10 Perfect Garage Rock Albums With No Bad Songs
8. Kick Out The Jams - MC5 (1969)
The debut release from Detroit band MC5 was the seminal album for just about every high octane rock band that came after. Recorded live at the historic venue, the Grande Ballroom, it encapsulated the raw power of punk rock before it had a name.
If garage rock is all about capturing unfiltered musical energy, then this album did it best. Listening to this record 50 years on will make you mourn the fact you will never see this group live. As staunch leftists, the band would often include politically charged monologues at their live shows. The record opens with lead singer, Rob Tyner, delivering a call to arms for political change. This kind of rhetoric was all that was needed to get a '60s audience fired up before they were bombarded with the sound of the anti-establishment.
The message was one of revolution, delivered in back-to-back three-minute explosive rock songs. Fred "Sonic" Smith and Wayne Kramer created a wall of fuzzed out sound with their guitars and Rob Tyner's impassioned vocals are enough to get you marching in the street. This album captures the band at their very best, this was proto-punk, garage, and hard rock, all rolled into a dangerously exciting sound.