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    Dennis Thompson, Drummer and Last Remaining Member of MC5, Dies at 75

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    The musician brought his hard-hitting style to the band, which helped lay the foundation of American punk rock and is set to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.Dennis Thompson, the drummer whose thunderous, hard-hitting style powered the proto-punk sound of the loud, outspoken and highly influential Detroit rock band MC5, died on Thursday in Taylor, Mich. He was 75.He died in a rehabilitation facility while recovering from a recent heart attack, his son, Chris McNulty, said.Mr. Thompson was the last surviving member of MC5, a band that was politically outspoken and aligned with the countercultural left, supporting the anti-Vietnam War movement and protests against racism. The band will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in October.Musically, MC5 was known as one of the forefathers of punk rock, starting with the breakout 1969 live album, “Kick Out the Jams.” The group’s song of the same name was its best-known, covered by Henry Rollins and Bad Brains, The Presidents of the United States of America and Rage Against the Machine.When Mr. Thompson joined MC5, short for Motor City Five, in 1966 at 17 years old, his intense playing style earned him his nickname “Machine Gun” from his bandmates for how ferociously he played the drums. He played that way because the group could not afford to connect a microphone to his drums in its early days.“The amps were turned up to 10, so he basically just had to hit the drums as hard as he possibly could to be heard,” Mr. McNulty said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Sinclair, 82, Dies; Counterculture Activist Who Led a ‘Guitar Army’

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      His imprisonment for a minor marijuana offense became a cause célèbre. He was released after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about him at a protest rally.John Sinclair, a counterculture activist whose nearly 10-year prison sentence for sharing joints with an undercover police officer was cut short after John Lennon and Yoko Ono sang about his plight at a protest rally, died on Tuesday in Detroit. He was 82.His publicist, Matt Lee, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was congestive heart failure.As the leader of the White Panther Party in the late 1960s, Mr. Sinclair spoke of assembling a “guitar army” to wage “total assault” on racists, capitalism and the criminalization of marijuana. “We are a whole new people with a whole new vision of the world,” he wrote in his book “Guitar Army” (1972), “a vision which is diametrically opposed to the blind greed and control which have driven our immediate predecessors in Euro-Amerika to try to gobble up the whole planet and turn it into one big supermarket.”He also managed the incendiary Detroit rock band the MC5. Their lyrics — “I’m sick and tired of paying these dues/And I’m finally getting hip to the American ruse” — were a kind of ballad for the cause.Mr. Sinclair, right, with members of the MC5, the rock group he managed, and friends in 1967.Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs, Archive, via Getty ImagesMr. Sinclair’s command of this “raggedy horde of holy barbarians,” as he described them in his book, was upended in 1969 when Judge Robert J. Colombo of Detroit Recorder’s Court sentenced him to nine and a half to 10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover police officer.During the hearing, Mr. Sinclair argued that he had been framed.“Everyone who is taking part in this is guilty of violating the United States Constitution and violating my rights and everyone else that’s concerned,” he said. He added, “There is nothing just about this, there is nothing just about these courts, nothing just about these vultures over here.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wayne Kramer, Influential MC5 Guitarist, Dies at 75

