. Everything that is born and lives must die. The center never holds.

This can be a hard thing to accept. It was for me. Especially when it all starts off so good.

In the beginning the faces are all smiling at you. Everyone laughs at your lame jokes. The women are willing. Everyone wants to hang out with you. People give you gifts like it’s your birthday every day. You may even see some real money. Journalists are asking you to expound on all your deep theories about music and politics and life and God and boy, it’s all just so fabulous.

It really works hand in hand with being young. When I was young I was convinced that I would live forever and that I was certain I was absolutely right about everything. In psychiatric jargon this attitude is called omnipotence. It also a major factor in alcoholism, but that usually develops a little later down the line when things start to go wrong.

You see, there is a high that sneaks into the picture with recognition, except you don’t know you’re high. If I drink a glass of whisky, I know I’m going to get a buzz. But I don’t know it when I’m high on celebrity. The intoxication of notoriety comes on subtly. You’re not even aware of it. You become actually drunk with it, but you don’t know it. None of this happens consciously. This happens below the level of consciousness. It’s just “a feeling,” and then, you want more of that feeling and need it again and again. Inevitably, common sense goes out the window and lunacy replaces it. Bigger cars, bigger accolades, bigger tits, and mostly bigger trouble.

There is nothing in one’s experience that can prepare you for prominence. There are no college courses on Fame 101. It’s “on the job training” and then it’s too late, way too late.

It all fades after a time, as it must.

This is a point where I have to face a world that just isn’t going the way I want it to go. The Band just isn’t the darlings we once were. Sales drop off. There’s a new band that everyone is talking about. The money just didn’t keep rolling in like everyone said it would. Disappointments start coming faster. Life gets increasingly complicated. And then the pain-killing properties of booze and drugs fit right in. It’s a lethal combination and the attrition rate is high. Just check out the long list of dead and damaged rock and film stars. It’s all so predictable and it can go on for years.

The damage is mostly done in relationships. People who started out as best friends end up with life-long resentments that distort the whole course of their lives. Family units are splintered and no one ever talks about any of it. It becomes the pink elephant in the room that no one recognizes.

Bitterness, regret and blaming everyone else for your failures become the dominant themes.

I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the current VH-1 TV show about reuniting bands from the ‘80s. Jools Holland and Nino Bettencourt, were so resolute against re-upping that it’s hard for an average person to understand. These are deep-seated feelings; they spring from deep in the soul. These folks have a pain about their pasts that they refuse to bring into today. They just can’t go there.

I can identify with them. For years I couldn’t watch MTV without getting angry. I was filled with resentment for everyone I ever knew in the music business. I didn’t know that I was the author of all my troubles.

There is an antidote for the damage and it’s in living today, not in yesterday. It’s also in finally growing up. Ultimately doing your art is the reward of your efforts. Not as the means to greater self-glorification. Keeping the horse in front of the cart makes it easier on the horse and you can carry a heavier load. You can actually do better work than when you were younger. Art is not tied to youth. Skill and craft are acquired over years of work. Art is something you do for life. Not till you hit the big time.

If you want to be a musician, then do it with all your heart. Study music and learn how to protect yourself in business. Because if you don’t, you will not be able to maintain a career. If you want to be a filmmaker, write your story and make your movie. If you want to be a painter or dancer or start a company or whatever it is that turns you on. Do it with commitment and passion. Go for it whole-heartedly, give it all you got. But don’t expect fame to fix you. It can’t. I have not seen many who have benefited as people from it.

There’s nothing wrong with money and recognition as long as it doesn’t come first.

I believe the best we can do as artists (and as people, too) is making a contribution to the world, whatever it may be. That’s something that matters.

Wayne

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 1:25 AM  

2.25.2004

"Help Me Out Here Donnie..."

Was (Not Was) Hit Sundance

The Was Bros were offered a showcase spot at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. David, of course, is my main man and we've kicked around the possibility of re-upping the group for years. He and his brother Don are the core of the group. They had an incredible idea that got them started over two decades ago.

I was the original guitarist on those first few records and tours and have remained close to both of them. When they called with the offer of going to Sundance to play, I was happy to join in. I thought this could be an attempt to rediscover something that was special. Not blindly or naively, but an honest effort to find out why we (and mostly David and Don) got together in the first place. I think that the spirit that got them started might be redefined for today.

I had never actually done a proper bus tour. I know it's strange, but true. For the last ten years on the road, I've been in the van. (I am a proud graduate of the Epitaph school of touring the world.)

The bus was a beauty, completely decked out with all the latest technology and creature comforts. The rolling crew was Don, David, singer Sweet Pea Atkinson, tour manager Gary Hirstus and your reporter. We departed LA late in the evening and rode all night arriving in Park City at about 3pm the next day. The highlight of the trip was actually working on the bus. David got his laptop out and came up with a wacky groove, Don put a funky keyboard pattern on it and we played live acoustic bass and guitar to it. This was it. We were in the zone and doing something new and exciting. It was a small taste of what might be possible. As it turned out, we didn't end up using the new music on the actual gig. But the spark most definitely was there.

If we're not moving forward, we're moving backward. This is one of the dangers of stepping off into something new from something old. There is a dangerous tendency to revert to what worked yesterday, and it's the kiss of death. The key is to stay in today. Right now is what matters.

The shows were fun and the crowds were elated to see and hear the group again. It was flattering to have industry folks buzzing around us.

Jon Brion joined us on keyboards for the first matinee. On the second night David McMurry came in on saxophones. Mac was the original horn player on the band and is much in demand these days for his formidable talent. We were lucky to get him back for the gig. It was obvious to me there's a special bond between the members of the group. It comes from being from Detroit and being as similarly twisted as we are. We have a unique musical language that we share. It's a precious quality and will need to be nurtured.

Narada Michael Walden filled the drum chair. Narada, a highly successful producer in his own right, drummed beautifully and was a pleasure to get to know.

We played a late night set on Friday and had to dig out some old material to fulfill the set length. We played well and Sweet Pea sang his ass off. Some pretty cool music. It was promising.

The most fun was on the ride home. After staying up way past my bedtime watching videos of the gig, David rolled out of his bunk and commenced the Donnie and Dave show. These two missed their calling. Forget music! Tag-team comedy is the way to go for these two all American nuts. I was in stitches for hours. Maybe their routines were cornier than corn, or maybe it was the late hour and lack of sleep, but I was dying. My sides were aching from the laughter. "Help me out here Donnie!"

More news as it happens.

Wayne

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 9:55 PM  

1.13.2004

I went out to Des Moines, Iowa over the last weekend representing Punkvoter. What an eye opener.

Met up with Billy Gould from Kool Arrow Records, Chris #2 from Anti-Flag and Tim McIlrath from Rise Against and we all went to work. Our purpose was to carry the message of activism to the youth of America. After all, there are millions of young people in this country who feel they have no representation in the political system. We want to use our notoriety to force our concerns into the national political dialogue. And we've got committed musicians (some of whom have previously been cynical) representing in the challenge to inspire punk rock fans to make change. So far, it's working.

Having NOFX, Green Day, Bad Religion, Bouncing Souls, Good Charlotte, The Offspring, Blink-182, Foo Fighters, Ministry, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Sick of it All, Dropkick Murphys, Pennywise, Mudhoney, Alkaline Trio, over a dozen record labels and hundreds of other music groups plus Fat Mike, Jello Biafra, and Brett Gurewitz behind us was a powerful declaration for change.

First stop was on Saturday night. I strapped on my guitar and hit the stage at Blues on Grand for a house full of union organizers and we had a ball. I don't play solo acoustic that often and I dig working in the troubadour style. I sang a short set of Broken Promise, Knife to the Gunfight,The American Ruse, Negative Girls, Back When Dogs Could Talk, The Czar of Poisonville and The Star-Spangled Banner. Basically the same songs I would play on any other night with my band.

On Sunday we had a press conference. If you had told me when I was 20 that one day I'd be standing next to the heads of labor unions and state governors to get rock fans to vote, I might have suggested you try smoking something a little stronger. But there we were. And it was cool. Dave Neil from the UAW and Seth Johnson and Marcia Nichols from AFSCME along with Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and his son Doug (with a dozen television cameras, Lazer 103FM and newspaper stringers in tow) joined us to light a fire of activism. Chris, Tim and Billy were eloquent in talking about Punkvoter and why we were there.

Here's the real deal: 18-to-25 year olds make up one quarter of the voting electorate, but only 13% vote! If young people got involved they could change the world! Trouble is, no one talks to them, so they feel outside the process. That's where we come in. Judging by what we accomplished in Iowa, we made a good start. Finally, a bunch of non-conformists finding something they can agree on.

On Sunday night we all attended the presidential debates and that was a trip. It was the first time I have ever been so up-close-and-personal to the process, and I admit I found it fascinating. The debates themselves were pretty tame, except for Al Sharpton's attempt to mug Howard Dean on race. I don't think many folks take the Rev. seriously, even though he did make the point that race is still an issue in America. (I'll tell you a secret, too. When the commercial breaks happen, the candidates are quick to step over and talk to one another like they're old friends, always covering their microphones with their palms.)

The real action was after the debates in what they called the "Spin Room." This is the media center backstage from the event. All the candidates and their handlers come back here to explain and expand on what just happened. The press corps then gets a chance to question them, and this is where your intrepid reporter got his chance to get involved.

I met Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, earlier in the day at the hotel and had a chance to talk with him about an exchange he had with Paula Zahn earlier in the week on TV. She was perpetrating a "fair and balanced" attack and Joe wasn't having any of it. I like when folks stand up to bashing from media personalities. Joe is unflappable and it was fascinating to watch him handle the swarm of reporters that descended on him like piranha after the debate itself.

I got the chance to talk to Dennis Kucinich about bringing young people into the process, but he mostly talked at me, not to me. He did score the biggest laugh of the debate on the question of Bush's plan to go to the moon and Mars: "Maybe that's where the WMD are!"

It was a good experience for me to engage professional political operators on their own ground and be able to have a vigorous exchange of ideas with them. Truth is, they're not any smarter than you or me. And we all have not only a right to our opinions, but a responsibility to express them. Democracy requires questioning authority. It's what the framers had in mind when they created the Bill of Rights. Ashcroft/Bush's attempt to paint those who disagree as traitors is as corrupt as it is disingenuous.

We ended up back at our hotel where the Forum Dinner was in full swing. We listened to many of Iowa's Black and Hispanic leaders speak. John Kerry got up and made an embarrassing speech trying to sell the house on how down with them he is. At this point, we mostly gobbled the bar-b-queue chicken wings and wound down after a long day.

I did talk briefly with Rob “biko” Baker and a couple of fellows from The Source magazine. I attempted to open a dialogue with the hip-hop community regarding unity in bringing young people into the process. We have way more in common with them than differences. We're all truly in this together. It doesn't make any difference what style of music you like if you don't have a job or can't pay for college or don't have health care or get drafted to fight in a war that was never necessary in the first place. We all need change and we need it now.

On Sunday Billy Gould and I visited the Dean HQ and got an inside look at a political campaign machine in action. I got the opportunity to talk with Iowa Senator Tom Harkin who was there with the troops working the phones and stuffing envelopes. He was surprisingly candid, saying that Bush is creating a climate of fear that is designed to keep us under control and out of doing something to change the way things are. He also acknowledged that no one was talking to young folks and that needed to change. I couldn't agree more.

How will all this play out? No one knows. I'm not talking for punkvoter here. This is my thinking. What I do know is this: This is the only chance we'll have. My concern is that if we're not careful and don't do something to change the direction our country is going in, things will get unbelievably worse.

There may not be a real election in the fall. Ashcroft, Rumsfield, Cheney, Pearl, Wolfowitz and their leader George W. Bush himself may just outlaw it. Check out his track record. He stole (with a little help from his brother) the last one. DO NOT BE FOOLED. THESE ARE DANGEROUS MEN. THEY ARE WELL-ORGANIZED AND THEY ARE SERIOUS.

Here's a guy who was raised into great wealth and power. Protected and pampered all his life. He is well known to have a terrible temper. Every time he has made a mistake he has been rescued. He was groomed to be president and he sat at the feet of his father and saw him do everything that he was supposed to do, and then they kicked poor Papa out of office. George, Jr. is determined not to let that happen to him. He is determined to look good in his father's eyes at any cost, at the cost of the Constitution and countless young American lives. At the cost of the health and welfare of the American people. At the cost of unknown numbers of Iraqi and Afghani lives. At the cost of the future of democracy as a guiding principle in the world's nations.

It's almost Freudian. Certainly Biblical. He is doing damage that will take generations to repair. And young people in America are going to be stuck with the bill.

You have the power to change this. Take direct action. Use your vote.

Wayne

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 11:29 PM  

12.03.2003

So as to be sure to completely dismantle the rock star myth (at least as it applies to your humble reporter) I must tell you that this final tour report is being written not in my luxury hotel suite with flowing champagne, cocaine and supermodel/whores, but rather, here in arid, but bustling, Primm, Nevada. Home of the world famous Primm Fashion Outlet Mall.

That's right, I'm here doing what millions of other American men are doing today: Sitting in the food court while my wife shops. And I'm not complaining either. We’re talking deep discounts here. 60% off on Kenneth Cole (one of my personal favorites). Christmas shopping is upon us and I am no exception to it. It’s fun. I appreciate just being part of a life that’s a good life, that’s ongoing and connected to my friends and family. A definite improvement over the way things used to be for me.

I find real enjoyment in doing regular things that regular folks do. We just visited the Meteor Crater just east of Flagstaff, AZ and then went to the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam. It was a ball. I never used to be able to do these kinds of things, because I was radioactive. I emanated negativity from within. I was just too cool for school, too hip and too damn smart for my own good. As is now, I’m having a ball, ya’ll.

The tour itself ended last week in Owensboro, KY, after 13 shows across the mid-south and Texas. And what a grand undertaking it was. I repeat, Cheap Trick get extra cool points for having the courage to bring me out on the road with them. They definitely stepped up, and they told me it was great for them too. Their fans got to have a night’s music that was completely different that anything they have ever heard before. And judging by the feedback I got every night at the merchandise table, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

The best part was getting to play for people who never heard of me before. Mainstream music fans in middle America. I heard it over and over, "I’m sorry, I never heard of you, but that was great music!" We actually sold out of Adult World by tour’s end. I’ve been trying to sell out for years. It finally happened.

I couldn’t have heard anything better from the many, many folks I spoke to after the shows. It was humbling and inspiring. I was a little perplexed to occasionally hear remarks like, "Man, I’m glad you had the courage to stand up there and tell it like it is." And, "we need more people to talk that way."

Now, I don’t think I live in a different world than anybody else or that I’m any braver or more outspoken than many other folks, but it struck me as strange that my attitudes and observations would sound so radical to middle America. Am I being naive? Or is there a lot more fear present in our country than I thought there was? I have no problem with someone who disagrees with me. In fact, vigorous discourse is necessary to a healthy democracy and should be encouraged. What struck me was the fear of discussion that was expressed. Maybe Ashcroft & Co. have chilled dissent to a degree that exceeds my grasp or perhaps there’s a deeper apprehension for the future than I thought might be happening. Obviously there’s a problem here that deserves further study.

