Not all rock-nostalgia tours are created equal. Some of them are actually good.
Take, for example, Kick Out the Jams: The 50th Anniversary Tour headed by the MC5’s Wayne Kramer and a band of younger all-stars (coming to the Showbox on Tuesday, October 16). The rambunctious guitarist and his crack pickup squad are resurrecting one of the most influential debut albums of all time, Kick Out the Jams, a Molotov cocktail of Detroit working-class fury and musical detonations that not only blew out John Lee Hooker and Sun Ra songs, it foreshadowed the blitzkrieg maneuvers of metal and punk. These members of John Sinclair’s anti-racist White Panther party not only talked a tough revolution game, they also soundtracked it. (Risking bodily harm and arrest, the MC5 were the only band to perform at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.) Many young rockers still emulate their power moves today.
