Taking 5

An impartial review

by John Sinclair

Wayne Kramer has been out there a long time without gaining the popularity, the recognition, and -- yes -- the financial rewards he so richly deserves. I should know -- I managed the MC5, featuring Wayne, from 1967 to 1969. (We also collaborated on last year's Full Circle on Alive Records.) And this great guitarist and widely influential musical force continues to struggle to get some props from radio programmers, the music-buying public, and the official recorders of rock-and-roll history.

Citizen Wayne (Epitaph) may not solve this problem. For one thing, it may be too intelligent to penetrate the pop mainstream. But the new Wayne Kramer album is most certainly the artistic capstone of the former MC5 guitarist's illustrious career.

Conceived as an "auto-mythological" work -- a form shaped to sum up the artist's life in song, and realized with the twisted assistance of composer/producer David Was -- Citizen Wayne delivers a coherent presentation in music and verse of the real-life protagonist's rough and rocky progress through the second half of the 20th century. The music drives, twists, powers, and rolls under and around Kramer's kaleidoscopic electric guitar and electronically altered voice, pulsing out from the drums of Brock Avery and prodded by the many instrumental voices of Was and the custom-made bass parts played by Kramer himself.

The songs -- half of them crafted by Wayne and Was, another five by Kramer alone, and one with Mick Farren -- move the story line along in epic fashion, treating the key themes and events of Kramer's personal odyssey through postwar America with care and immense musical power and invention. "Citizen Wayne is punk rock for grown-ups," Michael Simmons says in the LA Weekly, suggesting that Kramer's music here is rough, driven, angry, and splendidly aggressive, but full of intelligence, wit, and rhythmic force as well. It's something mature music lovers can enjoy for its weight and thrust as well as its resonant summation of life experiences shared to a various extent by an entire generation of Americans now in their 40s and 50s.

From the opening cut, "Stranger in the House," Citizen Wayne works its way from early suburban teen alienation and rejection of Middle American lifeways in the early '60s through Kramer's hard-biting account of his revolutionary years with the MC5 and the White Panther Party ("Back When Dogs Could Talk"), the 5's legendary performance at the Democratic Convention/Festival of Life in Chicago ("Down on the Ground"), the dog days after the break-up of the 5 when the guitarist turned to dope and crime ("No Easy Way Out") and was eventually redeemed by the love of his wife, Marjorie, his trial and two-and-half-year incarceration on a cocaine beef in the '70s ("Count Time"), and his first "comeback" attempt in a band called Gang War with the late Johnny Thunders (here dubbed "Junky the laughing clown"), as chronicled in the bitterly perceptive "Snatched Defeat" (as in, from the jaws of victory).

Interspersed among these personal narratives are several pertinent social commentaries: the wry satire "Revolution in Apt. 29"; "Shining Mr. Lincoln's Shoes," a lament for working people "since the Union lost its clout"; "Dope for Democracy," a musical indictment of the CIA's central role in the international narcotics trade; and "You Don't Know My Name," a brutal, class-conscious look at contemporary pop culture. The program closes with a slinky paean to the power of artistic commitment called "Doing the Work" ("It saved me, really") and an instrumental, "Farewell to Whiskey," that leaves us alone with Wayne and his guitar.

Kramer's first two albums for Epitaph, The Hard Stuff and Dangerous Madness, drew rave reviews around the world but racked up little airplay and modest sales figures despite relentless touring and unflagging label support. On Citizen Wayne the guitarist decided early on to make as personal a musical statement as he could and take his chances. Choosing David Was as his collaborator -- Wayne recorded and toured with the original Was (Not Was) -- is revealed here as a stroke of genius. Together they've created an expressive work of rock-and-roll art for the ages.

Wayne Kramer has now painted his masterpiece, and only time will tell where it will ultimately hang. Once you've heard it, Citizen Wayne should find a place in your mind, heart, and viscera for a long time to come. n

Wayne Kramer and John Sinclair will be appearing together as part of a poetry and music performance at Old West Church, 131 Cambridge Street, in Boston this Wednesday, June 18, at 7:30 p.m. Later that night, Kramer will play T.T. the Bear's Place in Cambridge's Central Square. Call 492-0082.