I do need to say a bit more about my hosts. Cheap Trick also showed me how a band can survive and remain one of the most successful touring acts in the business and be completely ignored by MTV and radio. (Not that anyone who ever cared about music would try to find it in those two places in the first place.) And, they know how to run a road show correctly. A real bunch of pros. Thank you, brothers.

As always, Doug Lunn and Eric (E-ROCK) Gardner played beautifully every night. They are a consummate rhythm section and are becoming one of the most in-demand outfits in LA. They go from my gig to jazz club dates to pop, rock and even Persian and Brazilian music gigs! I am blessed to have them in my life and work.

New keyboardist Gary Matsumoto also rose to the occasion in fine style. I know coming on my band can be a challenge. We do a lot of unorthodox things musically and I ask a lot of the players, but this is what makes the gig fun. There are plenty of groups that play conventionally, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I just need something else. Musically and in every other way, our "Secret to Anti-Matter Tour" was a great success. Thanks to all who worked so hard to make it happen.

Now it’s back to work on the 10,000 things we want to do in the new year.

Speaking of which, let me wish everyone a happy holiday season and thank you all for the support. See you next year!

Best, w

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 8:03 PM  

11.14.2003

It took a minute but things are definitely happening on this tour. Rick Nielson joined us onstage in Beaumont, Texas when we did "Kick Out the Jams". I don’t play the song often but we did that night by special request and when I saw Rick standing in the wings, I put him to work. It was big fun.

I've noticed that the audiences we're playing for are not as MC5-obsessed as the usual punk club crowd. Some folks seem to be aware that I used to be in the MC5, but most of the crowd never heard of me, and this is a great thing. It means that I get to present what I do to the crowd and they can decide right there and then whether they like it or not. So far, so good.

When I go out to the merchandise table during the intermission to talk with the fans, I’m meeting many people who say things like, "Who are you? Where did you come from? I never heard music like this in my life." It’s very humbling to be afforded such spontaneous appreciation. They’re asking, "Which records should I buy? Which one has those songs you sang tonight on them?" I’m getting to play for a whole new crowd and this is a good thing. Both Cheap Trick’s and our message boards are lighting up.

Last night in New Orleans at the House of Blues, Cheap Trick broke into a impromptu version of "Rambling Rose," complete with Rick singing in a falsetto. I loved it, as did our whole touring party.

Cheap Trick are truly one of the premier touring bands today. I love the fact that they operate with amazing success outside the world of MTV and KROQ-type radio. They give 100% every night, night after night, and enjoy a huge following. They are truly a great band. It’s all there: The solid, sexy bass, flash lead guitar, knock-out handsome and great-voiced lead singer and their deadly secret weapon; Bun E. Carlos on drums. A band is only as good as its drummer, and Cheap Trick has one of the best in the business. Great rock songwriting, and a few mega-hits, and they’ve built a brand that will continue to be important to their fans as long as they want to keep doing it. Their new record is outstanding. My favorite track is "Scent of a Woman." Both the band and the fans are having a ball.

I also must acknowledge the fact that they have shown a degree of courage in inviting me to join them on this tour. My work sometimes stretches beyond the "pop music" format and, in a sense, they are taking a risk putting me in front of their audiences. I believe they respect their fans enough to give them credit for being able to think for themselves and that they may enjoy what I’m doing. If you know me at all, you know I come to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

The Road crew that works for Cheap Trick is first class and has made going to work every night a pleasure. The sound is superb and everything goes with out a hitch. Real professionals.

Saw an alligator crossing the highway. I don’t see things like this often in my day-to-day life. I’m a city guy. I know a few sharks and weasels and a few true canines, but alligators are a rarity.

I’ve just relinquished the wheel to E-Rock Gardner. Eric is our champion driver and is steady as a rock on the highway, much like he is on the drums. I enjoy driving myself, after all I’m from Detroit. Today I enjoyed it a little too much. Heading out of Louisiana west on US-10 I was clocked at 81 mph in a 70 zone. The trooper was polite and business-like and set us on our way with out any extra hassle. I phoned the number on the back of the citation to see what the fine might be. $189.00! Ouch!

We were cruising along listening to a Charles Bukowski CD and I just lost track of my speed. I can’t say I hadn’t been told. Cheap Trick’s bus driver warned me at the beginning of the tour. But hey, what’s a tour without a little puking, speeding and general merriment amongst adults? Now we’re really touring.

The revelations in last week’s New York Times regarding the days before the war and the Iraqi efforts to avoid the invasion and the administrations failure to take a course of persuasion and diplomacy in favor of violence and destruction are chilling. If you ask a solider, he will tell you that war is the last thing you want to do. War means a complete failure of all other courses of action. Now we find out that there were alternatives presented to the White House and they dismissed them out of hand. At least they’re consistent in their pattern of ignoring the best plan and opting for the worst possible one.

None of this matters much now. The real question is can Bush be dethroned? Regime change indeed.

Just saw a roadside sign that read "Terrorists! Don’t mess with Texas. Remember the Alamo." I feel much safer now.

More news as it happens!

w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 5:02 PM  

8.26.2003

The Wednesday night Baked Potato residency is an extraordinary experience for me. It's like playing in my living room for a bunch of my close friends. Throw in a few strangers for flavor and someone to bring you food and drink and it makes for a winning combination. It's such an intimate setting. I've grown comfortable with it. It's a throwback to what live music in nightclubs used to be. At this point in my fine, fine career, I prefer the environment of a small club to the big stage. Somehow the "Big Rock Show" feels awkward and disingenuous to me. Maybe it's because I don't do too many of them or maybe I don't feel the need to compete with the world of "Rock." In any event, I like playing at the Baked Potato.

These shows are completely outside the mainstream rock scene. This is pretty unique, considering this is Los Angeles, the epicenter of the music industry. We're like guerillas operating behind enemy lines. What we do on Wednesday nights has absolutely nothing to do with hit records or radio or MTV. It is the simple act of playing music for people who enjoy hearing music played.

The special guests all bring their own unique gifts to the music and the outcome is always unexpected and often wonderful. Don't get me wrong though. Sometimes we have some real train wrecks, but the good news is – no one is injured in them.

After all, what's the worst that could happen?

A vile ending to a song? Happened.

A botched chord change? Happened.

An ill-advised pairing of guests? I'm wild. I'll take the chance.

Greg Ginn played with us last week and I was so impressed with him. He is a most gracious man and much revered as a founder of Black Flag and his groundbreaking record company SST. I knew his style was unorthodox, and I thought it might be a good match up. We had a ball.

          

left to right: Freddie Kron, Hunt Sales, Wayne Kramer, Greg Ginn, Doug Lunn

I was told later, after the gig, that this was the first time Greg had ever joined a spontaneous session with musicians he had never played with. This, to me, is the sign of a true artist. He took a chance. This showed courage. He played passionately on every single tune. He took a risk with us. We played songs with form, and songs without form (or at least conventional form). You know that's going to be the case when you add David Was on harmonica and drummer Hunt Sales as surprise ingredients to the mix.

Working with these cats, Greg displayed a wide-open mind at work, which is a real anomaly in today's music world where bands rarely even play on their own records. And when they play live, they do the exact same set, same songs and same arrangements every night to avoid those ever-annoying "surprises." This assembly-line approach to live music is degrading the art of music performance. It sells the audience and the artist short and relegates live shows to the level of computer games and MTV. Actually, I take that back. Computer games may be more interactive than the average touring Hit Band.

I had the great pleasure of spending the weekend with Michael Davis. Michael and have been seeing more of each other lately. We had a ball in London last spring doing the Sonic Revolution gig and we may do some more. We attended the screening of MC5: A True Testimonial at Allison Anders' Don't Knock the Rock film festival.

Later that night I inaugurated the festival at the Knitting Factory. The band was reconfigured since Doug Lunn and Eric Gardner were on another engagement. Drums and bass were most ably filled by Brock Avery and Trent Stroh. This was Trent's first work with me and it was a delight having him on the band. He is not only a first-line musician and superb vocalist, but is also a genuinely admirable fellow. Brock remains a genius drummer and will join us at The Baked Potato in September. I had bass players in abundance that night. As a special treat, we were joined by Michael Davis for the MC5 song "The American Ruse." Michael rocked the house as only a hardcore Detroit bass player could.

As time goes on, I find myself further distanced from, and acutely aware of, The Great Lie of Rock and Roll.

I have a friend who is a screenwriter and we were talking about what kinds of jobs a person might be able to do that left time for writing or rehearsing or painting or whatever you're into. He turned me on to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics web site. If you're interested in any job in the world, it's in there. There are job categories for professional singer, musician, arranger, composer. But there is no job category for "Rock Star." This is because it doesn't exist. It's not a job. The number of people who reach the level of "Rock Star" is so small that the odds are far worse than reaching the NBA or NFL or professional baseball. I put it at a million to one. Of all the folks who chase the dream, how many achieve it? How many Bruce Springsteens are there? How many Eminems? How many Missy Elliots are there? And how many are trying? And trying and trying.

This is one component in the Great Lie. The other is that if you have a hit (fill in the blank record/book/movie/TV show) you will be delivered and your life will be ok. That somehow fame and success and money will fix whatever is wrong with you. It just ain't so. Not only will it not fix you, it will make whatever is wrong with you worse. This has been my experience. I see it over and over again in the lives of young folks who get some recognition in their chosen field of music, TV, sports or movies. They lose their minds. The ego gets inflated and they don't even know it's happening. I have great empathy for folks who get into trouble with drugs and booze and sex and who try to get help. The problem is, they are surrounded by a world that tells them You are special! and The rules don't apply to you! Rules? They're for the little people.

There is nothing wrong with working in the entertainment industry. These are industries and the people who work in them are workers, no matter that they are on TV or in movies. It is labor.

But the lie is very powerful. It's sold to the public in very seductive ways and it's believed wholesale. Every day at LAX, hundreds of new hopefuls arrive here to chase that dream. Problem is, they don't have a clue of what is involved in the business of being a self-employed artist. But sure, they're going to "make it," whatever that might mean to them. It would be funny if the results weren't so tragic. The trail of dead is as long as the trail of damage.

But it doesn't matter what I say about it, or what anyone else says based on their own real life experience, because the dream is too strong. The lie is too powerful, the lure of deliverance too great for understanding.

This business of show is something to do only because you can't not do it. You do this because you love the actual work involved. It can be a living, but it's a tough living. Don't do it for security, or a steady paycheck, because those things are not here. Most of all, don't do it for stardom. That price is too high. There is nothing wrong with wanting--or getting--the respect of your peers, but to exceed that is inviting trouble. Do this because you love music and you love to write songs or you love playing your instrument or you get a kick out of singing and dancing and making a complete fool out of yourself in front of everybody. Do it because you're a natural born show-off.

But don't think it's any more than what it is. There are moments of transcendence and beauty. There are instants of joy. But those things are gifts to the artist, as they are gifts to the audience. They are fleeting. Beware of the lie.

Best, w

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 10:01 AM  

6.27.2003

Arrived in Helsinki, checked into our hotel and started working immediately. The press reportage has been strong over the whole tour. I was greeted this morning with a giant feature on the front page of Finland's largest newspaper. I wonder how many trees had to die for this.

After a couple of interviews, I headed over to the venue for sound check and met up with my Finnish cousin Markus Nordenstreng. Markus is a Renaissance man. He writes about music in the press, is a radio deejay and a superb singer and songwriter. We hooked up with fellow maniac and drummer/producer Janne Haavisto and made plans for a true Finnish smoke sauna tomorrow. Janne and I also have been friends for a few years now and are members of an international (and intergalactic) band, The Farrangs. We had arranged to do a recording session during my visit and now was the time.

Hittsville IV is the studio that Janne and his regular group, Laika and the Cosmonauts run and is a fine facility. State of the art as any musician operated studio in LA. Funky, but chic.

The track he asked me to contribute to was a delicious slice of pineapple space funk. I wrote and recorded a spoken text and put a baritone guitar solo on the track in the hour we had to work in. Just the way we like it. Hit it and quit it. Working title: "A Vacation in the Islands." It's completely sick and beautiful.

Back to the hotel for a quick change of clothes and to the venue for tonight's show. Being the last show on a tour automatically makes it a special night and the sold out crowd of 800+ really made it a fitting finale.

We have a running joke in the band that we're rehearsing out here on the road and when we get back to LA we'll finally have it down. It's actually true that nothing gets a band together better than working every night and we really cut lose tonight. There are moments, and they are just moments, when things cannot get any better. They are peak moments and at that moment, joy comes into my life. I can't hold on to joy. No one can. You just grab a kiss as it passes by. This was one of those peak moments.

Great crowd and we left them screaming for more. I returned to finish the night with the Sideburns on their all MC5 encore Let Me Try/Tuttie-Fruttie/Sister Anne. Eduardo Martinez and his brothers in the Flaming Sideburns showed a lot of class by insisting to do these shows with us and I appreciate it. Good guys and a hard-rocking outfit. They're touring the states in the fall and I hope to hook up with them when they hit the West Coast.

The next day I went with Janne and Markus and Cosmonaut guitarists McGiver as we drove out to the country to Janne's family cottage for a real Finnish smoke sauna and lunch. This was a real treat for your reporter. Janne comes from a whole family of musicians and I enjoyed talking with his father about music and the unique melancholia of traditional music in this part of the world. A superb meal prepared by Janne himself and then the sauna.

You heat the sauna with the smoke and hot rocks first then clear out the smoke, get naked and get in. This is a tradition that runs deep in the Finnish psyche. I think you can find a parallel in the sweat lodges of the American Indians and in other cultures. I stood the heat as long as I could (the Finns prefer to pour water on the rocks, increasing the heat to unbelievable levels.) We then took a naked run to the lake and jumped in. WHOOOOOOO. Then back in the sauna to do it all over again. On the second trip to the lake, I was a little prepared for the shock to the system and really enjoyed the experience.

Of course, time was running out and another ferry had to be boarded for the next and final leg of the tour.

A funny thing happened while I was in Finland. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. I may have missed some of the details but the basic story is this: The Prime Minister of Finland resigned while we were there.

Apparently she made a covert deal with the Bush/Cheney Junta to help rebuild Iraq after the war. This was a problem because it runs contrary to Finish national policy of not supporting any wars whatsoever. She then tried to cover it up ands was busted. She had lost the confidence of the people of her nation and the only proper thing to do was resign. Can you imagine an American politician resigning just because he or she got caught lying? Our political leaders get caught lying regularly and no one bats an eye. It's as if we've become numb to deceit and corruption and just accept it as business as usual.

Much love and respect to all my Finish cousins for the grand time in your country.

This last leg of the tour can give you an idea of how grueling touring gets sometimes. Check it out:

Depart Helsinki, Finland at 5:30 PM
Arrive Stockholm, Sweden 9:30 AM
Drive 12 hours to Hamburg, Germany
Catch flight at 11:30 PM for London Stanstead
Arrive 11:30 PM
Catch bus at 3:00 AM for Heathrow
Arrive and check in for 7:30 AM flight to New York
Arrive JFK at 10:20 AM
Depart JFK at 2:30 to LAX
Arrive LAX at 5:07 PM

That's 72 hours of traveling with the only proper sleep on the ferry to Stockholm.

