Wayne Kramer RIP

I am writing about 90s music and I didn’t plan on including Wayne Kramer, though he is a fit that I will explain later. However, I have been meaning to write about Kramer since he passed away in February. I have fond memories of our local record store. It was always a dollar or two more expensive than the chains but most people forgave the owner who was a big personality. He was a true grown 50s rocker. He had colorful import records at expensive prices. I bought a few and don’t regret it (T Rex, Slade, The Clash) One record I bought was “Kick out the Jams” by the MC5. If you researched the roots of punk at all, you would hear about the MC5. 

Although I never was obsessed with the 5 as I was with bands like the Stooges and New York Dolls, Kick Out the Jams is a strong album. Then again, it is a different strain of punk. Influenced by Sun Ra and James Brown as much as it was by the Sonics and the Kingsmen, it’s not so much punk as it is a precursor to metal, grunge and stoner rock. My next purchase was Babes in Arms- a ROIR cassette only compilation put together by Kramer in 1982. It is sort of a de facto Greatest Hits gathering alternate takes of the bands best songs from their short career. It was released on Compact Disc in the 90s and has been re-released at different points. 

While it is not a must-have (with its odds and sods variety), the early version of Looking at You (later covered by the Damned) might be the wildest punk song ever. Kramer most famously went to prison in the 1970s as captured in the Clash song Jail Guitar Doors. He briefly joined Johnny Thunders in a band called Gang War and the early days of Was (Not Was)- he’s on their 1981 debut. Kramer in the 1980s was a carpenter and a woodworker. But he came back to prominence in the 1990s. 

In 1995, he released the comeback album The Hard Stuff backed by the band Clawhammer. Punk label Epitaph (ran by Bad Religion’s Bret Guerwitz) was enjoying its largest success and now, Kramer was on the roster. The Bad Stuff got a lot of attention. It’s a bit of an unusual album. Nothing like the Bad Religion/Offspring type of music most Epitaph bands made. It was if anything like the jazz punk of Black Flag and maybe a bit of Charles Bukowski and Jim Carroll. More records were released in 1996 and 1997. 

In 2014 he had a successful jazz album. In 2008, he wrote a book also called the Hard Stuff and started touring the MC5 again which had reunited in 2004. The new 5 were Kramer and the other surviving members (Michael Davis, Dennis Thompson) have at various times added Handsome Dick Manitoba, Gilby Clarke, Stevie Salas, Kim Thayil, dUg Pinnick of Kings X and Marcus Durant of Zen Guerilla among others. It was expected the most current iteration of the MC5 was expected to release a album in 2024.  Bob Ezrin was producing with a guitar heavy sound with guest spots from Tom Morello, Slash and Vernon Reid and Brad Brooks as the band’s singer. If the MC5 album doesn’t come out then Kramer’s final epitaph might be Alice Cooper’s 2021 album Detroit Stories - a themed album that pays tribute to their home town. Cooper covers Sister Anne, the MC5 song and Bob Seger. Guests include Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner and the surviving members of the Alice Cooper Group. Kramer can be found on 10 of the album’s 15 tracks- stepping away for the songs that feature Cooper’s famous 1970s band