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I just started smoking joints and taking acid and peyote and it lead me into something completely different from where I started from. Between that and the black music, I was in a different world. And I've been there ever since, and I ain't leaving! -John Sinclair |
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Photo: MC5
35 years later, both Sinclair and Kramer are appalled at how little has changed. "We're really going backwards," says Sinclair. "It's mind-boggling how the lessons of Vietnam have been absolutely, totally ignored" adds Kramer. "He's [President Bush] trying to find a place in history and the place the he wants so badly he can't have, which is to be remembered as a great leader. He'll be remembered as the great chump, the guy who almost destroyed the country."
Wayne Kramer |
Like every generation, the younger people look to past leaders for guidance and answers. So why are we repeating history? "Young people today really seem to be more interested in the mall and a Blackberry and text messaging their friends," says Kramer. "World events, even tragic, immoral wars don't seem to really affect them. Where is the outrage?"
"They have to turn off their TV sets for a while and try to feel something," adds Sinclair. "They have to develop a heart because they've got everything else. They can communicate. They have the World Wide Web. We didn't have anything as great as that. We used to have to print things on a mimeograph machine and hand them out on the street. It's the passion that's missing. They're surrounded by this horrible [mainstream/radio] music and horrible movies and TV and the news and all that shit. It's just created to cocoon people inside."
Wayne Kramer |
The advancement of technology is this generation's double-edged sword. We communicate on a level never imagined 35 years ago, yet this same ability to ingest material at such a fast pace leaves the door open to filling our brains with misinformation, propaganda and mind-numbing hours of white noise. Can we leverage technology to push us forward, or will it simply continue to dumb us down and "cocoon" us as Sinclair says?
The answer is unclear but in the meantime Sinclair and Kramer aren't going quietly into the night. They still perform together regularly; and on the day I spoke with them, Sinclair read his poetry with Kramer supporting him. Although Sinclair says "rock & roll is not going to be a weapon of culture. I couldn't have been more wrong on that," he still uses music to open minds. Since his release from prison, Sinclair has gone on to become the founder and director of the Detroit Free Jazz Center, a professor of popular music history at Wayne State, worked as the editor for the Detroit Sun newspaper, managed bands, produced concerts and is a revered freelance journalist, poet and bandleader. In 1991, Sinclair moved to New Orleans and became a disc jockey at WWOZ radio, where he was voted the city's most popular DJ five years in a row (1999-2003) by OffBeat magazine's readers' poll. Following a visit to Amsterdam as High Priest of the Cannabis Cup, Sinclair moved to the Netherlands in 2003 and created his influential internet program, "The John Sinclair Radio Show," which is part of RadioFreeAmsterdam.
Sinclair & Kramer |
Of his move to the Netherlands, Sinclair reflects, "If we woulda kept at it some things would be different [in the U.S.]. Like in Holland where I live half the year, people like us kept on and engaged themselves with the political process in a real way, and not just having demonstrations but getting people to vote for a different way. They installed many of our ideas in the fabric of everyday life, like taking care of people. You don't see homeless people in Amsterdam too much."
Following the '60s and '70s, Kramer faced his own struggles. "There was certainly a high point in being in the MC5 and a great sense of possibilities and camaraderie and mutual respect of being part of a community," he says. "There were great low points when all that was gone and the whole downward arc where I ended up an alcoholic, drug addict and convict."
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