High Time

They need no introduction. It's the MC5 & their 3rd album. Mind shattering rock n roll as only the MC5 can do. The guitars are a sonic tornado,and the approach to their song structures appear more developed. I couldnt say which is their best its a matter of opinion but its got more guts than the still excelent Back in the USA. Its just a different approach, all i can really say is if you havn't yet got it, its high time you did- recommended by me the man at Frontroomautos, my house is like a garage & the MC5 get a regular slot when im working, go get!!!

If you like albums like Exile on Main Street or the Faces' A Nod's as good as a Wink, then this will fit in nicely. This album shows MC5 moving in the right direction to enter the 70's- sadly it was to be their last.

There really isn't a bad track on here. It could do with some Who-like remixing and mastering because the sound is a little thin and distorted but overall this is the best undiscovered album ever. Buy it now!!

Kick Out the Jams is of course a complete classic, capturing the MC5 intheir full-on primal/political manner. Cut a few years later after Back inthe USA and you find the MC5 stuck in one of the bleakest periods inAmerican history: the revolution had failed to happen- Vietnam dragged on-Nixon had returned to power with the help of his "silent majority"-Watergate- Kent State...and so on...Add to that The MC5 had somehow notbecome the most popular, as well as greatest, rock'n'roll band in theworld. Their peers weren't doing that well- The Stooges moving towardstheir messy end as the NY Dolls were moving towards their messy beginning.Roky Erickson ended up in a mental home where ECT-treatment would damagehim. Sly Stone was moving towards Fresh before lapsing into addiction andmediocrity. The Velvets had split, Lou Reed going to work in an officebefore embarking on his solo-career etc. The idealism and freedom of the1960s was nowhere to be found...still the MC5 got on and made arguablytheir best LP.
Thanks to an NME-compilation in the 90s that featured Skunk (SonicallySpeaking) I wanted to explore this album as well as Jams (which I knewfrom its 1991 reissue) and Back in the USA (which I bought as the coverwas cool and it had a song called Teenage Lust on- which was very MaryChain/Larry Clark)- High Time is their most overlooked LP and a milliontimes better than the pitiful hype-practioners heaped on people by themusic press/record companies the last few years (e.g. The Von Bodies, TheKills, White Stripes, The Hives, The Vines...and so on). The MC5 were ontosomething & produced this LP which was rumoured to be the one that theband liked the best! (Wayne Kramer said as much in an interview with Uncuta few years ago...). Their primal rock is delivered efficiently over theseeight-tracks, though Miss X sees the band veer off into ballad-territoryand is worth buying the LP for (perhaps if they'd gone on longer they'dhave produced a Clear Spot-type LP?). The majority of it is pulsing rock-though delivered by the tightest muthas on the planet and with asensibility found in forward-thinking jazz of the time (Coltrane, Davis,Sanders, Monk, Mingus, Coleman...). The wild guitars of Wayne Kramer & thelate Fred'Sonic'Smith are suitably mindblowing- this may have been a bandtowards the end of their brief, brilliant career, but they stil playedwith the freshness you'd associate with the start of their career...HighTime is one of the great rock albums of the 1970s and one I'd easily classnext to Funhouse (The Stooges), New York Dolls, or The Day...(Rocket fromthe Tombs). An album this great really ought to be appreciated more-Nirvana? PAH! Primal Scream? REALLY! The Strokes? YOU MUST BEJOKING...this is the real deal and a reminder that there was more to TheMC5 than Kick Out the Jams...