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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