I had some time to think while touring Europe, and I know this much. Europe is a society surrounded by history, where culture plays a more important role than in the United States. Being there, for what is probably the 100th time in my life, I have experienced an impetus to move ahead to do better work, better music and to live a better life. Many people on this planet do it every day. I am one of them.

I am most grateful to my band and dear friends, Doug Lunn, Eric Gardner and Freddie Kron for the camaraderie and mutual respect we have enjoyed this last month. Appreciation to our hardworking crew; Bertrand (BP) Perrot, tour manager and FOH mixer extraordinaire and Stephane Barde, our merchandiser, co-driver and all around good man.

And of course, thanks to all the good people who came to the shows and took the time out of their busy lives to come out to hear the music that brings us all together.

God bless you all.

A fine months work. We'll do it again next year.

That's it. w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 3:00 AM  

06.20.2003

After the drive and an hour ferry trip from Hamburg we arrived in Aalborg, Denmark for a show in a small venue that came up at the last minute. This gig basically covered our travel expenses to Sweden. We got a good recording and enjoyed the night thoroughly. Good folks to work with. The accommodations were interesting. One large room with mattresses on the floor. It was kind of a pajama party for grown-ups. Maybe these kinds of sleeping arrangements are cool for teenage rock bands, but at this point in my working life I'm not overjoyed with crashing on the floor.

I couldn't help but notice something so foreign and so unusual to my experience that it deserves comment.

In Denmark, people leave their bicycles unlocked. They go to the market or whatever and they just put the kickstand down and leave their bikes where they parked them. I was dumbstruck. We all were. The idea is so strange to us that you could leave your property in public and someone would not steal it just blows my mind. What is it in the American psyche that finds it strange that normal is stealing and odd is not stealing? Ours is a perverse national consciousness, utterly out of step with the rest of the world and ignorant of it. Merchants leave wares out in the open without security guards standing lookout.

Another example: I went looking for an Internet café this morning and couldn't find the one the desk clerk recommended. I stopped a young woman on the street and asked directions. She took it upon herself to go into a store and ask the owner if he knew of any in the neighborhood. Then, when he wasn't much help, she inquired where I was staying and I told her the hotel name. She made another recommendation and I thanked her and went about my biz. After a short walk through the neighborhood, I returned to the hotel where I was staying, only to find that she had gone there to offer to take me to her office around the corner to use her computer. Don't read the wrong thing into this. She was being helpful to a stranger in her town. What's the chance of something like that happening anywhere in America?

Michael Moore's film "Bowling for Colombine" touches on this a bit. There's an atmosphere of fear and mistrust in America so thick you can feel it. Maybe not without reason, but it's all out of proportion with the way life could be lived. We're out of whack.

Why does Sweden have the highest standard of living on earth? What are the social policies and leadership qualities that make Sweden what it is and America is not?

Europe has its woes, of course, but fear of your neighbor doesn't seem to be part of the fabric of society. Not to mention the long-standing fact that there's health care for all. In every nation in Europe there is a safety net for its citizens. If you're out of work the government will help pay your bills. This is not Pollyannaish. You must perform service work in return. But that's the point. Everybody contributes to the quality of life.

Everyone works at something and can make a living wage doing it. I've seen people whose job it is to sweep the streets. It's an honorable job. It contributes to a nicer city life. It's necessary, too. The word that terrifies American political leaders is "social." Social programs, social medicine, social security. God forbid: Social-ism. It's a word that Americans really have no understanding of and it's a pity. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Seems to be the American way today.

What's gone wrong in America? We are the richest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth? We can bomb you into oblivion with state of the art munitions but we can't educate our children. We can't feed our poor, we can't care for our elderly or mentally ill but we can mass-produce high fat, fast food to the degree that one of the nations leading health problems is obesity. We can't provide healthcare for all our citizens. There's a selfishness and arrogance that's really unattractive in the national character of America. Will we ever grow up?

Arrived in Goteborg, Sweden via ferry from Denmark and had a fine night's music. Had a great dinner and observed a club full of Swedes dancing their asses off to Latin music. Somehow salsa isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Sweden. Go figure.

Got to see my friend Mattias Hellberg who used to be in the Nymphet Noodlers/Hellacopters. He's working on new music and gave me some discs to catch up on what he's been doing. We gave him a listen in the bus and it's great. Very original. I'm always happy to hear when artists come up with a new sound, their own voice in the music. I don't want to hear another version of the MC5. I want to hear your blues, your story. I enjoy being part of a musical community that covers the whole globe. We live on a very small planet.

On to another ferry trip down to Copenhagen for tonight's show. Good dinner tonight at Pussy Galore. Tru dat. It's the restaurant's name.

Another ferry to the small island community of Mariannhamn. This is an isolated place up near the top of the world. Population 25,000. Our show was on a Sunday night and we were the only game in town. The place was packed and they came to have fun. I'm pretty sure most of the crowd never heard of me. We were just a band from the US playing in their town and the only thing that mattered was that we rocked. And we did. The kids (and I mean kids, some were very young) danced their asses off all night long. It reminded me how much fun it is to play for a crowd that's dancing. It's way better than the concert audience that stands there looking at you. Took me back to my early days playing in the bars of Detroit.

It's been so very strange to have sunlight till 1:30 AM. We finished the gig and were getting into the bus and it was still light out! Up this high on the planet it never really gets dark out at night. This really played hell with our biorhythms.

Up all night to catch the next ferry to Turku, Finland for a day of rest then on to Tampere for the first of two shows with one of Finland's most popular bands, the Flaming Sideburns. These are the last two shows of the tour and we're all looking forward to returning to Los Angeles and our families and friends. The Tampere show was very good and I had a good time meeting the fans after and talking together. The venue had a sauna in the basement and I took a sauna with the Flaming Sideburns. It's mandatory when you visit Finland. You must sauna.

God bless, w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 8:20 PM  

06.17.2003

Eric Gardner's birthday today.

We departed Strasbourg, France today after the last two French shows of the tour. The night before in Nancy was a real pleasure with great fans and a smoking set from the gentlemen of the orchestra.

We've worked with some super promoters on this tour and here in Nancy our host, Jeannette was one of the best. A home-cooked meal and some time to spend just being regular folks was just what the doctor ordered for us. After the last couple of days of long drives, late gigs and early wake-ups, we were all more than a little fried. Sleep deprivation can wear your ass out.

The promoters we've worked with and for on this tour have been a new breed for me. The folks that put on these gigs are, for the most part, real music people. Good solid folks that are doing something they believe in. This is way different than my experience in the past where promoters are indifferent business people. It's reassuring that decent people can promote an artist and put on a good show in a professional and still humanistic way. I salute you all who have helped me on this tour.

The heat continues to be intense on the stages. We're all consuming enormous amounts of water over the course of a show. Nature's cooling system.

Last night's show was in Strasbourg, France on the German border. The venue was a community center that produces rock shows. This is a novel idea, but not unusual in Europe. The local government underwrites gigs for touring acts of all kinds. Local, regional and international bands of every description can come and perform. Imagine it: Government underwriting culture. Actually taking a role in providing something and somewhere for kids to do something positive, even if it's just having fun.

This is another example of how the European sensibility can be preferable to America, where arts funding is cut to nothing at every turn. No phys ed, no art, no music education in the schools, but you can get McDonald's and Pizza Hut in the lunchroom. In fact, there's less and less education in the schools. The Bush Regime makes sure of that. Just check out his track record in Texas.

"The vision fails in the Promised Land/But they're building jails in the Promised Land."

On the night we played, we worked in the smaller of two rooms. In the larger one Sepultura, from Brazil, held their event. I hesitate to refer to it as a concert because it didn't strike me as a necessarily musical performance. It has musical elements in it, but, in a way, it was more advanced than traditional ideas of music. It was more like sound design. The musicians created a backdrop or soundtrack to the event where 600 or 700 young boys participated in the ritual of the heavy metal experience.

The ones in the front were slamming and throwing their hair and arms in the air, jumping up and down and generally having a ball. The older fans stood in the back and observed, kinda like the crowd that gathers around a car wreck. It was fun to be close to an event like this. It's not the sort of thing I see a lot of and it was cool to check it out.

Bye to France for now. It was grand being here. See you all again next time and thank you to all my French fans. God bless you all.

At the moment we're traveling up through Germany to Hamburg, where we'll spend the night on the way to the first of our Scandinavian dates. It's a long haul from central France to Denmark and, fortunately, we have a travel day to do it in. Not too tough.

Got hung up on the Autobahn for a few hours today. Traffic came to a complete stop as a squad of unmarked police cars screamed up the freeway head of us. Obviously, there was some heavy police action just up the road because traffic was stopped in both directions and then it was just all over. This delay put us 3 hours behind schedule but with no show tonight, no problem.

On the player today: Union Carbide Productions, Charles Mingus, Sonic's Rendezvous, Archie Shepp, and Black Keys.

God bless, w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 7:58 PM  

06.13.2003

After Scotland, we traveled down to the southwest part of Wales and played T.J.'s in the town of Newport. Another goodnight's work with good friends and fans. Then across the country to London.

London is another city that I feel completely at home in. I first came here in 1970 with the MC5 and I've maintained a connection to the city ever since. I have so many friends and partners who are English, that, on occasion I feel part British myself. This visit was a whirlwind of work with non-stop press meetings the day of the show and the day after.

Folks ask me if I tire of answering the same questions over and over, and sometimes I do, but I look at it as part of the job. Frankly, I'm grateful that journalists are interested enough in what I do that that they want to talk to me. Sometimes it can be engaging if the writer has his or her own perspective on things, and a real exchange of ideas takes place. Plus, it's not like it's always the same questions anyway. Everything changes and there's always something new to talk about. I think it's a good forum to get ideas out there to examine. It's really a matter of search and research, always with the open mind.

The London show was a delight, with many old and new friends showing up. The high point for me was a special visit from Kate O'Brien. Kate is the soulful vocalist who joined Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson and all our other guests and me for the Sonic Revolution gig a couple of months ago here in London. Kate sang Rob Tyner's great ballad "Let Me Try." The girl is hot. I kept her onstage to join us on the choruses of "Back when Dogs Could Talk." I see a direct connection from the MC5 to undiscovered artists like Kate, and am happy to be a conduit for it.

After the show we all trouped over to Alan McGee's Notting Hill Arts club for a late night soirée of hootchie dancing and hanging out. Eric Gardner and Freddie Kron both cut a mean swath on the dance floor. Met a lot of young musicians and had a festive evening. I'm always grateful to meet younger cats that cite the work I've done in the past as an important influence to them. Their sincerity is an honor to receive and I know that part of it goes to the memory of Fred Smith and Rob Tyner and my fellows from the MC5. I know they're looking across from another dimension with some amount of pride.

We left London and crossed over into France via the ferry from Dover to Calais and cruised into Rennes the next day.

No disrespect to the British people or the culture of England but the food (and in particular the coffee) was less than fulfilling. Being back in France was good.

Arrived at the venue in the afternoon. It's hard to tell what's evening and what's afternoon over here. It's still light out at 9:30 PM. I expect this will get even stranger when we head into the northern territories of Scandinavia.

This club, Mondo Bizarro, is a regular stop on the Euro Tour circuit and although it's small, it turned out to be the best gig on the tour yet. The stage and room were very modest. It reminded us of The Baked Potato, one of our regular gigs in Los Angeles. We felt right at home.

The house was packed with 200+ fans packed into a room that could hold about 70. The excitement was palpable when we hit the stage. It was a full moon night and strange and wonderful things can happen on nights like this. Again we had a room full of folks with open minds who listened to what we were doing and really connected with the music. Some of the improvising was really inspired and we played things that were completely new.

The excitement built and built until, at the end, a woman threw her bra at me on the stage and one lovely young woman was moved to remover her shirt and get truly free. This kind of response is a little unusual for me these days and it's fun to return to the sexy excitement of rock and roll that got me into this game in the first place. It's a little difficult to report on this without sounding lascivious, but it was all in good fun and truth is, a half-naked woman in the front row is not such a bad thing.

The fans were crazy for the music and we spent the remainder of the evening hanging out and talking.

Doug Lunn had an amusing exchange with a rather drunken fellow who complained about hpw "You musicians come over here and steal all our women and go to hotels and take cocaine all night." I think he's seen too many VH-1 "Behind the Music" specials. I know that stuff still happens in the rock world, but me and my crew are a long way from that behavior. Sorry to disappoint, bro. Like I said, full moon nights can be strange.

We have mobile digital recording gear with us on the tour and Freddie and I are trying to get some shows recorded for future release. It's proving difficult, because every venue has different sound equipment and the mixing consoles are always rigged differently. Sometimes there's just not time to get the system set up in time or the outputs are not there to patch into. We're working on it and hope to come out of the tour with an audio record of what is proving to be an amazing time in your reporter's working life.

We're cruising across France as I write this listening to a wide range of music. We stopped at one of the best record stores in France in Renne Music. I bought "Out of the Cool" by Gil Evans, "8 Mile" by Eminem and a rare Red Rodney CD. We're listening to John Coltrane, Archie Shepp and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Sun Ra is cooking right now with "Space is the Place." Heard a cool record yesterday by NYC's, Speed Ball Baby. We be grooving.

God bless, w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 10:55 PM  

06.11.2003

The trip over to Ireland was a good hump. Straight from Paris, across England onto the ferry in a blustering rainstorm traveling overnight and arriving in Dublin at the crack of dawn.

One's necessary requirements are focused down to a precious few when you're touring. Our booking in Dublin was a traveling musician's paradise. The hotel was one block over from the venue. The laundry next door. The all-important Internet café and international phone center on the next block. Hardware store, restaurants and newsstand within a block or two. A ten-minute walk to the mall with all manner of clothing and bookstores, record shops, music stores. Yes, Dublin worked out great from a logistical point of view.

The weather was fine, not unlike LA. Except for drizzle at night. The absolute high point of the tour for me, so far, was when I went around to visit historic St. Ann's church, home parish of Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker.

It was there, through mutual friends, I was blessed to meet Christy Moore, the great Irish troubadour. I have felt for a while that Christy's work and story ran a loose parallel with mine. At least in the love of a good lyric and a connection to your community. Meeting him was completely unexpected and a beautiful surprise to me. One of those gifts that can come into your life when you're in the right place for the right reasons. He was gracious and honest and we connected on many levels. We promised to write a song together. What an honor.

Made new friends and had a fine performance that evening at The Village. Sometimes I meet folks and feel like I've known them all my life. Or perhaps I'm finding the differences between us are less and the similarities are more.

The following day we drove up the Irish coast to Belfast and took the ferry across to Scotland.

I've seen more countryside, green hills and valleys on this trip than the whole of my days as a city boy. Scotland is all that it's advertised to be. Beautiful, lush country and good folks.

