This week I was reminded of long lost Labor Days in Detroit, marching with my father’s union as a little kid. Thinking about Labor Day and Detroit got me thinking about John Sinclair who famously got thrown in jail in 1969 after giving two joints to an undercover cop, before even more famously getting sprung from jail when John Lennon headlined his benefit concert. Sinclair managed the MC5 and also founded the White Panther Party which backed the agenda of the Black Panther Party while also advocating for a sex, drugs and rock and roll wing of the revolution. He’s a good man, and a great Detroiter. Sinclair now lives in Amsterdam.

Here’s Sinclair’s story in this great doc: White Panther – The Legacy of John Sinclair…

WHITE PANTHER: The Legacy of John Sinclair from Nomad Cinema (Charles B Shaw) on Vimeo.

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For every rock band that makes it big there are a million others that disappear unnoticed. However, there is also a rock band of a third kind: A band that makes a deep, narrow mark in its time that influences musicians for decades to come. The Velvet underground is a great example of this kind of band. The MC5 is another one.

For the uninitiated, the MC5 were a Detroit, Michigan rock group that released three records between 1969 and 1972. Their debut album Kick out the Jams is the band’s best known release and its title song their greatest, most infamous “hit.” The band fused the soul of rhythm and blues with the frenzy of garage rock and a love of pure noise into what often sounded like a kind of Motown metal that was as groovy as it was incendiary. The band are now seen as punk rock pioneers whose prescience continues to galvanize their place in the history of rock.

MC5: A True Testimonial tells the story of the group and their music against a backdrop of the art, rock, drugs and radical politics that defined the underground scene in Detroit at the end of the 1960′s.

Watch MC5: A True Testimonial below.

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