A (9:49)

50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy See terms a year from today. What would your dream private practice look like? Would you spend less time chasing claims or only working with clients who value your skill set? What if you had more time for yourself? ALMA empowers you to confidently accept insurance backed by an all in one EHR that simplifies scheduling, documentation and day to day practice operations. Your dream practice is closer than you think. Learn more about alma@helloalma.com get started. I'm done with subscriptions, streaming, fitness, razors, vitamins. I've got subscriptions for everything in my life. They lock you in and half the time I can't figure out how to unsubscribe. That's why I'm so excited about the new Blue Apron. Now you can get delicious meals delivered with no subscription needed, including new pre made options. Keep the flavor, ditch the subscription. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more.

B (11:02)

Our program is Cultural Revolution through a total assault on the culture which makes us use every tool, every energy and any media we can get our collective hands on. We take our program with us everywhere we go and use any means necessary to expose people to it. Our culture, our art, music, newspapers, books, posters, our clothing, our homes, the way we walk and talk, the way our hair grows, the way we smoke dope and fuck and eat and sleep. It's all one message. And the message message is freedom. So went the opening paragraph of the White Panther Party's manifesto as written by MC5 manager John Sinclair. It went on. Rock and roll music is the spearhead of our attack because it is so effective and so much fun. We have developed organic high energy guerrilla bands who are infiltrating the popular culture and destroying millions of minds in the process. With our music and our economic genius, we plunder the unsuspecting straight world for money and the means to carry out our program and revolutionize its children at the same time. And with our entrance into the straight media. We have demonstrated to the honkies that anything they do to fuck with us will be exposed to their children. We don't need to get rid of all the honkies. You just rob them of their replacements and let them breed, atrophy and die out. All of this concluded with we're bad then. The White Panther manifesto listed off its 10 point program one full endorsement in support of the Black Panthers 10 point program because John Sinclair started the White Panther Party partly in response to a call from Black Panther co founder Huey Newton who was quoted saying that if white people wanted to support the Black Panthers, they could do so by becoming anti racist and starting a White Panther Party. John Sinclair heard Huey Nicholson Newton loud and clear. The second point of his 10 point White Panther program stated total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets. This is where Wayne Kramer and his MC5 came into play. They brought all the rock and roll, a little bit of the dope and of course some of the fucking in the streets. The brutality. The Belle Isle riot left a lasting mark on Wayne and his bandmates. Chuck Berry riffs and teenage lust were no longer enough, no matter how much amphetamine they threw at them. There was indeed a need for revolution. The cops had made that clear. John Sinclair articulated it. And the MC5 were now soldiers in a much bigger war. A war with the establishment, with the pigs, with parents, the government, with any and all institutions with John Sinclair as their leader. Points 3 through 10 of Sinclair's 10 point White Panther Party manifesto hardly mattered because the MC5 was quite literally the perfect manifestation of the second point. Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets. This is exactly what the MC5 were. Total assault. It's hard, no, it's near impossible to explain. Explain the raw power of the MC5. There had been nothing like them before. Not in Detroit, not anywhere. They were punk before punk. They were a high watt locomotive, doped up on speed and revolution and too young to care and too naive to know any better. John Sinclair's politics infused a sense of purpose into the MC5. It gave them a point of view. Every major city in America at the time had its version of a Pre John Sinclair MC5, which is to say a great little rock and roll band that took Chuck Berry' side of the garage and was on the verge of becoming something original that perhaps didn't sound exactly like a Beatles or Stones ripoff. Seattle had The Sonics, Boston had the Remains, New Jersey had the Rascals. Hell, even Idaho had Paul Revere and the fucking Raiders. And Detroit had the MC5. But politics would soon separate the MC5 from their contemporaries. This is more than just a different lyrical point of view. The political message, the constant call for revolution in radical politics was the holy spirit coursing through the bands and their fans veins. It fused them. They lived and breathed rock n roll, dope and fucking in the streets. MC5 concerts were part Protopunk, VFW Hall Madness, part Sunday testimonial and part political rally. The energy, the excitement, the maximum. Sex, drugs and rock and roll was all too much for words. To witness the band live was to take part in a teenage religious experience. White kids from Detroit's working class packed the band's shows, they mobbed the stage, they locked the energy of the band into something that resembled a spiritual awakening. They shook, they shimmied, they testified, they drank Budweiser old style, whatever was wet. They smoked, they snorted, whatever was available and they armed themselves. Guns, knives, etc. They had sex anywhere, everywhere. With the band, with each other, backstage, in cars, in the street. The kids were pretty far from all