The show was good and the crowd got scary into it. It was a little hard to tell if they were enjoying the music as the set progressed. I know we ask a lot of an audience. We play some strange music sometimes and folks come to the shows with some preconceived ideas of who I am and what I should do. Fortunately, most of the people that come out to see and hear what I'm doing have an open mind, and when they give it a chance, they really connect with the music. My gig is very in the moment and not a calculated show-business type of performance. It's more like a jazz gig in that sense. The crowd kinda stood back with their arms folded and the lighting made it difficult to see their faces. The band played a smoking set and at the end the place just exploded in cheering and raving. It was as if a dam had burst and all the emotion of the whole set erupted all at once. I talked with the fans afterward and a good time was had by all.

We stayed at a classic Scottish bed and breakfast out in the country. More cows, sheep and chickens. And quiet. Lots and lots of quiet. Much discussion in the touring party about something being wrong with the air. We couldn't see it. Plus there was no advertising decorating the countryside. Very strange. Horses dogs and cats, birds and bees. Strange.

Off to England.

God bless, w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 12:47 AM  

06.09.2003

Bordeaux was sold out and hot, and not just in the musical sense, which was also true. The band is playing superbly. Doug Lunn, Freddie Kron and Eric Gardner are such beautiful musicians that they make it a joy and a pleasure to hit the stage each night. The songs are really coming alive and the improvisations are always different and challenging. As my Finnish friend Markus Nordenstreng says, "Good stuff." We've just about got the technical aspects of the gig worked out and the sound has been consistently good.

But "HOT" best describes this night's enterprise. We calculated that the temperature at floor level in the Cat Club this night was 95+ degrees. Up on stage, under the lights, it must have been at least 115. I hadn't played in this kind of heat since back when dogs could talk. It used to get this hot on a summer night in Detroit at the Grande Ballroom. The difference being, I was twenty then. At this point in my working life, I knew pacing was the key. I kept focused on what I was playing, listening to the fellows and concentrating on I was singing, and that's all. No dancing, no jumping around on this one. We played a nice long set of one hour and forty minutes. (With a short break to change a string.) Eric Gardner was working so hard on the drums in the heat that he consumed 6 litres of water!

The crowd was really open to what we were playing and that makes it fun. Good company with the other bands on the show, who were The Hard Feelings from Austin, Texas and The Cool Jerks from Memphis, Tennessee. Both bands were genial people and there was good camaraderie. The Hard Feelings also supported us the next night in Paris. Schooley, the Hard Feelings leader, must be recognized as the prince of a man he is. In the heat of the night at Bordeaux he offered the solution to the problem of wearing glasses on the gig - the nerd strap. This became the subject of much discussion in the dressing room. Just how cool is it (or not) to wear a nerd strap to hold one's glasses in place? The conclusion was: Bo Diddley wears one, so it's acceptable. Long-time glasses wearers have been through things like this but I'm still new to wearing them. I've only been wearing glasses for just over a year now and I'm just learning the ropes.

(An aside: Our promoter for the Bordeaux show, Francis, told me when he joined the French army in 1969 they cut his hair off to the sounds of the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams." Strange where your music can show up in peoples' lives.)

Paris, as always, was outstanding. I feel at home in Paris. I am French/Greek, and in France I see people who look like me. The structure of their faces seems similar to me. Maybe it's my imagination, but we all come from somewhere and this is where half of my genetic roots are. When I came here on tour in 1995, there was a terrorist bombing in the subway that day and I wrote "Bomb Day in Paris." I have continued to perform the piece and, sadly, it is a song that continues to be relevant. It was only right to perform the song here, at the place of its inception. Even with the language difference, I believe the message of the song came through and the audience was wildly enthusiastic with the music. Big fun.

Freddie Kron played so hard he broke a key on his keyboard. Hopefully we can get it repaired in Ireland or England. Doug Lunn and I went out to dinner after the show with some old and new friends. Good talk over noodles and shrimp. Politics, art, history, war, music and a lot of general good humor. An Adult World indeed.

It's fascinating that the culture of Europe is so different from the US. In Europe it's so natural for people to be out late at night on the streets going to clubs and cafes, coming and going about their business without any fear of each other. People of all colors and nationalities, all living together side by side. It's so civilized. Something we know very little about in America. It's nothing unusual to see a young woman walking home at 3AM by herself in any country in Europe, without the fear that we get force fed from the TV news in the States. It shows what an immature and brutal nation America really is.

The European view of current events also has a broader perspective than that of the states. They've seen it all before and have a better grip on world affairs than most folks in our land. But then, most folks in America don't really have a clue what's going on today or their own national history or what the Bush/Cheney Junta is really up to. But we'll find out in the months and years to come. I don't think it will be nice. Not nice at all.

We're on our way to Ireland now for a show in Dublin and then 4 shows in England finishing up in London, another of my homes-away-from-home. We then return to France for 3 shows and then on to the Scandinavian countries.

More news as it happens.

God bless, w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 3:45 PM  

06.03.2003

After a frantic rush to get out of LA, the 24 hours on three different planes seemed like a something of a relief. It wasn't too bad considering it was 9 hours to London Heathrow, a 3 hour lay-over, two more hours to Madrid, another hour layover and then another hour to Bilbao, Spain to kick off our one month Adult World Euro Tour 2003.

Our friend and the champion of all things rock & roll Kike Turmix met us at the airport. Kike is one of the last true believers in the power of rock to overcome the evils of the world and is a great host and raconteur. He took us to a superb restaurant in the village of Bergara where we were to start the tour the following day. The cuisine can be an additional benefit of touring Spain and this first stop was a feast. Considering the fine, fine fare that passes for food on the airlines and highway rest stops, this was an authentic pleasure. They're not buying any of this American style-low-fat- watch-your-cholesterol stuff in Spain, not in all of Europe really, but most definitely not here in the Basque country. They also don't have the uniquely American hang up about smoking in bars and restaurants. Life is to live here.

After finally hitting the bed after much too long I was startled awake by a sound I could not identify. A clanging and then a loud mournful moo-moo-mooing. What the hell? Cows? Tru dat, me brovers. Cows! Right outside my window! I staggered up out of the rack opened the window to view a lush green valley and grazing cows and sheep. Pretty strange for a city boy, but nice in a picture postcard kind of way.

Of course reality is never too far away and down at the bottom of this beautiful, bucolic setting is& you guessed it, a factory. The scene was the kind of perfect contradiction that I enjoy so much. Here was, on the one hand, the beautiful Basque country in the north of Spain, green valleys and simple farm life juxtaposed with a pollution spewing industrial plant squatting right down in the center of it all.

The first couple of nights on tour are when you work out the kinks and start to get the feel of how to do this thing. Technical details and song selection and a million other bits and bobs. I'm trying out a new in-ear monitoring system and it's taking a little time to get it set up right but I believe when we get it right it will make everything even better.

After Bergara we head across the country to the north East Coast and the beautiful coastal town of Vigo.

Another superb dinner of Spanish seafood. Shrimp, three kinds of local fish and for your reporter a first: Stingray. Our host was local promoter Antonio Barreiros and his friends from the venue Dominus. Joining our touring group was Kike's wonderful wife, Margaret Turmix, who helped translating and merchandising on this leg of the tour. We got finished with dinner just in time to make the advertised set time and it was a good night's music with a great response from the fans.

We are quickly learning that Spain operates on a different time frame than we're used to. Everything seems to happen when it's supposed to but that's usually an hour or two after the schedule. Laid back as a way of life. It's not so bad, once you get used to it.

The travel from city to city has been fairly easy. We are in a Mercedes touring van. It's a real improvement over the American style van. Much larger with two rows of airline type seats and a bunk in the rear for napping. The gear goes in a separate compartment in the back. Video/DVD/CD all help pass the time. It's funny but it seems I hear more new music on the road than I do day to day living in LA. Our driver and FOH man, Bee Pee, (a Frenchman and a fine fellow) brought a case of his favorite CD's. So far I have heard a very cool record by an Australian artist, Tex Perkins. Yesterday we took a trip down memory lane with the Nuggets collection from Bomp/Rhino. It was interesting to hear the production styles of the day. They were so similar from record to record. Very thin guitar sounds, cheesy organs and very loud tambourines. The fuzztone was just appearing and every record had to have one. Eric Gardner brought a bunch of his current favorites and we grooved hard with Fela pulling out of Madrid on route to Barcelona.

There was a sublime moment when midway across the Spanish countryside Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain came up in the rotation and everything just fit together perfectly, the country, the people, the tour, the camaraderie of the fellows in the band and the music. Sometimes it doesn't get much better. Good shows in all four cities with the best being the last in Barcelona. Over 400 fans packed into the KGB club.

Attendance at the shows has been the largest I've ever played for in Spain. The Spanish are serious about their Rock & Roll and really follow their favorite bands closely. They also seem to be very open minded about the music we're playing. I know I ask a lot of an audience when we play songs that they don't know yet or improvise music that can get pretty far out. But they're right there grooving with us and it's a great feeling to be connected with the audience on such a deep level.

We departed Spain today with full bellies and happy hearts. Good music, good crowds and new friends. I think the only thing missing was sleep. Oh well, we'll sleep when we get home. On to France.

God bless, w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 2:36 PM  

03.17.2003

We came together. We played. We conquered.

What a great time the last week has been. For those of you living outside the sphere of all things MC5, I spent the last ten days in London working on a truly wonderful happening.

The back-story: Some months ago we learned of the licensing of some MC5 images by Levi's for a very limited run of vintage style shirts. This was done with our old friend Gary Grimshaw, the artist who designed much of the MC5's graphics back in the day. The trademark was inadvertently used without the permission of the whole band and it looked like trouble brewed on the horizon. Instead of taking the traditional music business approach of Threaten and Fight, we tried to find a way to turn a lemon into lemonade. Truth was, we all liked Levi's jeans and did a little research on their company. What we found was encouraging. They were open-minded. We agreed that the idea of a live show celebrating the artwork of Grimshaw and the music of the MC5 to bring the band's message to a larger, more contemporary audience might be within our power. To draw the connection between the music of the MC5 and today's music fans was one of our goals.

After a lot of brainstorming and an endless stream of international phone calls and e-mails, it actually came together. We would do it in a tiny and historic room in London, the 100 Club. Tickets would be given away by an alternative radio station and guests would include people who worked at Levi's stores across Europe selling jeans, journalists who thought this was an historic event, friends of the band and people literally coming in right off the street. We also wanted to film and record everything, so we would have to keep it small in light of the current tragedies at overcrowded clubs.

Getting together with Dennis and Michael to play the music we helped create so long ago was a formidable challenge, but one that I undertook with great enthusiasm. It's been a long time and much water under the bridge since we worked together. It was time.

The deaths of Fred Smith and Rob Tyner weighed heavy on my heart at the thought of presenting this music again. How do we do this with dignity to their memories and respect to their families? One answer came quickly. This would not be an MC5 reunion gig. This would not be advertised as an appearance of the MC5. That would be in fact, incorrect. There will never be another MC5. That would be impossible. What it could be is a celebration of the music and influence of the MC5. It was about the songs and the spirit of the group, and if we were to be true to the legacy of the band, then we would have to push ahead musically, trying to move past the place where we left off all those years ago. It was clear that, in order to do this correctly, we'd need help. Next call was to Dr. Charles Moore.

Charles was our horn arranger on "High Time" and a frequent collaborator dating back to the Grande Ballroom days of 1968. We did many special shows with Dr. Moore and other avant-garde jazz musicians in Detroit. I felt that having Charles on trumpet and fellow Detroiter Ralph "Buzzy" Jones on saxophone, the band could commit to pushing the sound. This was key. Charles and Buzzy were good to go. I started to get excited about the musical possibilities.

Now I faced the prospect of who was going to sing the songs. I sing a few of the tunes in my band today, but this was a much taller order. After some brainstorming and then talking it over with Michael and Dennis, I made a list of possible guests. This was an interesting exercise. Calling musicians worldwide and trying to arrange schedules at the last minute from a diverse number of folks (not to mention SXSW and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction conflicts) was a job I never realized could be so difficult. It brought me a whole new respect for people who do this kind of thing everyday.

I am happy to report that every single artist we invited sent great love and respect for the work of the MC5 and all left the door open to future collaborations. Little by little it started to come together. The excitement began to build when we arrived in London to start rehearsals. By then we had Dave Vanian from the Damned, Nicke Royale from the Hellacopters and Lemmy from Motorhead on board. We got right to work.

It was a trip learning these songs today in 2003. I've played a lot of music since I last played this material 30 years ago and I found that I had a fresh take on it. It was like learning someone else's music but it seemed kinda familiar. I had written many of these songs, but it felt like I was in a dream-state. On a few of the songs I was struck by what a creative bunch of knuckleheads we were back when we were kids. Like digging through old photographs and seeing that you actually looked pretty good when you were young!

The rehearsals ran counterpoint with promotional work for the event. We spent the days in the studio and the nights doing European press. This is standard procedure for any touring artist, but the interest in this show seemed to be rabid based on the number and intensity of the interviews we did. Some of the British music press was curious how this gig came to happen and tried to generate a scandal around the MC5/Levi's connection. The Guardian's cub reporter in particular gave it a nice try, but he ran out of steam. Rather than focus on the fact that he had the first interview with us all together for the first time in decades, he published a tired MC5-have-the-nerve-to-get-paid-for-their-work article. Yawn. Here we go again.

Speaking of scandal, I've been following the dialogue on the message board and enjoying the vigorous exchanges. There seems to be a lot of speculation and incorrect assumptions, so I'm gonna break this down for you all right now.

Artists have, from the beginning of time, used whatever means at their disposal to reach their audience. Moving musicians around the world, recording, promoting and distributing records and all related activities is an expensive undertaking. In the past, record companies covered the cost of much of this, but that's not the case today. In today's world music economy, the artist needs new resources. If you don't fit into the mega-hit formula of MTV/Clear Channel, you must find alternative ways to get to your audience. The Internet is one way, like we're doing right now.

You must also find a way to survive that is in harmony with your view of the world. All the anti-establishment sentiments in the songs don't mean a thing if you can't pay your rent. The pundits and fans wishing the MC5 were guerillas hiding up in the mountains and making raids down on the cities are way off the mark. For one thing, we dress better and we don't live in tents. We live in houses and apartments just like everyone else. We have bills just like everyone else. I love hearing about all the millions of bucks folks think I have. What a hoot. If and when I ever make big money, I'll let you know.

The dynamic goes something like this. If we put ourselves up as revolutionaries who are willing to say something in our music besides the usual rhyming blather, and we find acceptable ways to pay our rent, the critics attack us. There is no way around this and I accept it as the cost of doing something as opposed to doing nothing. This kind of mean-spirited slagging has been going on for 35 years with the MC5. The current class of mudslingers should have been around in the '60s when we were getting it from the Black Panthers, SDS, the Weathermen and The Motherfuckers. They would have eaten all those lightweights alive. The Radical Left found us not revolutionary enough for the revolution. The Radical Right tapped our telephones and harassed our families.

