Detroit rock city

A major reason why the MC5 emerged with the furious power it did was because of where they came from.

Detroit was a city of factories and blue-collar workers. The huge black population which had arrived last century to escape the racism of the south had found itself the new urban underclass. And there was the music that came from it - tough blues and Motown soul, the trashy rock of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels.

This is a city which has given music such unfashionable outsiders as Bob Seger's workingman's rock (before he went arena-sized mainstream), the Amboy Dukes which gave Ted Nugent a national stage, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and Was (Not Was). The White Stripes, Von Bondies and Dirtbombs call Detroit home.

Techno pioneers Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson came from the club scene here - and Eminem, another white boy in a black art.

Detroit isn't an easy town and it breeds 'em tough'n'willin'. God, Nugent even hunts and kills his own food with a bow and arrow. Detroit spells different, and did when the MC5 emerged.

Kramer wrote in Mojo when describing the environment in which he grew up: "This was music that only we could play, and only because we were from Detroit, right here in the middle of the nation in a union town, a workingman's town. We were not effete intellectuals or smarty-pants artists like New York. We were not laid-back hippies of San Francisco or the plastic culture of Hollywood.

"This was not Uber-hip, tailored and swinging London. This was Detroit. Grimy, sweaty and industrious.

"With a history of labour struggle and a potent youth culture and anti-war movement, Detroit became the epicentre of radical politics for a generation.

"The future was now, this was the place and we were the people to deliver it."