It's important to understand that, once upon a time, hippies were cool. That time was the mid- to late 60s. By the 70s that was no longer true as they and their music and culture had largely been absorbed by the mainstream and was no longer a threat. Sort of like punk by the early 90s or rap by the late 90s.

Being anti-hippy was important to early (mid 70s) punk because they had to define themselves partly by what they were not. But, yes, their roots did go back to the hippy era (MC5 and Stooges, but also bands like the Doors[!] to an extent) and a significant portion of the punk movement took on the peacenik side of hippydom by the early 80s (think Crass, Subhumans, other British bands but also MDC and Dead Kennedys). Politics became huge in punk throughout the 80s, and it was mostly of the same uber-left stripe borne out of the hippy antiwar movement.

Being anti-hippy for the sake of being anti-hippy is silly.

Also, being a hippie didn't mean that you were anti-patriarchy/wussy men.

Most of those anti-establishment heads were macho assholes.

Hippies don't really start to suck until the mid-70s, when they have lost the things that defined their movement (Vietnam, Free Love, Drugs) and they are eclipsed by the women's movement, the disco lifestyle, and gays.

That said, the influence that those bands had on the sounds to come after is amazing when you consider that they weren't that popular at the time. Seriously.

punks is hippies

It's too simplistic to call MC5 either hippies or proto-punks. They also foreshadowed heavy metal and they covered songs by free jazzers like Sun Ra and bluesmen like John Lee Hooker. But your criticisms about the 33 1/3 author are on point.

Oh yeah: hippies were more revolutionary than punks and they made better, more enduring music.

Let the flaming begin...

Both arguments (MC5 = punks, MC5 = hippies) are foolish because they both revolve around labels which are inherently fuzzy and highly subjective.

Music fans are even worse than librarians when it comes to over-categorization. Who cares if a band is Postrock-college-noisecore or Indie-mathrock-bluegrass? It's all a lot of hipster posturing.

If you want to spread the music, great--but no one particularly cares what you changed the "Genre" field to when you ripped the CD into iTunes.

Categorizing something as "hipster posturing" is inherently fuzzy and highly subjective.

I always thought MC5 were in that least categorizable category (as in who gives a fuck) of garage rock band, and yes they loved to smoke dope - so I guess that makes them hippies. But they were Detroit hippies. Don't pretend you know what that means - just go read about it somewhere...

Sure, "hipster posturing" is just as fuzzy and subjective as "hippies," but it's openly just my perspective. It's not like I said:
Josh Feit = hipster poseur

My issue is with those types of categorical statements that have the pretense of being objective truths rather than personal opinions. Thankfully, there's no International Council on Musical Genres and Classifications -- but even if there were, its word wouldn't be final. Same goes for Josh.

Um, the Stooges were the anti-hippies.

MC5 = hippies HELL YES
MC5 = proto-punks HELL YES
MC5 = REVOLUTION? indeed. but probably only as far as John Sinclair could be in control. deep down they only ever wanted to be a "good band." not targets for the honkeys sitting on a lotta money hidden behind a white man's bitchin' afro!

right, so hippies made better music than punks? that's relative (tho' generally I agree...FUGS!?!), and I agree punks is hippies. As for Sun Ra plus blues being a mark of genius, well the Stones and everyone else played John Lee Hooker too. Boom Boom was a beat standard issue cover. I'd reckon the MC5 lucked out to be in the know about Sun Ra and then made crazy noise to be stoned by. But then Eight Miles High was based on John Coltrane's playing, and i'd rather listen to the Byrds OR Tomorrow's version of 8MH than the MC5's awful Sun Ra KOtJ freakout. Really, lots of hippie/sike bands experimented with noise...Floyd, Tomorrow, early Grateful Dead, fucking QUICKSILVER (!) and Soft Machine...etc. And some other not so garage bands would also come close to metal...Iron Butterfly...um, Les Fleur Des Lys for fuck sake? Live, most of those late '60s bands prolly were super heavy, but with better fills (Deep Purple) and no mesa boogie heads, but generally on period rock/sike LP you hear a sanitized recording, the MC5s KOtJ just happened to slip out all wide open. Thank fucking god!

um, and ben - 'cause I'm a dick (or your final word on categorical statements)...KOtJ is not an itunes tune, as it is a live record w/no stops between the songs, when it's ituned there are inserted "stops" or a moment of silence between songs where there should be segues. so it's a no go for itunes, then therefore it can not be "genred", least not in itunes. so don't try to put it in itunes, it'll make you mad. and I DO care if a band Postrock-college-noisecore or Indie-mathrock-bluegrass. it's my $$ so when it comes to buying records or CDs I wanna know what the hell I'm buying, not that I'd be caught buying any contemporary indie bullshit. lastly as I know Josh Feit, he is the last person I'd call a hippie poser, but nice try.

oh yeah, and FUCK MDC! DAVE is an asshole. bad example.

MC5 were (aural) precursors to the initial punk phenomenon in that they were fast, loud, and brash, much like many of the bands that would subsequently be deemed "punk" shortly after the Michigan band’s demise. The group were seen as “punk” in a philosophic sense in that they were loosely, and perhaps wrongly, associated with the failed attempts at social revolution during late 1960s. For similar reasons, among others, many will also peg MC5 as hippie—they were the only act to play the 1968 Democratic National Convention, delivering an incriminatingly hippie-esque eight-hour set, only to exit the stage when the mainly white, middle-class protesters (most of whom could also be labeled as hippie) finally became enough of a collective, actionable nuisance to goad the Chicago Police into Excessive Force Mode. The hippie stigma, as previously noted by "just like an aborigine," was also largely the result of manager John Sinclair's efforts to promote the band in accord with his laughable, transparently phony “utopian” rhetoric, which is often incorrectly described as “socially progressive.” Ultimately, though, MC5 were little more than an exuberant, impressionable rock band with a handful of noteworthy cuts, a whole lot of amplification, a virtually non-existent political or sociological agenda, and an outspoken manager pushing separate, potentially conflicting motives—which, for the record, is sometimes about as good as a band can get in my book.
Most of the pivotal terms recurrent throughout this thread (my post included), though, are decidedly subjective, and therefore hindering the potential for productive discussion unless all parties agree to common definitions, or at least learn to articulate themselves more clearly.

Fuck! Why am I such a tedious nerd? I’ll still admit to believing that linguistics is far more interesting conversation material than social commentary via popular music. But that’s just, like, my opinion.

MC5 was about rebellion against society. Many's the time in the late 1970s and early 1980s I'd listen in a Bay City or Flint bar to some autoworker (or former autoworker) in his late 20s or early 30s yammering on about MC5 on a tape deck and a couple 40s being drunk during lunchtime in the parking lot of an auto plant.

The Stooges, at least the first incarnation of them, were about rebellion against the then-perceived limits of how far you could take music as an emotional experience.

The rest is just the personal lives of the band members and how we as listeners interpreted their respective sounds.

My two bits...

The MC5 could also call honkies "honkies" with a complete lack of irony, and did so. They were awesome. I'd vote them president of this goddamn fucked up country if I could.