MC5 “High Time” released 50 years ago today, July 6th, 1971. High Time was MC5′s second and last studio LP. Though not as successful or iconic as their live Kick Out the Jams (1969) or the studio Back in the USA (1970), High Time is still a gritty, rocking album that helped influence the rest of the 70′s and 80′s hard rock/punk/metal scenes (and that even includes a power ballad, “Miss X” – not my favorite track, sorry Brother Wayne Kramer). My top picks are “Sister Anne” (that ends with a Salvation Army band), the manic “Gotta Keep Movin,’” funky “Future/Now,” the anthemic call-to-action “Over and Over” and the album closer “Skunk (Sonicly Speaking)” which pretty much throws every rock sound and rhythm at the wall and makes it somehow stick (there’s like a hundred people playing percussion that track, including fellow Detroiter Bob Seger).