right. Rock and roll, dope and in the streets for sure. Brothers and sisters, I want to hear a little revolution. Brothers and sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are part of the problem or part of the solution. You must choose brothers. You must choose brothers. It's time to test testify. And I want to know are you ready to testify? Are you ready? I give you a testimonial. The MC5. John Sinclair couldn't have said it better himself. The urgency in those words that served in part as the band's live stage introduction were absolutely necessary. As Sinclair saw it, it was time for a testimony. Who was ready? Which side were you on? There was a larger war that was worth fighting. And outside on the streets of Detroit there was a riot going on. Literally. July 1967. The stuffed shirts on the local news predicted a long hot summer. Boy howdy, were they ever right. Wayne Kramer of the MC5 looked out across the Detroit skyline as the evening sun went down above Grand River Avenue. He saw it. Revolution. Not on a T shirt and not on a handbill. Not spewing from the lips of some hyped up hippie charlatan. He saw revolutions smoking from atop the flames that tore through the four and five story apartment buildings on Grand River Avenue. Detroit had had enough and Detroit was on fire. Destruction was the price Detroit was paying for years of systemic racism and economic hardship foisted upon its black community. Just like Newark, New Jersey, which had recently exploded in urban violence, leaving 23 dead, all but two of them black. Just like Cleveland, Watts and Philadelphia, where rioting was also exploding over urban frustration. It was just as Malcolm X said, the chickens coming home to roost. Smoke covered the sky. Sirens blasted through the evening air. Young black men and women sprinted down the street holding as much merchandise as they could in their hands. Television sets, racks of clothing, cases of booze, food, toilet paper, baby formula. Makeshift signs covered shop windows with hand painted slogans that read Black Power and Soul brother. In a desperate effort to deter the looters, Detroit police officers patrolled the streets with shotguns, viciously beat down any and all rioters and black civilians they encountered with their nightsticks. Try as as they did, the cops could not suppress the rioting. It dragged on for days. Local politicians made their pleas on television. The mayor enacted a curfew, banned the sale of alcohol and firearms. The riot still raged. Community organizers failed to organize a stand down. More looting. Detroit Tigers left fielder Willie Horton drove straight into the riot on 12th Avenue after a game and stood up on the hood of his car, unpleased with the black residents of the neighborhood he'd grown up in to stop the violence. They didn't listen. Michigan Governor George Romney declared the event a state of insurrection and pleaded with President Lyndon B. Johnson for federal assistance to comply with the Federal Insurrection Act. Romney, a Republican, was a potential presidential challenger of Johnson's in the upcoming 68 election. Romney, Michigan and the people of Detroit, or so went the Democrat LBJ's thinking. The president did nothing. The insurrection raged on and more people died. Panic in the streets, widespread looting. Black owned establishments suffered the worst of it. 1,800 arrests. Over 2,500 guns were stolen from local shops. 483 fires. Firefighters who attempted to quell the flames were shot at. President Johnson finally gave in to his political opponent, Governor George Romney, and at 1:30am on July 25, sent in the National Guard to crack skulls. In the end, 7,000 Detroiters were arrested. 43 were dead. Police, fearful of rioting, snipers on rooftops, went on a rampage during the insurrection. They discarded legal police tactics and tore a by any means necessary page out of the Black Panthers playbook. Illegal searches and police brutality became the order of the day. Wayne Kramer and his bandmates in the MC5 were not immune to the abuse and oppression from local law enforcement. 8,000 National Guard troops, nearly 5,000 paratroopers. U.S. army tanks rolled down Detroit streets flanked by local police. To Wayne and his bandmates, it was an unimaginable scene. The power and reach of local, state and federal authorities was downright chilling. John Sinclair's rented home on Warren Avenue sat just down the block from Wayne Kramer's. On the roof of the home, John placed a large sign that read, burn baby, burn. The police raided his home without a warrant, guns drawn. Sinclair refused to back down. He held his newborn baby up in front of him in the faces of the cops with their giant shotguns. He dared them to shoot. Either shoot me or get the out of my house. The cops backed down. It was up, all of it, the entire scene. But it was a win. Wayne Kramer knew it then. The revolution was on. Days later, after the rioting had subsided, Wayne Kramer slept quietly in his apartment just down the street from John Sinclair's place. He awoke to the sound of his German shepherd whimpering in pain on the receiving end of a Michigan State Police beating. Stadies were flooding his home now with guns drawn, ripping long hairs out of their slumber by their scalps, rousting them awake, naked and confused and demanding to know where the guns were. The cops wanted to bust some snipers. Except Wayne and his roommate didn't have any guns. The cops had confused a telescope in an upstairs window for a shotgun. It didn't matter. Wayne and his roommates were arrested anyway, and they were let out of his house in handcuffs. What Wayne Kramer saw blew his mind. There in his front yard, the U.S. army tank with its cannon pointed straight at him. Wayne Kramer, John Sinclair, the MC5 were officially at war. We'll be right back after this.