If I declare myself to be a messenger of change, to protest what I know is wrong in the world or in myself, then actually be the person I represent myself to be, my critics seem to be compelled to needle me for not being downtrodden enough, not oppressed enough. There's a perverse thing going on here with critics and fans. It's especially peculiar to me that, when I was rotting in Federal Prison, the British music press revered me. Maybe they'd be happier if I'd never work again and be a glorious petrified legend. True to form, rather than step up to the plate this time and explore the decisions made by us, they tried to make us look bad. I would be disappointed if they didn't. It's predictable and it's cheap and it's their usual lazy journalism not backed up by any political ideology or theory one way or the other. It's about filling column inches with as little effort as possible, and they have a right to do so. It's as if we were accountable to a different standard that anyone else. If you shine a light on injustice, you can't have a nice, clean house?

There is a distinction that could be made and this is it:

There is nothing wrong with success, as long as it doesn't come first.

There is nothing wrong with money, as long as it doesn't come first.

There is nothing wrong with having the respect of your fellows, as long as their opinions don't come first.

What is wrong is when prestige and status come before human concerns. When money comes before people, trouble follows. That's on a personal or corporate level and true for me as a person, for a band or a corporation. A corporation is not, inherently, an evil thing. Some are, to be sure. Companies that poison water and air for profit are wrong. The military-industrial complex is at the center of much that's wrong in the world today.

Everyone works for a company. What do you think record companies are? All your favorite artists from Rage Against The Machine on Epic to Bruce Springsteen on Sony, to Iggy Pop on Virgin record for major international companies. Do they slam Steve Earle for being on Artemis? Or The International Noise Conspiracy for being on Epitaph? These are all corporations. I own a corporation. It's MuscleTone Records.

There is no way to live outside the system. That is a complete distortion of real life. If you touch money, you are part of the system. This acknowledgement is consistent with the stance of the MC5 since its beginning. What do you think "by any means necessary" means? Shooting it out with the pigs? Wrong fantasy, dude. We always viewed the system as the way to reach people with our music. We always believed in co-opting the system. We wrote "American Ruse" when we were on Atlantic Records for Chrissake! Effect change from within. Do you think that we didn't laugh our asses off when we saw Justin Timberlake on the cover of Vibe wearing an MC5 shirt? How did that happen? Hell if I know, but it was a trip. It took us 35 years to get in deep and there it was, represented by Justin staring back at us. I figure he'd probably heard somewhere along the line about the "Mick-Five," but I merely speculate.

If artists don't want their music used in connection with other products or services, that's their right. It's their work. They decide what's best for them, but that doesn't mean their records aren't products and they don't deal in services. Artists have a right to make a living from their work just like anyone else does.

Where does it say in the revolutionary handbook that I'm supposed to starve to death?

People are constantly asking me if it rankles me that Iggy isn't lambasted for licensing Stooges music to Nike (who use foreign child labor) or his own stuff to Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. It absolutely does not bother me. I just read in the New York Times that "the conscience of a generation" himself, Bob Dylan, licensed a song to Victoria's Secret. These and other artists can do what they want with their own work. If they do or do not need the money is none of my business. Bless 'em all.

This is the point: The MC5 or any artist has a right to enter into any business relationship of their choosing. That's why we do what we do. It's our work and it's our lives. It's the music we share.

The other important point is this. I do not work for Levi's. My company, MuscleTone Records, entered into a partnership with them to produce this event. We control the film and audio rights of this event. And, just for the record, I personally did not negotiate a performance fee for my services from Levi's. If I make a dime from this event it will be because I worked hard to musically direct, produce and market this music. All of the artists who performed in this event will share in the profits, if there are any. There are no guarantees in this game, homeboy. It's an argument that will run outta gas on its own, but sometimes it's helpful to clarify the facts.

As I mentioned earlier, I did some research on Levi's. I found out that they are a 150-year old, family owned and controlled company. They have a record of standing up for their workers' civil rights going as far back as the South struggle during the Jim Crow era. They pay women equally. They do not use foreign child labor. Levi's Vintage Clothing is made in the USA. They are decent folks and a good company and I have no problem with them. In fact, I admire them for having the good taste and vision to take on a project like this. The MC5 is not exactly the kind of band that most companies would have the cajones to be identified with. They made a dream come true for fans who have supported us all these years. If it were Dow Chemical or another polluter of the planet, I would have had to decline, but Levi's are a good product. I've worn them all my life. What kind of jeans do you wear?

Back to the show.

The guest line-up grew right up to the last minute with the addition of a wonderful 21-year old London soul singer, Kate O'Brien. I really wanted to have a woman sing Rob Tyner's achingly beautiful ballad "Let Me Try," and Kate was perfect. And at the last moment, Ian Astbury called up to let me know he was in town and asked if we wanted to hang out.

We filmed the show with a four-camera shoot and live audio recorded to Pro Tools that I'm mixing now. If it comes out as good as I hope we'll have a CD, a TV show and a DVD to show for it.

The music was a joy to perform and everyone played their asses off. Playing with Dennis and Michael was a ball. Michael has been touring all over the world with Rich Hopkins and has recently set off on his own to do some solo work. He and Dennis mentioned in an interview that they plan to work together on a studio project in the near future. Dennis's drumming was as high energy as ever. Kate, Dave, Lemmy and my main man Nicke all sang beautifully. Nicke's guitar work was a living tribute to the artistry of Fred Smith. Ian Astbury's inspired performance of "KOTJ" was hypersonic.

Seeing the joy in the faces of the fans blew my mind. By singing every song along with us, word for word, had me floating through the whole set. Another high point was performing "Black to Comm." Charles and Buzzy brought their otherworldly brass sounds into focus with the screaming electric guitars and, together, we truly traveled the spaceways from planet to planet. Kate even joined in on some intergalactic vocals. It was some old songs played in a new way and some new music played in an even more immediate way. It was alive right then in the moment and it was good.

I'll keep you informed on progress with the CD/DVD and thanks for all the messages on the site. You folks amaze me with the level of passion you have for the music and artists you follow. I want you to know I appreciate all your ideas and support (and criticism). Thanks for caring.

God bless, w.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 2:32 PM  

12.01.2002

Sweden is quickly becoming one of my favorite places. I went over to Stockholm last month for an appearance at their annual spoken word festival. This was something completely new for me.

Of course, I've been involved in poetry and the application of spoken word with music since the sixties. It usually took the form of playing in a band and finding the appropriate musical counterpoint to the text. It's a musical and literary exercise that I really enjoy and something that I will continue to cultivate in the future.

But this was sans band. It also differed in that I was doing a complete performance that mixed singing solo with just the acoustic guitar and a narrative.

There's no question that I have a massive ego and the idea that someone might find me, talking about me entertaining could be asking a lot of the ticket buying public. But they asked and I accepted. The venue was a beautiful 400-year-old theater that has been lovingly maintained and is used for all manner of musical and theatrical events. It was a fine, fine room.

We left LA on the red eye and arrived in Stockholm at eight in the morning. Too early to check into the hotel so we walked around the shopping district and drank coffee and ate Swedish pastries. Not too difficult, but at that point the jet lag and fatigue were catching up with your faithful reporter and I had to get to bed. Had another day to recover and then do the gig on Saturday night.

A real gift on this gig was working with my dear friend and mentor John Sinclair. John was in Amsterdam preparing for another of his regular Euro-tours and the promoters were thrilled to fly him over to Stockholm and have him on the bill. It worked out great. I accompanied him on acoustic guitar for a selection of his "investigative poems" on the blues and blues artists. John is truly the maestro. He captivated the Swedes with his tales of trouble and joy from the Mississippi Delta and beyond.

I really enjoy providing the music for John, because it is a challenge to lay down a feel and not give in to the temptation to go off on my own tangent. I like the self-discipline this kind of work demands. You must let the text lead and serve the text only. And in that way, I end up being free to contribute an aural landscape to the action that John has built into the story. Good stuff.

John and I performed around 6:00 PM and the schedule had me coming back at 10:30 for my set. As is the case often at festivals, acts tend to run over schedule and as each act adds 5 or 10 minutes to their set the whole thing starts to get bent further and further out shape. I think I finally went on about midnight.

My approach was to tell a chronological narrative of how I ended up there on that night in Stockholm. Covering the MC5 early years, the highs and lows of that period of my life on through the prison/crime years and up through to today and the work I do now. I tried to illustrate each phase with a song that was appropriate to the period.

To tell you the truth, it was kinda fun.

At this point in my life I really enjoy taking a chance on something that I never did before. It's the practice of keeping an open mind and the dividends are vital.

The whole thing seemed to be going down well and the people responded with great enthusiasm after each of the 5 or 6 songs I sang but there was a perplexing lack of laughter. Now I'm not trying to kid myself or anyone else; I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand up; it's not really my thing. I leave that to the professionals but, I do have a good sense of humor and find a great many reasons to laugh and enjoy the irony and ridiculousness of trying to get by in this world. And on occasion, I can say something that people find funny. So, at a couple of points in the performance I said things that were funny (in my humble opinion) and a dead silence. You could have heard a church mouse pissing on cotton. I felt like the world's worst borsch-belt comedian having his worst night. Somehow humor, at least my brand of humor just might have too many idiomatic references or maybe I'm too formal in my delivery or maybe the language barrier filters out the nuance of humor. In any event, they didn't find me a laugh-riot, but they did seem to enjoy the show and I finished up with a Q&A and some good questions and a fine ovation. I put it down in the win column.

I asked Sinclair afterwards about the lack of response with the jokes and he said he though I was hysterical. Strange, those Swedes.

Maybe next time I should bring some cream pies and a seltzer bottle if I want laughs.

In the end we left Sweden with good memories and the conviction that the solo spoken word/acoustic guitar format has real potential. Maybe I'll do an acoustic album next. Hmm.

The band and I return to The Baked Potato starting Wednesday, January 8, 2003. We will play every Wednesday night indefinitely. We're planning to keep it lively with special musical guests and even some poets, writers and actors doing all manner of entertaining stuff. Same format: 9:30 and 11:00 shows.

Check in to see who's on week by week.

Happy holidays.

Best, w

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 2:25 PM  

11.01.2002

I have seen the future and it's a bit of the past.

A curious phenomenon is unfolding. Its roots go back to the big bands of the 1930s and 1940s. It's the business of bands carrying on as working entities long after they were supposed to have ridden off into the sunset.

I have a dear friend (who shall remain anonymous), and from time to time he has expressed a dilemma with his working situation. He is a superb professional guitarist with a long history of contributions to popular culture, mostly as a member of a huge band in the late 70s and 80s. Some folks might not agree with the idea that his group was an important band, but they wrote and recorded some cool songs. Of course, the group has disbanded and my friend has a family to support and has been, for the last few years, working over 100 nights a year in a "revised" version of another major band of the sixties. His quandary is that he doesn't feel like it's a "real" band and that somehow, its less-than-honest work. This is absurd and I'll tell you why. It's both simple and complicated.

First things first, a guy's gotta eat. A place to live is also fairly important. To be able to raise a family and send kids to school, pay doctors' bills and buy clothes are pretty real too. All these things are real world needs. These are the basic building blocks of life. For these reasons alone there is no valid argument to be made. But let's pull back a bit and take a look at the reality of the situation.

The life of a musician is not really what most people think it is. The public at large, I think, believes that we all make millions of bucks and travel from one exotic concert location to another, with beautiful "hos" hanging on our arms. Then we get our comeuppance and crash and burn and end up on "Behind the Music." At least that's the way MTV, VH-1 and the rest of the rock media portray it.

The truth is often more mundane. Just going by the statistics, your chance of ending up rich as a musician are about the same as ending up rich in the NBA or the NFL (Not For Long) or professional baseball. It's about one hundred thousand to one. Very, very long odds. But if you worked ridiculously hard and were really, really lucky, you might have been in a hit band for a year or two, or written a hit song. You might have pulled the golden horseshoe out of your ass once, but fact is, it don't last. Then you're faced with the prospect of finding a way to support yourself and your loved ones with the only job skills you have.

I will never criticize anyone who finds another way to make a living outside of music. If a guy or girl finds that selling real estate or building houses or teaching school is a better bet, I say, "God bless 'em." Make no mistake. This business of music is a very tough row to hoe. It's not set up for you, as an artist, to make any money. You get paid last, after the label, publisher, manager, lawyer, accountant, booking agent, travel agent, hotel, bus rental company, equipment rental, roadies and caterers (not to mention dealers and bartenders and x-wives).

So, back to my friend’s quandary. He looks at it philosophically and I think correctly. He gets paid a decent wage to do what he loves doing. So where's the beef?

Could be our refusal to grow up. Musicians are often not only child-like but also can be childish in our view of the world. Accepting change can be a daunting challenge. It means letting go of old ideas. Doctor Carl Jung said that man would rather do the same thing he has always done, even if it's wrong, than do something different that's right. Adapting to real life takes a degree of maturity that many musicians are not familiar with. At least that's been my experience.

Whatever motivates us at 19 or 29 years of age inevitably will not be the same at 39 or 50. Most of the people I know and work with as professional musicians have a much wider view of the world of work and how they can function in it. You must, or else you will not survive in this way of life. As my dear friend John Sinclair says, "Remain flexible and maintain your sense of humor."

It reminds me of the sort of things I used to hear when I was a kid around Local 5, Detroit Federation of Musicians, union hall. They had a cheap bar in the basement for members and you could hang out there all afternoon and get hammered for next to nothing. If I had some union business to do I would end up at the bar with the old timers. These fellows could talk all day about the different bandleaders they worked for. All the different bands they were on. They'd talk endlessly about this gig and that gig, and this boss and that club owner and, truth is, I couldn't relate to it at all. I was from a different generation. I was from the world of "Bands" as lifestyle, as social group, as tribes or gangs. The band was our symbol. I came from a time and place where you got your band together and that was going to be it, For Life. One for all and all for one. This feeling was reinforced by the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, the Who, the Dead, Jefferson Airplane, et al. All the contemporary groups of the day represented this mentality.

There's a scene in the movie "Help" where the Beatles are coming home after a hard day's night and each of them enters through a different door on the same street. Inside, each door led to the same huge living room. It was as if they all lived together. They were so "together" it was inspiring. And it was also untrue. It was the movies.

Now it's thirty years down the line and something is happening here and I'm wondering what it is.

I'm seeing a lot of groups from the last few decades return to the regular touring circuit and selling tickets and making a living in the process. These are bands that cut their teeth on endless tours. Groups who built followings the old fashioned way, criss-crossing the world for years. But the kicker is that it's not the original line up and guess what? It doesn't even matter!

I know there's a handful of pundits who hold musicians up to an impossible standard that has only existed in a fantasy from the beginning. They may find this troubling, but I don't. In fact, it seems unfair to hold musicians up as adjudicators of purity. Might not the principle of "To thine own self be true" apply here?

