GITAAARGH ARMY !

The MC5 along with the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop have all been described as ’pronto punks’. It was only the MC5 that had a political agenda to go with their rock’n’roll posturing, thanks to their manager John Sinclair, who sought freedom for the youth of Amerika by the means of A TOTAL ASSAULT ON THE CULTURE, rock’n’roll was the weapon and the ‘guitar army’ was the kids struggling to survive and grow in the Amerikan Death Culture of the late 1960’s, this wasn’t flower power, this was DOPE GUNS AND FUCKING IN THE STREET. Sinclair’s White Panther Party rallied thousands of kids against the established order with their 10 Point Program that as it’s basic premise demanded power to all people. The Amerikan state saw this as such a threat that Sinclair was jailed for 10 years in 1969 for possessing two joints and the MC5’s gigs were regularly attended by the police and secret services, to check out that the band didn’t “Kick Out The Jams Mutha Fuckers” and to show who really had all the power, bad drugs soon crept onto the scene and ideals were sold out by the lure of record contracts and the commercialisation of the culture. The rest as they say is history. When Guitar Army was published 35 years ago Amerikan death culture was in it’s teenage years. It has now grown up and we are living in it, and with the total absorption of alternative cultures it is hard for anything truly revolutionary making it into the masses consciousness, where ‘freak culture’ and revolution can be bought in high street shops, but all is not lost because the lessons from Vietnam have not been learned and the Amerikan Death Culture is meeting more resistance as it tries for total domination. The internet has enabled Point 5 of The White Panthers Party program to be achieved “Free access to the information media - free technology from the greed creeps!” Guitar Army is John Sinclair’s account of Rock and Revolution and the search for a better society, a manifesto for social change that is still a relevant read today. The recent re-print comes with a free CD that you can get here, it includes music from the MC5, Rationals, The Up and recordings of White Panther Party meetings, and more. If you wanna read the book go to yer local Library and ask ‘em to get a copy for you, or order it from a bookshop but just remember Big Brutha may be watching.