A (22:33)

Word, word, word.

B (22:37)

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A (23:03)

I am your host, Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven.

B (23:13)

Because he's so evil, I do think he is misunderstood.

A (23:16)

You see, everyone face consequences. It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick. Yeah, there's always a twist in this show. It's nothing you would expect. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast now streaming and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

B (23:34)

Kraft Mac and Cheese is better than 90s hip hop. We'll remind you of your childhood without making you feel incredibly old. Kraft Mac and Cheese. Best thing ever. The arrest didn't stick. A couple nights in the local cooler, Wayne and his roommates were released without being charged. Charged for a crime that is. In another way, Wayne had been completely charged. He took the shock and awe of government power and authoritative overreach and used it to power him creatively. He and his bandmates in the MC5 in those early days, they took their roles as revolutionaries seriously. As a rock and roll band and political functionaries of John Sinclair's movement, they were uniquely suited to reach and inspire American youth for the cause toward revolution. This task became a lot easier when the MC5 were signed along with their little rock and roll brothers from Detroit, the Stooges to Electra Records with a record deal. The MC5 had money. Money coming in. Money that John Sinclair managed, sort of with much of it. Funding is Translove Energy and Anarcho Syndicate Commune Boarding House, MC5 production team. In that order. Kind of, I guess. I'm not really sure. But the band in mind, that's the point. They wanted John Sinclair to manage him. They were on the road, spreading their message, performing alongside bands like the Velvet Underground and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, blowing Eric Clapton's Cream off the stage, refusing Janis Joplin's drunken advances backstage. How had it come to this? Wayne Kramer wondered. Months ago they were being harassed by police and thrown in jail. Now they were celebrated rock stars on the come up, at the vanguard of 60s culture and politics. So when they were asked to perform at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 25, they of course said yes.

A (25:31)

Yes.

