Wayne Kramer - The Hard Stuff (1995)

The MC5 – with guitarist extraordinnaire Wayne Kramer – are one of those bands that has grown large in legend, receiving much more acclaim after their demise than they ever did during their brief artistic and commercial life span. As the cultural arm of the White Panther Party during the late-60s, the Detroit-based band mixed radical, "power-to-the-people" styled politics with crunching power chords and primordial metallic rock and roll. Along with fellow Motor City rockers Iggy & The Stooges, the MC5 did more to influence the punk rock revolution that would define the late-70s than any other band, save, perhaps, the New York Dolls.

Twenty-five years have passed and here is Kramer resurfacing with his solo debut disc. At a time when most forty-something artists from the '60s are totaling up their mutual fund yields and cranking out safe-as-milk reunion albums, Kramer's The Hard Stuff burns and scrapes like a shot of raw whiskey with a broken glass chaser. Recruiting an all-star team of punk rockers, including members of Rancid, Bad Religion, Clawhammer and the Melvins, Kramer shows that he can still run musical circles around the young 'uns.

Along with co-writer Mick Farren, Kramer has assembled eleven killer cuts for The Hard Stuff, with songs like "Edge Of The Switchblade," "Junkie Romance," "Incident On Stock Island" and "Crack In The Universe" brimming over with the sort of street poetry, colorful imagery and sheer attitude we haven't seen since Lou Reed's day in the sun. It's the music that truly sets The Hard Stuff apart, however, as Kramer's guitar screams, cries, moans and roars with a passion and a ferocity few players can even attempt, much less coax from their instruments. A quarter of a century may have passed since the MC5 broke up, but Kramer proves with The Hard Stuff that he can still kick out the jams. (Epitaph Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy The Hard Stuff from Amazon.com)

Mad For The Racket - The Racketeers (2001)

Wayne Kramer is a survivor in every sense of the word. From the legendary MC5 in the '60s through collaborations with Mick Farren, Deniz Tek and Johnny Thunders in the '80s and '90s to Mad For The Racket, his new project, Kramer has enjoyed a lengthy and impressive music career. If most of his almost forty years in the biz seem to have been spent at odds with the establishment, that’s their problem, not his. As Kramer enters his fifth decade as an artist and musician, he does so with a new CD, a new label and some old friends.

Primarily a collaboration between Kramer and former Damned/Lords Of The New Church axeman Brian James, Mad For The Racket also includes the instrumental contributions of Blondie drummer Clem Burke and former Guns ‘N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan. Stewart Copeland sits behind the kit for a song or two, as does longtime Kramer drummer Brock Avery. “The Racketeers” is a guitar showcase, however, and in spite of the impressive credentials of the various rhythm-makers, it is the slash-and-burn dueling six-strings of Kramer and James that dominate the proceedings. Swapping red-hot riffs and vocal duties, much like Kramer did with Tek on the excellent Dodge Main CD, the two guitarists are similar enough stylists to make these songs work. They differ enough in their approach, however, that they manage to create some live-wire tension in the grooves.

The sound cranked out by Mad For The Racket is standard hardcore roots rock, filled with razor-sharp ribbons of six-string work, thundering rhythms and old school punk attitude. The material here is not that dissimilar from that which Kramer kicked out on a trio of studio albums for Epitaph, overlooked classics that showcased his vastly underrated guitar style and ever-maturing songwriting skills. On “The Racketeers” Kramer and James share the songwriting duties, sometimes resulting in a dud like the heavy-handed “Prisoner Of Hope,” with Kramer’s over-the-top vocal histrionics mangling hackneyed lyrics. Kramer has done better on his own with similarly themed material. More often than not, however, the pair has created winners like the dark, disturbing “Tell A Lie,” the seedy “Czar Of Poisonville” or the blazing “Chewed Down To The Bone.”

Kramer’s vocals are always adequate, unique and easily identifiable, flawed but forceful. James’ pipes are weaker but meet the challenge of the material, sometimes sounding like former bandmate Stiv Bators; other times – as on the lively “I Want It” – James sounds like a young Iggy Pop. Both play the guitar like maniacs, loco mosquitoes hell-bent on tearing down the walls with the sound of their axes alone. Together, the two grizzled rock & roll veterans have created an entertaining and hard-rocking collection of songs, an album that showcases their strengths and furthers their already considerable legacies. “The Racketeers” is the sound of punk rock entering middle age, and for Wayne Kramer and Brian James, they refuse to go quietly into that good night. (Muscle Tone Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy The Racketeers from Amazon.com)