I Can Only Give You Everything

AMG Review of I Can Only Give You Everything

Mark Deming
All Music Guide

This collection of MC5 material seems to have been thrown together without much rhyme or reason -- there are both live and studio recordings, and tracks from their three official studio albums along with outtakes and single tracks; familiar numbers sit alongside obscurities, and the quality of the fidelity is all over the place. That said, I Can Only Give You Everything is at least a good listen, offering 52 minutes of great music from one of the most important American bands of the '60s. Beginning with two of the best tunes from the MC5's underrated swan song High Time, "Skunk" and "Sister Ann," this disc isn't afraid of the band's most potent ock moves or their more esoteric experiments (with "Train Music" from the little-seen movie Gold heading up the latter category), and features a few welcome rarities -- an acoustic version of "Shakin' Street" that previously surfaced on the cassette Babes in Arms, and a rollicking alternate take of Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA." The songs are good, the sequence makes sense, and the overview of the MC5's many facets is thankfully coherent. As a "Greatest Hits" set or a career overview, I Can Only Give You Everything doesn't hold a candle to Rhino's The Big Bang: The Best of the MC5, and it lacks the charm of Babes in Arms, but if you borrowed a friend's car and this disc was in the stereo, you wouldn't complain for a moment.