B (25:31)

Bob Dylan and Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe McDonald and his band the Fish were all invited to perform. But no one except the MC5 showed up. There were rumors that the whole scene was going to go bust. Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, leaders of the Yippee movement, countercultural front of the decades, New left specializing in media circuses, had organized a protest outside the convention called the Festival of Life. I used the word word organize loosely. There was barely a stage and zero production. That didn't stop the MC5. There was a show to put on and there were thousands of kids there at the convention who had been promised like minded entertainment. The revolution must continue to turn so at 4pm the MC5 took the stage. Immediately they felt it. An overwhelming sense of tension and violence in the air. From the stage, Wayne Kramer and his bandmates could see them in the crowd. Real Jughead Joe Square types riling the hippies up. Dudes with flat tops and military fatigues, black shoes and white socks. It was plain as day to anyone with eyes and not completely stoned out of their minds. These squares in the crowd were government plants, agent provocateurs placed there by the FBI to create problems, to egg on the hippies, to get the kids to overreact, to take the first swing and justify a government beatdown the likes of which this generation had never seen. Which is exactly what happened. While the MC5 stormed through a manic Detroit powered rock n roll barn burner of a set, the government plants in the crowd cheap shot hippies in the ribs, spit on them, push them around. Little skirmishes broke out. The hippies pushed back. The agents got ugly. Fists started to fly more freely. Up above the stage, a police helicopter flew low, buzzing the band and adding a sonic whirl. That Wayne Kramer welcomed it perfectly augmented the electric torrent. He bent out of his red, white and blue Stratocaster. The helicopter took off, turned and came thrusting back towards the stage, its giant propellers grinding through the Chicago air, sending anything not bolted down on the ground to touch tumbleweed throughout Lincoln Park. It was an intimidation tactic and it worked. The sense of fear on and off stage was very real. Everyone felt the same sense of impending doom. MC5 wrapped their set, hopped into their van and got the hell out of there. In their wake, the fuse they helped ignite would later explode in violence. The 1968 Democratic National Convention would go down, down as one of the most disastrous events in American political history. The protest organized by Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the rest of their political pranksters would result in more rioting and clashes with the police. Skulls were cracked, heads rolled. 668 were arrested. Two more than the devil himself could have managed. A similar number were injured, along with 192 police officers. Hoffman, Rubin and five other organizers who had converged on Chicago were charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with intent to start a riot. They would be tried together as the infamous Chicago 7. The conspiracy charges didn't stick though, because the 7 had barely coordinated anything. They barely even knew each other. Five were convicted on the riot charge, facing five years in prison each and the judge convicted all seven and their attorneys on contempt of court charges. Thanks to the Yippees publicity Stunts which meant even more jail time. Ultimately, it was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cuz in the end, nothing changed. The Democrats nominated Hubert Humphrey. Even his name was square. The revolution hit a wall. Wayne Kramer and the rest of the MC5 made it back safely to Detroit. But their manager, John Sinclair, was eventually arrested and it looked like he'd be going to jail for a long, long time. Revolution was stressful business. More stressful than robbery. The revolution came and went, but Wayne Kramer's heroin addiction didn't seem to be going anywhere. It was 1973, five years removed from the heady days of the MC5's peak. And only a year since they'd broken up. Wayne Kramer was a broke and busted, unreliable junkie musician. He put the revolution down. Breaking and entering was his new hustle. Wayne could tell the owners of the massive house on the outskirts of town weren't home. No cars in the driveway. He and his partner rang the doorbell to be sure. Buckus. So they broke into the garage first, located some tools and used them to pry open the door to the main house. Once inside, the liquor cabinet was the first stop. Big gulps of the brown wet stuff to drown the sinking feeling that being alone in someone else's home usually gave. To Wayne, it was wrong, no matter how he tried to justify it. Deep down, Wayne knew what he was doing was fucked up. He went through the motions trying to locate jewelry, expensive rugs, television sets and hi fi equipment. He let his mind wander back a couple years to a better time. So much had happened since his days in the MC5. It appeared on the COVID of Rolling Stone before their first record, Kick up the