Since I've become aware of this phenomenon, I'm starting to see it everywhere I look. The Doors are gigging again. Of course, they hired on a new singer, but what the hell. He kinda looks like the last guy and sounds close enough, so all the hits will sound pretty much the way we remember them. (As if we could forget them.) They're played on the classic rock stations more today than they were back when. Truth is, to today's fans, young and old, it doesn't matter. For them, all bands exist right now as they have always been. I do appreciate drummer John Densmore's declining to participate on the grounds that "we don't need the money," but drum ace Stewart Copland was looking for a gig and he did it. He doesn't need the money either so why did he do it? He wants to play his drums.

I think what's going on here is that Ray and Robbie just want to be in a band again, their band, doing what they were meant to be doing. You spend your youth learning to do something and if you can, you want to get out there and do it. It's only natural. Dancers need to dance, writers write, painters paint, sculptors sculpt, actors act and musicians play music.

Let's me see if I can make a short list of the bands out there right now that are hitting the boards. The parenthesis indicates how many original members are in the current band.

The Who (2)
The Stones (3)
Journey (2)
Pretenders (2)
Bad Religion (3)
Lords of the New Church (2)
Lynyrd Skynyrd (hard to tell)
Damned (2)
The Cult (2)
The Knack (3)
Metallica (3)
REO Speedwagon (?)
Chicago (who cares?)
The Eagles (ditto)
Jefferson Airplane/Starship (depends on which version and when)

This was off the top of my head. I'm sure an accurate list is much longer.

Ringo has embraced this idea with his annual All Star Tour, and he packs the house wherever he plays. People come and have a ball with him and his friends.

This is an old tradition in R&B with groups carrying on with one or two original members but still being viable, even with new lead singers who are sometimes even better in version 2 or version 3 than the original.

I ran into a pal at the used music instruments store last week. (I was selling some gear. I needed the money.) Anyway, he told me he saw The Who the night before and Townshend smoked the place. Burned it down.

"Man, he was playing his ass off," my buddy said. "It was like without Entwhistle he had more space to play in, like he had something to prove."

Plus, the new bass player Pino Palladino is not exactly a slouch. The Who represent one end of the spectrum where leader Pete Townshend wants to work. Pete has always wanted to work. And work he does. He keeps challenging himself, and us, with projects and ideas that force us to rethink old ideas. Sometimes they work sometimes they don't, but at least he's out there trying to come up with something of value. He is as vital today as ever. Pete's efforts really speak to the point that music is an activity that is not really dependent on youth. Look at the world of jazz and blues plus all the other ethnic and regional music of the world. As a craft or profession, it's one that you can continue to develop and hone your skills through the whole of a lifetime. Right on till the final bar.

But really, this is nothing new. The Count Basie Orchestra, The Duke Ellington Orchestra, The Lester Lanin Orchestras, in fact, all the big bands have been doing this forever. This has been the way it is since there were bands of musicians traveling the earth. The bands become the training ground, the apprenticeships for the next generation of working players. And yes, most of them need the money. I'm not sure where the idea that "it's not a real band" comes from but I'm pretty sure it's lost its usefulness.

In the context of today's popular bands, all of this potentially takes on more meaning. Here's why: No one I know knows, or cares, who the individual members in Korn or Marilyn Manson or Linkin Park or Disturbed or P.O.D. might be at any given moment. The possibility is that these bands have franchises that can work forever IF they learn how to entertain an audience.

Trouble is, most bands that hit the mainstream today hit it big outta the box. This happens with millions of promotional dollars poured into radio "consultants" pockets. The "hits" are bought and paid for before the bands ever earn a following. The shelf life of popular groups is about a New York nanosecond. They never get the chance to develop touring chops or a following because, by the time they hit the road, the fans are already there. Bought and paid for. And the fan tastes change as fast as the next big thing comes down the pipeline to them. The bands are hot one day then they're old news.

So today we find a situation where fans that have been around a while and still dig a great concert attraction are happy to shell out the bucks to see their old favorites, with or without all the original members. And to young people who have no sense of history before Nirvana, all bands exist now just like they never left. Music fans are locked in today, with no reference to the past. They hit the net and have access to every record ever recorded.

To them it's all the same. And, truth be told, it's all good.

Best, w

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 2:20 PM  

10.05.2002

The tour. What a ball. Not only did we cover 10,000 miles in a month, but we also did it in fine style. The best news: the music itself. The band made a fine fabric woven by Doug Lunn on bass, Eric Gardner on drums and special one time member Jim Wilson on keyboards and guitar. They played their nuts off every night. The music was uplifting - as well it should be. Sometimes touring can become a real task, almost a burden to endure. This tour was as drama free as I've ever done with special thanks to all in our office that gave us the support and tweaking as needed throughout the trip. Playing night after night was effortless for me.

Although we're setting up additional US and European tours, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to play in town and sleep in my own bed at night. As much as I enjoy touring, it is great to work in a club, once a week, as a residency for a month or two.

Kick-off was at the Troubadour in LA where it was a treat to see so many of my friends come out and hear the new record played live. We moved on north to San Fran, Seattle and Portland, seeing the sights of Mt. Shasta and the forests of the great northwest. Portland rocked big time.

It was nice to spend some time with Terry Currier at his Music Millenium record stores in Portland. Terry is a record man in the best sense of the word and it was good to kick it with him about the state of the business. Clearly, records are too expensive. I see a future that includes the return of the $10.00 record. $18 to $20 is just too much to pay for a record, especially when there are only one or two songs on it that are any good. Today times are just too tough to drop $20, $40, and $60 on a few new releases. With downloading and home burning, the business is changed forever. We need to rethink how we're doing this and it seems to me the answer is in better, cheaper records and more of them.

From the northwest was the long drive to Denver and a benefit show at the Blue Bird Theater for the West Memphis 3. You may have heard about this case on HBO and other news outlets. Three young men are in prison in the Deep South for a murder that I don't believe they committed. Check the story out at www.wm3.org. Denver was the beginning of a 100+ heat spell that lasted 'til we returned to LA three weeks later. From Denver came another marathon drive up to Clear Lakes Iowa. The venue was the famous Surf Ballroom where Buddy Holly, Bib Bopper and Ritchie Valens played that last fateful night before the final plane trip. My special guests opening up on tour were Mother Superior. The only road problem we had on the entire trip was during the drive up to Clear Lake when they blew a tire. I opened for them that night so they had time to get their tire fixed and make the closing set.

Quick jaunt up to northern Minnesota for a radio festival and then down to one of my favorite cities, Minneapolis. 7th Street Entry is a real basement rock venue. Good sound and great crowd. On to Chicago, where we had a most cool band, Cane Corso, open. Playing "Nelson Algren stopped by" had a completely new resonance to it that night. The song is set in Chicago so it made for a particularly interesting take. Funny thing about that song, folks ask me "who is Nelson Algren?" er&ah&duh. I hadn't thought about it before, but I guess it works even if you don't know who he was. That makes it a story about a real cranky friend who got screwed over after he died. Works for me.

Detroit was next and as usual, it was a blast. Motown always brings out the "prodigal son" feeling for me. The Magic Bag has excellent sound and sightlines, although it was a little off that night. The main thing is the love that comes out and goes back in that city. I also got to spend some time with old comrades-in-arms from back when dogs could talk. At one point there were three generations of roadies sitting at the table. We were like old soldiers kicking around war stories and appreciating the fact that we're still here. Big time gratitude was the order of the day. Also got to spend some time with Elizabeth Tyner, Rob's youngest daughter. She is a gift in my life and being able to share with her about my time with her dad is one of the high points in my life these days.

Cleveland came next. Mark and Cindy from the Beachland Ballroom were gracious hosts and provided a great home cooked meal, one of the few on tour. There was a remarkable free jazz trio in the second room at the venue called "Birth" and it was thrilling to see a room full of college kids listening attentively to music that in another time would be "too advanced" for young people. It was very encouraging.

A long drive to Boston was next rolling us onto the East Coast with a major groove on. Cambridge was a strong show and then we dropped down to NYC. I haven't been there since last September 8, when my partner and I both stayed at the Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center. The big town has changed. I know I've changed too. Walking around the lower East Side (my old neighborhood) just didn't feel the same anymore. I used to come back to New York and long for the old days, but I'm just not there anymore. I think my life is in Los Angeles today and that's where I feel most at home.

The show at the Mercury Lounge was fun and I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing my protégé Alex Sniderman and his new band open the show. We had an interesting group on next, "The Plastic Fantastics." Mother Superior tore the roof off as they did throughout the whole tour and when we hit it was like a hot knife through butter. It was really good to see so many of my dear old friends in NYC.

Baltimore was next and the show featured a performance by the Motor Morons. Hands down the most fun band I saw on tour. More like a factory with instruments. They were a clanging, banging, cacophony of sparks, beats, shrieks and hollers. The two women, four man, one grinder, two driver drills, one circular saw and one industrial blower equipped band were a joy to behold. Doug Lunn votes them "best in show".

We jumped back north to New Brunswick, NJ's Court Tavern. This was another basement club with a great feeling and motto: "Cruel, But Fair". Love it. I had the honor of meeting two of Red Rodney's nephews that night. They were fine fellows who only learned of the connection between their uncle and myself by going online and searching around. We had a great time talking about what a great character and musician he was. That was another gift.

Philly was a ball. Great turn out and good music all night long. Next we headed south to Atlanta where we did the TV show "Good Morning, Atlanta", a very early morning gig for touring musicians. It was pretty square but fun and a chance to reach thousands of housewives and insomniacs. It was a busy day for this reporter as I did a series of demonstrations at Apple Mac Stores all along the tour route and Atlanta was one of them. I had put together an outline for the demos that I hoped would be both entertaining and informative. At my first presentation in Glendale, CA, I discovered the Apple credo on the wall in the store and found this remarkable connection between my history and Apple.

Here's the Apple credo:

"The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do."

This thing knocked me out. This was simpatico with who I am and what I'm all about too so I used this as the context on which to introduce myself and the music I have made in the past, as well as the music I make today, on the Mac. It was an easy hop, skip and jump to bring folks from the days of MC5 rebels and round pegs in square holes, to red planets and laboratories on wheels. I'm a tool guy and the Mac is a great tool. It was a lot of fun showing people how the power of both the Mac and Digidesigns Pro Tools could be used by average folks to create art in their own home. I recorded a simple beat, then a guitar track, and then a bass showing them how multi-track recording is done. This is where the real fun began. I wrote a line or two of lyrics right on the spot that referenced an audience member and recorded the lead vocal. Then, I had the audience sing out in unison on the backing vocals. They had a ball! Hearing themselves back on the playback, they seemed truly amazed at how easy the whole process could be. I demonstrated some mixing techniques and finished up with some thoughts on the importance of art and creativity in our lives today. Everybody who attended had a good time and I hope the experience advanced the cause of people's unique ability to create and contribute to the world. Special thanks go out to the superb Apple staff in each city. Thanks to my friends at Apple and Digidesign for the opportunity to be of service.

Atlanta is where I also had a chance to spend some time with one of my oldest and dearest friends, Tim Shafe. Tim and I go way back and have a great deal of history together. Tim is also a monster bass player and we played together back in my Detroit days. We're all getting older and some of us are fading quicker than others and seeing him and sharing how much we love each other was another gift. Life long friends are a special blessing.

Birmingham, Alabama was next and then down to the big easy, N'Awlins. One hundred and ten degrees! Now we're talking some good radio. WOZZ-FM New Orleans is one of the best stations on the air. Great jazz 24-7. New Orleans is also home of the big chief, John Sinclair. John opened for us and regaled the crowd with his "music and verse" explorations of the blues and told the crowd "if someone would have bet fifty cents that Wayne Kramer and John Sinclair would be playing together at the Shim Sham Club in New Orleans in 2002, no one would have taken the bet." Great food, great music and great company. It just doesn't get much better.

The Big Lone State was next and I have to tell you, I wasn't looking forward to it much. Except for Austin, I have never been able to draw much of a crowd in Texas. I was pleasantly surprised when both Dallas and Houston gigs were much better attended than ever before. Even better was the sense I gained from talking to everybody after the shows that there is a grass roots core of folks out there that really "get" what it is I'm trying to do. One of the best parts of the tour was being able to talk to all of you after the gigs. You were very kind and gracious with me and I appreciate it. I got to reconnect with Pat Burrows in Dallas. Pat was the original bass player in the MC5, pre-MC5 actually, the days of the Bounty Hunters - way, way back in the day. He's doing fine and still playing a funky fender bass. Another gift. Emo's 10th anniversary party in Austin was a grand event. The Detroit cobras played along with the Makers and of course, Mother Superior. The woman singer in the Cobras was great when she announced, "you won't hear anything new up here tonight, and I love to drink, I love to smoke, I love to fuck and I love Jesus!" Good stuff.

Albuquerque, N.M. was a good club date. I'd never played there before and it was nice to meet some new fans there. Next was Phoenix, AZ. Our promoter there, "Fun Bobby", was on the job and made it a good show. "Fun Bobby" was one of the few true promoters on the tour. My experience has been that "promoters" don't really exist on the club level of touring. Mostly there is a "booker" and a "club" which is really a bar. Not many bars really "promote" a show. They might run an ad, open the room up and see what happens. It's understandable when you have 3-4 bands a night, 6 days a week and hundreds of bands out on the circuit trying to get something going for themselves. We all do the best we can, but having someone to put the energy and time into actually promoting is a rare and much appreciated.

San Diego was the final stop and we slid back into LA at 4:30 in the morning safe and sound. 10,000 miles, thousands of fans, and way too many Motel 6's. Folks ask me "wasn't that hard?" But the truth is, if you remove the Jack Daniel's, the heroin, the cocaine and the attendant bad behavior from the equation, touring isn't really that hard. It's sure easier than putting in 40+ hours a week on the assembly line or mopping floors or working the field in the Central Valley. It is a lot of sitting around in vans and loading gear and suitcases in and out of hotel rooms. It's also a lot of greasy road food. But there was no rose garden promised and I'm ready to head out again. I asked for this and am grateful to be able to do it.

Special cool points go out to my touring party including Mother Superior: Marcus Blake, bass, Jason Mackenroth, drums and Jim Wilson, guitar. Jim gets an extra gold star for working double duty as a member of my band on keyboards and harmony vocals. It was a joy having Jim on the band for the tour and he really helped me see the potential in expanding my working line up to four pieces. Now I have the difficult job of finding a replacement to take over for the future. Our tech squad on tour included Jonathan Austin at monitors and Jake "Iggy" Danielson on stage management. Both guys worked their asses off and did a fine job.

The very best of all was done by musicians Eric Gardner, drums, Doug Lunn, bass and Jim Wilson on guitar and keyboards. These men made the tour a dream gig for me. The most valuable thing I have is the fellowship and mutual respect of the people I work with.

Til next time.

Best, w

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 2:14 PM  

06.01.2002
Summer 2002

We're amping up. There's a flurry of activity building up to the release of the new record ADULT WORLD. It's a fascinating learning experience. I've only been in the record business for 30-plus years, but it's been on the artist end. Now, I find myself on the label side, and what a difference. I have a new found sympathy for the folks in manufacturing, artwork and distribution. It's not glamorous and it's not a lot of fun but it's truly the nuts and bolts of how this business works.

