Wayne Kramer: Jam It.

Wayne Kramer Presents: Beyond Cyberpunk is in stores now.

It would have been perfect if Wayne Kramer had come on the phone and growled, "Hey, kick out the jams, motherfucker". But he didn't. In fact, the legendary punk father didn't do anything revolutionary at all. Even worse he seemed to want to distance himself from his entire glorious past when as joint leader of Detroit's meanest, leanest radical rock force of the '60s, MC5, he scared parents and authorities witless.

Now he's modest and nice.

He bursts out laughing when I offer the observation that 32 years after their immortal Kick Out The Jams album - one of the most demented high octane live rock'n'roll albums ever committed to bloody posterity - history has treated them so well that they are now approaching sainthood. "Too bad they don't pay on sainthood," he says.

"Look, I'm nothing but grateful," he says. "I have a lot of gratitude for the public at large that seem to find some value in what the band did and represented. It doesn't surprise me the way the perception of the band has changed because I knew what it was all about from the beginning. It's always nice to be recognised for your work but I can't live in the past; I can only live today in the day I'm in. And the work I do today has to sustain me not the work I did five days, five years or 25 years ago. I have no regrets and I don't close the door on it but I have to leave the past in the past and live today in today."

Well. we certainly aren't going to have a revolution, again.

"No. We're in a far different time now." He almost sounds wistful. I think. I hope. "I do think a lot of those principles - if you use the word 'principle' as another word for truth - then a lot of those principles were true 500,000 years ago and will be true 500,000 years from now. The principles of freedom, of justice and equality. Those basic ideals are still there: that there could be a better way to do things; that the ideals of compassion and sharing and commitment - those things still exist and you see them expressed in songs by contemporary artists from time to time."

Some of those artists appear on the new compilation Wayne Kramer Presents Beyond Cyberpunk in which the godfather lets his musical taste do the talking and redefines punk:

“I come from an older school where punk was not a term of endearment." Thus, he explains, "Punk, as an attitude, was meant to break out of the status quo - to throw away old and tired ideologies. Now we're going beyond." Or punk music is music that's "extending the frontier, pushing the boundaries of music out".

Punk as we know it - and we're talking US punk first, second and third generations (in order MC5 and the Stooges into Patti Smith and the New York Dolls into the Ramones, Dead Boys, Television) smokes best with some oldsters proving they still have what it takes: Dee Dee Ramone's Bad Little Go-Go-Girl is just brilliant - bop till you drop, friends, as Dee Dee surf's up (think Dick Dale) the Ramones patented sound. Wall Of Voodoo legend Stan Ridgeway offers the beautiful, harp-laced, Raymond Chandleresque pop of Beloved Movie Star. Former Stooge Ron Asheton unleashes a big, all heavy chords and meanness, Dead End Street. Guitarist Chris Spedding, whose played with more people than you probably know and was recently here with Roxy Music, is quaintly old rock on Love On Death Row. Richard Hell is still Richard Hell and the godfather's own Crawling Outta The Jungle is a thoroughly-chilled and nasty piece of electronic blues.

The band that delivers the most though, is the Kramer-produced Mother Superior (aka Rollins Band sans Hank Rollins) whose Black Silk is pure rock and sounds - the Cult without crutches and with attitude. It really is very good and Godfather Wayne agrees. Well he would considering he's working with 'em. Still.

"They are the best. I'm just finishing producing their album now. In fact, I have one more day in the studio tomorrow. They are great singers and songwriters. What Mother Superior does isn't what's happening in the music business, right now. They're not a rap-rock band and they're not cuddly, little, so-called punk rocky guys, and they're certainly not a boy band. They really understand what a song is; really understand structure and chorus and a good lyric. I'm in love with this record we're making. The songs are just killers. Jim Wilson, the lead singer, his voice is just earth-shattering, man. Sometimes, he reminds of me of Curtis Mayfield. He can sing in that smooth, sexy, falsetto. Kills me. Kills me."