Jams, was even released. When it came out, all their dreams of revolution and rock and roll rebellion seemed inevitable. Then Electra Records dropped them over a skirmish with a retailer. Next, John Sinclair got sent to jail over a measly two joints. Sinclair wanted more support from the MC5. More money, more revolution. More, more, more. Wayne and the band offered to help. But what they brought to the table wasn't enough for John Sinclair. Skew skewered the MC5 in the underground press. He said the band wanted to be bigger than the Beatles, but he wanted them to be bigger than Chairman Mao. That stung. But John Sinclair was stressed. He was heading to prison. He had a wife and a young child to take care of from behind cell doors. Then the White Panthers got indicted for the bombing of a CIA office in Detroit. The evidence was questionable and several of the Chicago Sevens attorneys represent ended the White Panthers now, this time, they would score a cleaner victory in presenting their case. The government was caught using warrantless wiretaps to spy on the White and the Black Panthers. The Michigan judge overseeing the trial even sued the federal government to force them to reveal their warrantless surveillance. The Nixon administration appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court before the Panthers, in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, got their ultimate victim. Vindication in the process, the MC5 fell apart. Their records bombed. Their record labels gave up on them. They became known as unreliable drunks, too up to make it to the gig on time. They broke up in 1972. Wayne took up a heroin habit. He no longer hung out with rock stars and revolutionaries. Instead, he spent his days with reprobates and thieves, hustlers, pimps, dealers, anyone who could cook up a scam that would result in him staying high. The revolution was dead, and Wayne Kramer was barely alive. He was busted and like John Sinclair before him, heading to jail. His life as a lowdown B and E man came to an abrupt halt in late 1974 when he was busted for some serious narcotic weight while on probation for a previous bust for possession of stolen goods. The DEA kept his latest arrest out of the news, hoping to gain Wayne's cooperation as an undercover informant. But Wayne decided to face the music for practical reasons. He wanted to move past all this Sunday, and he knew the life expectancy of snitches. So Wayne was sentenced to four years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky, commonly known as the narcotic firm, with its history of housing addicts, including many of them the most famous jazzmen of the 1930s, 40s and 50s. In prison, especially in this prison, Wayne Kramer was able to get his hands on a guitar. Playing music with a clear head and a renewed focus helped him do his time. But when he was released on parole three years later, he was truly rehabilitated through the power and the saving grace of music. After his incarceration, Wayne teamed with the great musician Billy Bragg to expand Bragg's charity organization, Jail Guitar Doors, named after the Clash song that Joe Strummer and Mick Jones wrote in part about Kramer's incarceration. Jail Guitar Doris mission is to help rehabilitate incarcerated individuals through the transformative power of music. Fittingly, Wayne Kramer of the MC5 is its executive director. Post prison, Wayne Kramer kicked his addictions and started a family. Now he leads the Jail Guitars organization in his image and through the example he set by providing guitars and rehabilitative programming for prisoners throughout the United states. Wayne himself has personally led many music lessons and songwriting sessions for the Org, and the program overall has expanded to include artists, mentoring convicts in rap, piano and more, extending its reach into over 140 prisons in jails across the U.S. the revolution may have failed, but jail guitar doors like Wayne Kramer of the MC5 is a success because the only revolution that really matters is personal revolution. You say you want a revolution, you want to save the world. Change yourself, then change your family, then your friends, then your community. Changing the world is impossible. It's juvenile folly, a utopian hippie dream that America is still unfortunately hung up on from the 1960s. Society doesn't change, doesn't matter the era, it'll always be unjust. Politicians don't change. It doesn't matter what party. They will always be corrupt individuals, though they can change revolution from the inside out. Real change the power to change yourself, to break your own cycles of nerves, narcissism and selfishness and make yourself a valuable contributor to society. This is extremely difficult, but change revolution on a personal level is always possible. Sure, it isn't as sexy as rock and roll, dope and fucking in the streets, but Wayne Kramer of the MC5? He proved that personal revolution can deliver one from disgrace. Jake I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the Show Notes page@the disgracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com Membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.