Mc5

While lacking the monumental impact of Kick Out the Jams, the MC5's second album is in many regards their best and most influential, its lean, edgy sound anticipating the emergence of both the punk and power pop movements to follow later in the decade. Bookended by a pair of telling covers - Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and Chuck Berry's "Back in the U.S.A." - the disc is as much a look back at rock & roll's origins as it is a push forward into the music's future; given the Five's vaunted revolutionary leanings, for instance, it's both surprising and refreshing to discover the record's emotional centerpiece is a doo wop-inspired ballad, "Let Me Try," that's the most lovely and gentle song in their catalog. The recurring theme which drives Back in the USA is adolescence, its reminiscences alternately fond and embittered - while cuts like "Tonight," "Teenage Lust," "High School," and "Shakin' Street" celebrate youth in all its rebellious glory…

Alongside their Detroit-area brethren the Stooges, MC5 essentially laid the foundations for the emergence of punk; deafeningly loud and uncompromisingly intense.
In 1969 they signed to Atlantic, where producer Jon Landau was installed to helm their second album, 1970's 'Back in the U.S.A.'; with their manager, political activist Sinclair out of the picture, jailed for possession of marijuana, the music's political stance vanished as well, with a newly stripped-down, razor-sharp sound replacing the feedback-driven fury of before. Jason Ankeny AMG