Wayne Kramer, RIP

Big loss here. MC5 is one of the seminal bands of rock and roll history. Kramer was a great guitarist. Kramer and the rest of the band had great politics too. They did however run up against the reality that junkies are politically useless, so he lost many years to addiction and then prison. My favorite Kramer story though is that when was in prison in Lexington for his drug use and sales, there was another musician in there–Red Rodney, the old Charlie Parker sideman who became famous for being the white man in the story needed to get funding for Eastwood’s Bird biopic made. Rodney helped Kramer get his shit together, taught him a ton about music, and they both had much better post-addiction careers than one might have thought at the time. Kramer kept his excellent politics up too, showing up at the rallies in Wisconsin against Scott Walker in 2011 and then playing at Bernie rallies in 2016, which probably will lead to half the commenters saying they hated MC5 even though if he had supported Hillary they would be the greatest band ever.