Learning how to really understand a marketing plan and co-op grid, and the constant struggle to find money to pay for things is really a challenge. What with the fact that we don't have the million dollars per record that the majors spend to launch a new record, we've been looking for new ways to reach you, The Public. One is through strategic partnerships.

My friends at Fender have stepped up to the plate and are working with us to co-promote the ADULT WORLD TOUR 2002 and the new record with a series of nationwide contests to win a Fender Stratocaster. The Apple computers folks are also coming into the picture with their "Made on a Mac" campaign. I did, indeed, make ADULT WORLD on a Mac and we're working on doing a series of demonstrations at Mac stores along the tour route. We'll post them as they're confirmed.

We also have the fine folks at X-Large Clothing giving us some cool stuff to wear so that we have some semblance of cohesive style on stage. Hey, it's tough to look cool and wear something that doesn't give you gig-butt every night. You know, we'll talk about our goals to anyone providing they--and their products--don't violate my fundamental principles of fairness and usefulness. I know the expression "thinking outside of the box" has been run into the ground these days, but that's exactly what we need to be doing to find to find new ways to get our records heard. All this may not sound too interesting, but it's what some of my days are like and it's my report and I'll write about whatever I feel like writing about.

The reality of going back on tour is becoming a part our daily plan and I admit I'm getting excited about it. The line up for the band is set and will feature Doug Lunn on bass. Those of you who follow my work will know Doug. He's not only one of the most in-demand studio bassist in Los Angeles, he's also co-leader of the Vida Vierra Band. These folks are the hardest dancing, most fun groups in LA. It's really much more than a band, since it includes the Swing Brazil Dance Company, who are a dance troupe, singers, and percussionists. I went out to hear them recently. They had the Temple bar in Santa Monica samba-ing and Latin dancing their asses off. I hadn't seen folks having that much fun at a club in a long, long time.

Also, on drums will be Eric Gardner, who has been with me for a year or so in-between stints in record company pop bands that need a real drummer to fill out their "next big thing" line-ups. Eric is a hard grooving and subtle player from the East Coast and has worked all over the country in all manners of musical aggregations. From Latin jazz in Miami to Boston blues groups. Eric played drums on ADULT WORLD and is the hottest young drummer in town. I hope I can hold on to him.

Bringing the touring group to completion is the addition of Jim Wilson on keyboards, guitar and vocals. Jim is a member of Mother Superior and they are my very special guests on the entire tour. As it turns out, he was open to the idea of temporarily joining my group for the duration of the tour and it all fell into place.

For me, it's an absolute dream line-up. I've been wanting to expand my working line-up to 4 musicians, but the costs of touring are so high that I couldn't afford the fourth member. When it occurred to me that Jim might consider working his gig and my gig, my prayers were answered. Rehearsals have been going great. We warm up with 30-40 minute improvisations that seem like they go by in 4 or 5 minutes. The music just flows with everybody carrying the ball and playing like a team. The guys all have extraordinary instincts and all of them comprehend a wide range of musical influences. They all know about Sun Ra and James Brown, Chuck Berry and Charles Bukowski.

I'm looking forward to playing this tour more than any I've ever done. Playing with these guys is a ball y'all. We're gonna tear the roof off the sucker. If I said I was thrilled about getting into a van and driving 10,000 miles around these United States, I'd be less than honest, but I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to play music for a living and hang out with this fine group of fellows. The real pay-off is, and always has been, the camaraderie and mutual respect of the people I work with. To be a worker among workers, a fellow among fellows. It doesn't get much better.

I'd like to try an experiment. I'm asking you to write out your dream set list. Remember that I have a new record "Adult World" that I'll be featuring on this tour and I know that most of you, at least on the first half of the tour will not have heard any of this music yet. It hits the street on July 16th and so after that I expect everyone to know it by heart. Anyhow, what would you like to hear me play when I come to your town? Consider my solo CD's and my work in the MC5. I really do want to know what you think.

I went to Chicago last month to attend the preview screening of the MC5 documentary film "A True Testimonial." To say it was an intense experience would be an understatement. Got to spend some time with my old partners Michael Davis and Dennis Thompson and getting to know Rob Tyner's family has been probably the greatest gift of the whole movie experience. His daughter Elizabeth has become like a niece to me. Its kind of difficult to relate to you what it felt like to watch this film. I'm sitting there watching the story of the early formative part of my life on the big screen. It's me, me and more me...not too healthy a deal for an egomaniac like me.

The filmmakers have done a fabulous job of telling the story of the MC5. Of course, the passing of Fred Smith and Rob Tyner make the film kind of one-sided, in as much as they weren't there to reflect on their sides of the story. It's truly a shame, because they were the best storytellers in the band. Life and death are not fair, but the rest of us did our best to carry the message.

The film covers all the bases. The early formative years down in Lincoln Park through the heavy political days in Detroit and Ann Arbor and our struggles with the Detroit police, the FBI, the music business and one another. The story unfolds in graphic detail with never-before-seen footage that is intercut with interviews with all involved. At times it's not a pretty story, and it's definitely not a glossed over VH-1 biopic of over-inflated multi-millionaire rock star excess. This is the real deal. I'm grateful that the story is finally getting told and told right. The in-concert footage is stunning. I had not seen some of it before and, at one point, the audience in the theater actually cheered aloud after a particularly dynamic performance. That was thrilling.

Some of the footage was hard to watch, especially later in the story as the band begins to break down. I know my mind is damaged from my years of abuse, but I remember almost everything except one particular performance. There is some footage of me drinking whisky before going on stage in 1971 in Helsinki, Finland and playing a concert. I have absolutely no memory of that night. Scary. I wish I had better news about when the film will hit the streets, but I'm kind of out of the loop about that. It’s about me and my band. I helped them make it, but it's not my film, it's theirs and they're holding it close to their chests. More news as it happens.

We're trying something that I learned from some of the other groups that I work with. Street Teams. Apparently, this is an idea that has possibilities for us to reach out to friends and fans around the country and enlist them in our cause. Getting the word out, getting posters up, making radio and retail visits. I think it's a cool idea but some of the folks we work with are warning me that most of the people who sign up for street teams don't do the jobs they're given. I'm guessing it's one thing to sit at your computer and respond to e-mails and sign up for free tickets and merch and back-stage passes, but it's another thing to actually get your ass up out of your chair and go out in the street and do the work.

This will be an interesting experiment. Perhaps you'll join us. I'd like to see you all when I come through your hometowns across America.

Stay in touch while I'm away. Visit the message board and tell me what's going on...See you soon, America!

Wayne Kramer

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 5:55 PM  

02.01.2002

I realize it's been a while since the last report but we're upgrading the site and it's put us on hold temporarily. I originally wrote this report at the end of the year and, thus, had to edit and update it a bit. More news as it happens...

Here's the latest:

The end of another year has come and gone and what a year it's been. Everything has changed, politically, culturally and personally for me. The landscape we all have been cruising through has been altered forever.

Change can be painful but it's a fact of life. Change can also open new doors and be the beginning of something better than anything we could have ever imagined. And it can come in many forms.

Getting a record label off the ground has been a true eye opener for your intrepid reporter. After being in the music business at various levels for 30-plus years, I've discovered that I had to go to school (literally and figuratively) to really learn business. I've been attending a business course set up by the Small Business Administration to learn basic business principles. It's been a ball. I'm finding it to be really fascinating stuff.

I never really knew why people buy the stuff they do. I used to think it was all about the price. Not true. If it were, I guess we would all eat at Taco Bell and drive a Yugo. The good news is, MuscleTone Records is up and rolling as a record company and moving swiftly ahead in 2002.

"The Hard Stuff" is ready for a late March, 2002 release. I've included 3 bonus tracks that didn't make the original record. I transferred the original 2" studio master tapes into Pro Tools and have been combing through them. It's been fun really taking a close look at what we were playing on those sessions back in '94. The new tracks are "God's Worst Nightmare" (the original version), "Till The Police Come" and "Going to the Wasteland."

We've also expanded the original artwork to include new notes and candid photos along with Mackie Osborne's original artwork. We also now have the technology to put videos on the disc and we've included director Lech Kowalski's videos for the songs "Junkie Romance" and "Crack in the Universe." "Junkie" in particular is very rough in subject matter and is very graphic at one point. Needless to say MTV hid in horror from this clip.

I had an excellent time just before Christmas at the Roxy with The International Noise Conspiracy (I)NC and the Hives. (I)NC are fellow travelers politically and really understand the connection between music and change. They're a hard grooving outfit and don't play down to the audience. Instead, they raised the bar. They were uplifting and weren't afraid to challenge old ideas and behavior, like slam dancing. Lead vocalist Dennis Lyxzen told the wide-eyed and bushy tailed LA crowd: "[slamming] That's not dancing, hurting your brothers and sisters by bashing into them isn't fun. Dancing starts down in your hips, not with your fists flying up in the air." That was good to see.

The Hives just might become the biggest band in Europe. Word has it they've sold over 200,000 copies of their latest record. Who knows, maybe they can make some noise on this side of the Atlantic, too. Pelle, the Hives lead singer hits the stage with a joy and confidence that could not be beat. I haven't seen this kind of spirit in a long time. I love to see a band come on with the attitude that they OWN THE STAGE. That's what I'm talking about. Their set was a celebration of the pure joy and release that music can bring when it's done right. There's nothing wrong with fun.

There's a trend forming that both these bands are part of. It's a growing worldwide movement that could be the start of a new chapter in popular music. In Europe, 12-year olds are looking to bands with spirit and originality, not pre-packaged acts, not Korn/Bizkit knuckleheads. Not techno or rap. And not a moment too soon. You can see it in the White Stripes and the much missed, At the Drive In.

That same new energy is exploding here. More of this same new light is emanating from two L.A.bands the Bellrays and Mother Superior. Both out-play, out-write, out-sing and out-perform anything that's on the horizon. I know you hear hype all the time and I know that the menu is almost always better than the meal, so I'm just carrying the message and will let the bands speak for themselves. They will do it more powerfully and eloquently than I ever could using mere words.

All of these bands represent a future that looks to be very exciting. The world of music seems to move ahead in starts and fits. We've been in a real valley, creatively and it's time for a change. And as Sam Cooke said, "Change is gonna come."

I'm looking forward to this New Year. We have some interesting plans and projects scheduled, including a new solo record from Yours Truly in June 2002 and the debut of the documentary film "The MC5: A True Testimonial." I've seen a portion of it and it's a motherfucker. Early screenings have generated a response bordering on ecstatic. I am very happy for the filmmakers. It's been a long, long haul for them. We first started work on it over 5 years ago and it's truly been a labor of love for director David Thomas and producer Laurel Legler. These folks have gone to the mattresses on this project and the result is that the world will finally get to learn the story of the MC5 in the best possible way.

I find it all very exciting and more than a little strange. I've been through so much from the early days of the band through till today, that when I watch footage of me and the band back in the day, it doesn't seem like I'm the same person that's on the screen. It's like I'm watching someone else's story. But if I dig a little deeper into this feeling I know that, today, I'm actually not the same person that I was then. That would be an impossibility.

Even though I am Wayne Kramer from the MC5, my time in the MC5 was a long, long time ago. It was a time in my life that happened and ended. It took a long time for me to accept that fact; that it came to a close and will never happen again is, in the end, a good thing. I'm proud to have been part of one of the greatest rock bands of all time, but that was then and this is now.

So I'm back to the subject of change. Change is something I need to stay in touch with. Things fall apart and reorganize themselves into a new order. The center will never hold. Never has, never will. Change is the one thing I can count on. Old ideas can be a fatal trap for me because they have the power to close my mind. If my mind closes, I start thinking that I know something absolutely or that I'm some kind of authority for my own life and wham! I'm in trouble. So it's a good thing that I'm not the same character I was at 18 or 28 or 48 for that matter.

I have much to be grateful for here at the beginning of 2002. I have a dear friend who describes the New Year as a clean sheet of paper. Pristine and flawless. Unmarked by the past and open to possibilities that are, as yet, unknown and unexplored.

Sounds good to me.

Wayne

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 3:48 PM  

09.17.2001

But permit me to explore the questions a little deeper.

To find the roots of destruction in my own life, I needed to take a moral inventory. It is a way to find out who I really am. (Not who I think I am, but who I really am.) In the inventory, I wrote out lists. I listed my resentments, fears, sexual harms, etc. in four columns. In the 1st column, I named the person or thing I resented (or feared etc.). 2nd column, what happened (got fired, jailed or whatever)? 3rd column, what part of self is affected (ambition, personal security, pocketbook, etc.)? 4th column, what is my part in it?

The key to understanding how such a terrible thing like this could happen is to ask: What is my part in it? Or, more specifically, what is our government's part in all this?

I sat along with the rest of the nation and watched as events unfolded, I listened to an unending stream of expert pundits and government officials prattling on about finding who's responsible. Not one of them has answered the question honestly yet.

So, I’m taking the plunge: What, indeed, could drive people on the other side of the earth to hate the United States so viscously as to mastermind and carry out the inconceivable enterprise needed to pull this attack off?

Bin Laden, Bin Laden, Bin Laden they keep whining. The government of the United States of America created him; they trained him and his gang back when they thought terrorizing the Soviets was an honorable concept. The US government has trained death squads that have murdered thousands of innocent people around the world. Is it all that strange that some of it comes back on us?

Truth is, if a group of people are willing to give their lives in their cause, you really cannot stop them. That's the same for Marines charging up Iwo Jima or the events of 9.11.01.

There’s an expression in the street: "You get what your hand calls for." And the real shitty part of it is, it’s not the leaders who get killed, it's us. It’s working folks. It's poor people. It's average people. People just trying to get by, trying to find some peace in our day-to-day lives. It's never the leaders and feeders in the high offices of power.

I'm wondering how is it that, culturally, we do not look inward for the source of our problems? Is it really the American way to blame somebody else for our difficulties? And please don't misunderstand me, the perpetrators of this crime should be brought to justice. By law, the same way any killer should be prosecuted. But understand this: Hunting down and killing the leaders of this crime will not prevent it from happening again. That kind of logic will only guarantee that it will happen again and again. To stop this from happening again, the conditions that created it must be changed.

When we see hundreds-of-thousands of people die in other countries, it hardly makes a dent in the nightly news in this country. We are hated for our arrogance.

When countries without the basic elements of life (food, shelter, medicine) exist in the same day as the obscene riches this country flaunts, how do you think those who can do something might react? We are hated for our excess.

If history has shown us anything it's that you cannot fuck people over forever. At some point they will rise up angry.

The rest of the world lives with this kind of terror everyday. Why should we be immune? Clearly we are not.

What is happening is a human tragedy. But it doesn’t have to stay this way. Or does it?

Are we at the turning point? Or will it be more of the same? Is there a lesson here to be learned? Will all those who died have died in vain? Must the behavior on the highest levels of government that brought this pain down on us be repeated again and again?

We all live on the same planet. We all want to be healthy and happy; to live our lives and do our work and raise our families. To love and to be loved.

My dear friend Doug Lunn sent me this, and I think it speaks more eloquently to both the problem and the solution than all of my ranting.