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      Mr. Kramer was one half of the twin-guitar attack that drove the Detroit band’s incendiary live performances, helping to set the stage for punk rock.Wayne Kramer, whose explosive guitar playing with the influential Detroit band the MC5 in the late 1960s and early 1970s helped to set the template for punk rock, died on Friday. He was 75.The death was confirmed in a post on his official Instagram account, which said the cause was pancreatic cancer. It did not say where he died.The MC5 (short for Motor City Five) formed in Lincoln Park, Mich., in 1965.Mr. Kramer and Fred (Sonic) Smith teamed to provide the twin-guitar attack that was at the heart of the band’s sound, and the centerpiece of its notoriously loud and frenetic live performances.In ranking Mr. Kramer and Mr. Smith, together, at No. 225 last year on its list of the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, Rolling Stone said the two “worked together like the pistons of a powerful engine” to “kick their band’s legendarily high-energy jams deep into space while simultaneously keeping one foot in the groove.”Mr. Kramer performing with the MC5 in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1969.Leni Sinclair/Michael Ochs Archive, via Getty ImagesThe band, which also featured the vocalist Rob Tyner, the bassist Michael Davis and the drummer Dennis Thompson, splintered in the early 1970s after just two studio albums.Its debut, “Kick Out the Jams,” a live set recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit in 1968, is considered one of the most influential albums of its era, and inspired generations of musicians, including the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and Queens of the Stone Age.Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine said on Instagram on Friday that Mr. Kramer and the MC5 “basically invented punk rock music.”Mr. Kramer was arrested on drug charges in 1975 and was sentenced to four years in prison.In 2009, after he returned to performing and recording as a solo artist, he established Jail Guitar Doors U.S.A., a nonprofit that donates musical instruments to inmates and offers songwriting workshops in prisons, in partnership with his wife, Margaret, and the British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg.The name comes from “Jail Guitar Doors,” a song by the Clash that opens with a line about Mr. Kramer’s struggles with substance abuse and the law: “Let me tell you about Wayne and his deals of cocaine.”“The guitar can be the key that unlocks the cell,” Mr. Kramer told High Times in 2015. “It can be the key that unlocks the prison gate, and it could be the key that unlocks the rest of your life to give you an alternative way to deal with things.”A full obituary will follow. More

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      Dolly Parton, Eminem and A Tribe Called Quest Are Rock Hall Nominees

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      This year’s slate of 17 acts eligible for induction span rap, country, folk, pop and more.Dolly Parton, Eminem, A Tribe Called Quest and Beck are among the first-time nominees on the ballot for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, the organization behind the museum and annual ceremony announced on Wednesday.Spanning rap, country, folk, pop and more, the list of 17 potential inductees includes seven acts appearing for the first time — Duran Duran, Lionel Richie and Carly Simon also among them — plus 10 repeat nominees who have not yet been voted in: Pat Benatar, Kate Bush, Devo, Eurythmics, Judas Priest, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine and Dionne Warwick.More than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals will now vote to narrow the field, with a slate of inductees — typically between five and seven — to be announced in May. Artists become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording.Voters for the Rock Hall are asked to consider an act’s music influence and the “length and depth” of its career, in addition to “innovation and superiority in style and technique.” But the hall’s exact criteria and genre preferences have seemed to expand in recent years, in part in response to frequent criticisms regarding its treatment of female and Black musicians. In 2019, a look at the organization’s 888 inductees up to then found that just 7.7 percent were women.Among the recent boundary-pushers to be elected are Jay-Z, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, the Notorious B.I.G. and Janet Jackson.In a statement, John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, called the latest nominees “a diverse group of incredible artists, each who has had a profound impact on the sound of youth culture.”But in a universe of snubs, surprises and also-rans, there is a cottage industry of music obsessives dedicated to parsing who is recognized when — and who continues to be overlooked.A Tribe Called Quest, the influential hip-hop group from Queens, has been eligible for nearly a decade, but just received its first nomination, while the white rapper Eminem, who is among the genre’s best-selling artists of all time, made the ballot in his first year of eligibility. Simon, the 1970s folk singer known for hits like “You’re So Vain” and “You Belong to Me,” is a first-time nominee more than a quarter-century after she qualified.Back from last year’s ballot are the Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, the rap-rock group Rage Against the Machine, the new wave band Devo, the early punk act New York Dolls, the experimental pop singer Kate Bush and the best-selling vocalist Dionne Warwick. Returning after some time off the ballot: Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, Judas Priest and MC5, now on its sixth nomination.This year’s induction ceremony is planned for the fall, with details about the date and venue to be announced at a later date, the hall said. More