earMUSIC has announced “10 More”, the explosive new live album from MC50, due out December 5 and capturing the unrelenting energy of the 2018 world tour that reignited the spirit of one of rock’s most radical and influential bands.
The album — a companion piece to the “10 x MC5” record included in the bonus version of the 2024 MC5 “Heavy Lifting” release — is available for pre-order via online retailers, and to pre-save now and on all major digital platforms.
Formed by MC5 founding member Wayne Kramer to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Kick Out The Jams”, the MC50 lineup united an all-star ensemble of rock innovators — Kim Thayil (SOUNDGARDEN),Brendan Canty (FUGAZI),Billy Gould (FAITH NO MORE),Matt Cameron (PEARL JAM) and Marcus Durant (ZEN GUERRILLA) — carrying forward the revolutionary power that made MC5 a lightning rod for change in the late ’60s and ’70s.
Captured live during the 2018 anniversary tour, “10 More” roars through MC5’s most iconic songs — including “The American Ruse”, “Call Me Animal”, “Rocket Reducer No. 62 (Rama Lama Fa-Fa-Fa)”, “Looking At You” and “Starship”. With recordings from live shows in Seattle, Washington; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Hamburg, Germany, the album spans tracks from all three original MC5 albums — “Kick Out The Jams”, “Back In The USA” and “High Time”, along with a cover of Ray Charles’s “I Believe To My Soul”, which was a staple of the band’s sets in the late 1960s. These performances recall the same urgency that once echoed through Detroit’s underground, where MC5 fused rock, free jazz and political protest into a sound that challenged America’s status quo.
Following the acclaimed 2024 MC5 studio album “Heavy Lifting” — produced by Bob Ezrin and released shortly before MC5’s induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame — “10 More” continues the story of one of rock’s most influential bands with a powerful live recording that celebrates their lasting impact and uncompromising spirit.
Kramer died in February 2024 at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, according to Jason Heath, a close friend and executive director of Kramer’s nonprofit Jail Guitar Doors. Heath said the cause of death was pancreatic cancer.
MC5’s sonic thunder continues to reverberate a half-century after they first stormed the rock world with 1969’s “Kick Out The Jams”, the galvanizing live document that introduced a major voice of late ’60s counterculture and proved incomparably influential on metal, punk, stoner rock and almost every other form of loud, boundary pushing music that would follow. The original MC5 lineup recorded two more albums before imploding: 1970’s “Back In The USA”, produced by rock critic (and future Bruce Springsteen manager) Jon Landau, and their 1971 creative zenith, “High Time”. The last days of 1972 also marked the final performance of the original MC5 lineup, thereby ending a turbulent existence marked by their anti-establishment political stance, mainstream radio banishment, FBI harassment, and lots of uncompromising, unequaled rock and roll fury.
Kramer was a well-respected and prolific film (“Talladega Nights”, HBO’s “Hacking Democracy”) and television (HBO’s “East Bound And Down”) composer. He was recognized by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Guitar Players of All Time”.