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of only 100 people, it would look something like this:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 North and South Americans
8 Africans
30 White
70 Non-white
6 people would possess 59% of the world's wealth, and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
30 would suffer malnutrition
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer

May we love the lives we lead and may we embrace the rest of the "village" with love and compassion.

God bless you all,

w

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 4:40 PM  

07.24.2001

 

Hola,

Scandinavia is the best. I went over to Sweden to perform with the Nomads at the Hultsfred 2001 Festival and had a ball. It was an honor to be asked, as the gig was the 20th year anniversary of the Nomads. They are a superb band and fine fellows and were gracious hosts. They also brought over Jello Biafra, "Handsome" Dick Manitoba and Ross "the Boss", from the Dictators and Chris Bailey from the Saints, to join in on the Nomads party. The set was like a review with each of the guests doing a song or two and I was honored to close the show with a house-shaking version of KOTJ. I don't get an opportunity to play for 10,000 kids every day so I made the most of it. It was fun to hear the whole crowd getting on the good foot. It was a hoot.

The festival itself is one of Europe's longest running annual music events. For 17 years now the small town of Hultsfred in southern Sweden, is taken over for a week each spring by music fans from all over Sweden and Europe. They seem to have a much better attitude about rock festivals in Europe. The older generation accepts that young folks like to do these kinds of things and the young people, in turn, don't tear shit up. What a concept! People drank their share of alcohol and, I assume took their share of drugs but somehow they just kept the lid on things. As an American with a background in extremely bad behavior I find all this civilized behavior curious. How do they do this? Why can't we manage it here in the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Queens of the Stone Age, Iggy, Manic Street Preachers, Rocket from the Crypt, Nashville Pussy, Aimee Mann, J. Mascis & the Fog, (with my man, Mike Watt), OutKast and many others were there along with the hugely popular Hellacopters.

I heard a very cool rapper back in the hip-hop tent called Sage Francis. He was a white, bearded, rhyming, rapping manic. Free styling and goofing with (not on) the crowd and generally showing what real entertainment is all about. He was sharp minded and the fans were digging it. He wasn't insulting their, or my, intelligence. His raps were smart and inventive. Good Stuff. I'd like to learn more about him.

It was non-stop bands all day and night for three days and a good time was had by all.

After the festival I went down to Stockholm with the Hellacopters and recorded two songs with them. A new original song we co-wrote and a cover of the MC5's "Gotta Keep Moving" for the album that will accompany the release of the MC5 documentary film "A True Testimonial" next year. The Hellacopters cut a roaring version of the tune and I really enjoyed working with them. They remind me, a bit, of myself when I was their age.

The trip left me a little sick, what with the jet lag and sleep depravation and the flying petri dish that airplanes are, so I was down for the count for a week or so but I'm good now.

Song writing has been at the front of my activities lately and it's something that I love doing. Writing has become a real love of mine and the more I do it, the more I enjoy the process. Both prose and lyric writing have been flowing lately. I'm happiest when I'm writing. If I don't do it, I start to get a little funky, attitude-wise.

Brian Howes from the Vancouver band DDT, came into town and we wrote for a couple of days. We got one good song out of it. Tony Fate, of the Bellrays, and I have been burning the midnight pro tools. I think we've come up with some interesting stuff. The songs we are writing are a little strange and that's a good thing. I never know where these efforts will end up and I don't need to know. I try to stay out of the results. I also have been exploring the world of techno/electronica. You just can't leave a guy in a room with all these noise making machines and not expect something strange to come out of it. Hmmm.

Funny you don't hear about the evil napster too much these days. What a load of horseshit that was. All the greedheads crying bloody murder because the think they might not be able to make the payments on their new Bentleys or what ever the hell they do with all their money. From what I can see, what's happened is the major labels (and their pimps the RIAA), have won gigantic cash awards from the courts from the dot comers and I will bet a dollar on a dime that not one red cent has found it's way into the hands of any songwriter or band. No one likes to get ripped off but look who ends up with the money: the big multinational corporations. Same as it ever was. Napster and all the other file sharer's are not the enemy. They never were. All those folks that were downloading their favorite music weren't doing it to get rich. They did it because they dig the music. You want to rattle the captains of industry? Get them where they live. Get them where their hearts reside: in their market share. Threaten their money streams and they will scream from the rooftops about artist's rights and the sanctity of copyright protection but what their really whining about is the possibility of losing profits. I say possibility because no one has yet proved that they lost money, not labels, artists, publishers, and no one has lost a dime. And in the age old, tried and tested way that big business operates, they have managed to turn a perceived threat into even more profit. The whole episode gives me gas.

Speaking of big business and crass commercialism, MuscleTone Records is up and rolling with our first release (actually, our second after Beyond Cyber-Punk). Mad For the Racket, the record I made with Brian James & Co. is set for a fall street date. We will open a special page here on the web site for it and will have all the info there. Stay tuned. All in all, life is good today and I have much to be grateful for. I wish you all well.

Thanks for tuning in.

Wayne.

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 10:50 AM

4.17.2001

Friends, Romans and countrymen lend me your ears... Or eyes or minds or something like that. Here's all the news that's fit to print of late with your intrepid reporter.

SXSW was a gas. Went down to Austin TX. For the annual music business hyper-schmoose fest. The Bellrays were down there playing and I caught them at Room 710. They were great as always. This band is just too powerful for words sometimes. You may not like them or you may love them but you will not be indifferent to them. My mission down there was two-fold. Part one was appearing on an industry panel at the convention where I talked about substance abuse related issues in the music business. Joining me on the panel was David Anderly from the E entertainment channel, Bob Forrest from Thelonius Monster and Bicycle Thief, Harold Owens from Music Cares and my main man and jazz great, Buddy Arnold from The Musicians Assistance Program. We took a hard look at the problems and discussed (with the participation of a very involved audience) possible solutions. I enjoyed it and it's a good way for me to participate in my own recovery by carrying the message whenever I can. Part two was the American debut of Mad for the Racket. Joining my partner Brian James and I on the band was the Manchurian maniac Mani on bass and Chris Vrenna on drums. Mani was on the Euro dates we did in the fall and was at liberty to join us. We got very lucky on drums with Chris. Since his departure from Nine Inch Nails, Chris Vrenna has turned into one of the most in-demand re-mixers and producers in town and since he hasn't been behind a drum kit in a while, MFTR was just what he was looking for. And, he played his ass off. We played a low profiled show at The Atomic Café and the placed was packed to the rafters. Apparently the fire Marshall was pitching a bitch about the crowd size. As the rappers say; “it's all good.”

Back in LA, Musicblitz in association with Muscletone Records promoted a record release party at the Key Club on the Sunset Strip. My most beloved Stan Ridgeway and his band headlined the night with the hardest rocking band in show business, Mother Superior, opening. I played a set in between and was joined on the band by new drummer Eric Gardner, Doug Lunn on bass, Mark Johnson singing harmony and very special guests, David Was and Dr. Charles Moore. David performed "Chow Main Street" and was wacky and wonderful. Dr. Moore gave us all a music lesson with his trumpet. If you don't know who he is, or what my association with Charles Moore is, we go way back to Detroit and the days of the MC5. Charles wrote the horn charts on Skunk (Sonically Speaking) from "High Time" our last Atlantic album. He's been out here in California since the 70's and is now a full professor in music at UCLA and a pleasure to have in my life. Good gig and a good launch for our first CD release; "Beyond Cyber-Punk".

Every Sunday in May it's "The Reeves Gabrels/Wayne Kramer Quartet" at Spaceland in Silverlake. I'm looking forward to this short residency. Reeves heads a short list of truly original guitarists working today that I really admire. We should be able to make a joyful noise together. The Plaster Caster documentary movie opens tonight here in Hollywood and I'm going to go down and check it out. They shot an interview with me about my scarlet past with them back in the day. Should be good for a laugh.

We've put up a new page, "maneuvers" on the site. The plan is that we can keep up dates on it regarding live shows. VH-1's History of Punk, is set to air on April 19 and includes an interview with your truly. Man could my ego get any more massaged? Finally, and sadly, the passing of Joey Ramone. This was a sweet man. A friend and a brother, and he will be truly missed. We lose people over the course of our lives and some are harder to accept than others. This one hurts. 49 is too young to be done. So long pal. You and your family are in my prayers.

God Bless.

Wayne

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 5:45 PM  

11.14.2000

On the national front, I'm sure it will come as no surprise to any of my friends and fans that I'm a 100% Nader man. You know, I lost my right to vote as a result of my bad career choices in the '70s that eventually landed me at my old alma mater Federal Correctional Institute in Lexington, Kentucky. But now I've regained my right to vote and I would do it every day if they'd let me. What we've ended up with in Bush and Gore is two hereditary politicians fighting like professional street rats over a big piece of pork fat. Like Ralph says, "if you're voting for the lesser of two evils, you're still voting for evil." Four years is not such a long time, and I, for one, will be working hard to make Green Party politics a force in America and the world.

In cultural news, I've been back and forth to England a couple times over the last six months. I did a terrific concert at Royal Festival Hall in London in support of Pere Ubu for the Outro Festival. I had the opportunity to bring Brock Avery and Paul Ill with me on the band and it was just superb. What is this? Great sound. Great lights. No stink like some punk rock shithole. Could I be in the right place?

I spent a week in Leeds mentoring a baby band there named Parva. Five twenty year-old upstart lads who have been taken under the Muscle Music wing and who have attracted the ear of not only me, but of Dave Creffield, who produced the trillion selling Embrace albums in the UK, as well as Rob Howes, who is a deejay and songwriter in England who also goes by the moniker The Overseer. The three of us worked together at Adam Pearson's studio busting out a couple of tracks with the lads for future release. What a pleasure! The kid’s minds were open and Dave and Rob were full of ideas. I'm pleased with the result and you'll hear it soon enough.

Last month's trip was to do a solo electric performance (Yikes!) in coordination with Lech Kowalski's film on Johnny Thunders called "Born To Lose." The movie is still very rough, but I think he'll pull a great documentary out of it. It was a lot of toxic shit for me, watching myself talking about the Gang War days on camera in a standing room only theatre. The gig was good. It was in an Internet Cafe in SoHo and Lech's got it all on film.

We also spent considerable time laying the groundwork for Mad For The Racket. If you haven't heard (or didn't read my last installment), Brian James and I have started a new band called Mad For The Racket. It was originally called The Racketeers, but we discovered there were numerous other Racketeer bands around the world and found it easier just to rename our project. It's kind of a rock and roll experiment gone right. The idea is that we run it more like a musician's collective based on the songwriting collaborated on by Brian and me. So, each record will show an ever-changing cast of sounds and characters, but the core will remain the same. The first record, called "The Racketeers," came out in the UK in a very limited run last week on legendary Track Records (former starter home of Jimi Hendrix and The Who) and Duff McKagan, Stewart Copeland, Clem Burke, Adam Pearson and Brock Avery all contributed generously to the sessions. We've set up a couple of live experiences to launch the band in England in December (12th in Dublin and 13th in London) and so far we've got Mani from Primal Scream playing bass on the live shows. That will be fun. The record will be available worldwide in spring, 2001.

Here in L.A., I did a short run at the Baked Potato with Gilby Clarke. Unfortunately it was one of those loose jam-based gigs that fell apart almost as fast as it came together. Also, my dear friend and mentor John Sinclair was on the West Coast for a short fun. We played up and down the California coast north of San Fran and a few jobs here in LA. Sinclair is the hardest working poet in show business. Check out his most recent work on the CD "Underground Issues" through SpyBoy Records and his own archival recordings of Sun Ra on Alive-Total Energy Records.

Speaking of Alive Records I've got a new CD available through them called "Cocaine Blues." In 1975, when I was arrested, charged with conspiring to sell cocaine and sentenced to 4 years in jail, many gathered around to help. When I was finally released in 1978 after serving 2.5 years, one of my best friends Mick Farren welcomed me to England by setting up a gig at Dingwall's. The CD is a nice chunk of that very show, discovered this year on old reel-to-reel tapes by Andy Colquhoun, who played bass with me that night in the Pink Fairies. It's also got other gems on it, for the complete-ist in you.

In September, I went up to Portland for NXNW and spoke on a panel with some music business notables on the subject of alcohol and drug abuse (something I know a little bit about) in our world. The discussion was designed to bring awareness to various foundations set up to help musicians in need. If you need more information on what to do if you or someone in your band is having trouble, you can contact these organizations: Musicians Assistance Program, MusiCares, Sweet Relief and Alcoholics Anonymous.

While at NXNW, I ran into At The Drive-In, who are sweet guys. I love their look. Somehow, it seems familiar...I might write a piece on them for a dot com later this month. I'll let you know. I'm continuing to write and record my next solo record and I must say that I'm--at the moment--well pleased with how the songs are shaping up. The other big thing that's been happening with me, and I'll try not to go into too graphic of detail here, has been health related. I've had four trips to the emergency room with kidney stones in the last year. I've finally had the surgery to have a huge stone removed last week. This has been a whole new world of pain for me, but I think I'm over the worst of it. Suffice to say; I know what it means to be a woman, because I’ve had the pain of childbirth. Seriously, I actually had an emergency room physician tell me she has treated women for kidney stones who have told her it was more painful than childbirth. In the words of Louis Armstrong, "Leavin' it all behind me."

I've just finished the final sequencing and liner notes for "Beyond CyberPunk," my compilation album featuring, among so many, Richard Hell & Voidoids, Dee Dee Ramone, Jimmy Zero's new band Lesbianmaker, Mother Superior, Ron Asheton and Mudhoney. It will be the first ever Muscle Tone Records release and will be done in conjunction with our friends at Musicblitz.com. In case you don't know what Muscle Tone is, my manager Margaret Saadi and I have launched our own imprint called Muscle Tone Records. We'll use it as a channel for my solo work (both old and new), and numerous other projects for 2001.

Future/Now Film's MC5 documentary "A True Testimonial" has gone into post production and we are going up to Chicago to view the footage over the Thanksgiving. They tell me they have discovered over 4.5 hours of never before seen concert footage, home films and interviews. This is going to be a great movie.

On December 2, I go up to Seattle for a week of panels and live shows surrounding a celebration of the work of Jimi Hendrix at the Experience Music Project. The week climaxes with a special one-off appearance of a band I've assembled featuring Reeves Gabrels (David Bowie, Tin Machine) and me trading guitar duties, Johnny Rzeznik (Goo Goo Dollas) on vocals and Paul Ill and Brock Avery from my band on bass and drums. We'll perform a selection of Hendrix material, a couple of my songs and a couple of Reeves' songs and who knows what else? I understand that Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox are going to be there too, along with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Double Trouble. Maybe we'll all make a joyful noise together.

My kidney is sore, but my spirits are high. We're still trying to sort out a way for me to answer your e-mail. It's not quite together just yet, but it will be. I promise. No, really, I'm getting all of it forwarded to me and it's all truly appreciated. Keep it coming and tell a friend.

God bless you all.

Wayne

POSTED BY WAYNE KRAMER AT 7:00 AM