Check Out Benny & the Jets in Print & on the Airwaves 
 

Benny and the Jets Band, the same band that recorded 3 LPs in the 70s, is featured in a full color picture in the October issue of Orlies Lowriding Hot Rod Magazine, available in book stores nationally - check it out!! The band's web site, www.fast.to/BennyJets, was recently awarded thee prestigious Mnet Award, for out standing web site! You can hear Benny and the Jets perform live November 24th on the Brickhouse radio show, with host JT the Brick, on the Sports Fan Radio Network, heard in 130 cities, including WEEI in Boston, WDFN in Detroit, KTCT in San Francisco, and WQAM in Miami. Be sure to tune in. 

Benny and The Jets continue to make Detroit rock with songs like "Dumb Girls", "Last Kiss", "Little Red Riding Hood" and many 50's and 60's rock and roll tunes at clubs around Detroit. 

With the release of there newest album, "III" they now move to new public, THE WORLD. This album is moving up the charts in Europe and Asia and the tune "Dumb Girls" has made radio stations nation wide.

On the local Detroit sceen the   Sunday Night shows at "Bucks" on Warren Road near Telegraph include his infamous sexual games contest and the occational wet "T" contest. 

Equipt with his trade mark "Budwizer" custom guitar he rocks till the wee hours

By: Ivan Helfman

Once upon a time Benny and the Jets, were content to be a three piece biker band playing hard-driving rock at western Wayne County bars. Then two DJ’s, Wild Bill and Bruce Shine of the Sports Fan News Network, started spinning the groups new song "Dumb Girls" on their national sports talk show, and group leader Benny Speer is starting to think big. "We should be on Howard Stern," said Benny, a tall man with a Rip Van Winkle beard who wears his graying hair in a long braid, "We have a little spark that the right promoter could fan into a flame." 

Originally, Benny, an Inkster father of three girls, described the tune as a "song that Beavis and Butt-head would really love ." With lyrics like: "They Really, really, really like dumb girls. They like them simple, they like them sexy, they like them dumb," it’s certainly in the Beavis and Butt-head league. But to Benny’s surprise, many women love the song. " women are turned on by this song," he said. "when we played it at bars, women came up to us and asked us if they could be in the video for the song. 

The female response was so good that we recorded it." According to Benny, the song is driving women to call the wild Bill And Bruce Shine show and request it.. "their number of girls listening has jumped way up because of Dumb Girls," Benny said. The song has become popular that the two jocks are running a contest to chose the dumbest girl. So far Kelly Bundy, Lisa Marie Presley, and Traci Lords are gathering the most votes, 

With former US Surgeon General Jocylin Elders lagging far behind them. But the problem is, Benny can’t find a major label to put the record out. Right now it’s on Ghostown Records, an independent Port Huron label without a distribution system. Now that we have national air play, nobody knows what to do," said Benny. "It’s our fault. We were unprepared." 

Benny was born in Ann Arbor, a block away from rocker Bob Seger, but grew up in rural Plymouth Township in the 1950’s and 1960’s. "I started playing guitar in the third grade," he said . In junior high, he formed a band with Chri Campbell, currently Seger’s base player. In the 1970’s, Benny and the Jets was formed and began playing up-tempo oldies. "We slicked back are hair and wore leather motorcycle jackets," he said "our first gig was opening for Chubby Checker at the Stork Club, a famous club located outside of Toronto. One of the first song to get radio play was ‘Christmas Twist,’ a take off on Chubby’s Twist.’" 

The music he promoted was raw and revolutionary in every sense of the word.Unlike the hip and trendy Seattle scene today, the Detroit bands back then were not prepackaged and slick- marketed impersonations of one another..the MC5 with their gritty urban warfare mentality, the UP with bayonets on their guitars , Iggy Pop and the Stooges and the many others all had there special character and were spontaneous high-energy musical mind mutations. Motown is the most celebrated genre of Detroit music, but equally influential to the world of pop music were the rock n roll bands that made Detroit the center of the rock and Roll world for those 5 or so years. Much to the chagrin of myself, Benny E Jet and many others, the Rock n roll hall of fame in Cleveland makes the mistake of highlighting the motown scene at the expense of what we call the"Sinclair-Detroit- revolution", properly named because he is considered to be the godfather of the Detroit rock explosion. Rumours abound that an addition to the Detroit exhibit is in the works, and so the next pilgrimmage to Cleveland will hopefully be more fulfilling. 

"Rock n Roll, dope, and sex in the streets" was the proclamation and chant of John Sinclair's political party called the "White Panthers", that, at it's zenith ,had thousands of kids involved from the mid-1960's through the early1970's. He spoke of a cultural revolution in America where the kids would go,"...wild in the streets and take over Amerika.." They always spelled America with a "K" in protest. Many people today think that the religious right and Pat Buchanan started the rhetoric about culture wars and a fight for the soul of the country, and that people who talked about ulterior motives of rock n roll groups were just "ignorant bible-thumpers". Mr. Sinclair and many others on the Left were talking about culture wars and changing society through music and art 35 years ago. "Rock and Roll is a weapon of cultural revolution" he wrote in his article in the Ann Arbor based newspaper he founded called the Fifth Estate in December 1968." It is extremely important for urban groups to organize themselves around cultural forms like  rock bands...this will give you access to audiences of pre- revolutionary youth who are waiting to be turned on." He finishes by saying,"It's time to turn on, tune in and take over!" He understood the impact of reaching the youth of society, particularly through music, to achieve the end of a successful political movement. This is a lesson that others have also learned where you see Bill Clinton playing the saxophone live on MTV or when you see some elements of our society trying to make fundamental changes in the schools in furtherance of larger agendas. John understood this connection between indoctrination of youth and longterm success of a movement, and that it was critical to the success of his White Panther party. The stodgy Right-Wing could learn a lesson from Mr. Sinclair, but they probably can't get off their high-horse long enough to listen. 

John was also a trend setter in his application of justice and equality in society. Long before it became hip and trendy to support Gay rights, he juxtaposed the gay rights issue with blacks who were fighting for racial equality. 35 years ago, before the 1969 gay riots in New York that many Gay activists see as the start of the movement, John Sinclair was speaking about it with the passion that still burns deep in his 55 year-old sardonically sublime voice. He was a lot younger then, and he did what he thought was right despite the possible negative consequences to himself and the White Panthers. You have to love it when a person acts on the courage of their convictions, way ahead of their time and with no constituency backing .It is a refreshing and beautiful thing; especially in our current slick media age with it's politics based on focus groups, study commissions, and payoffs to the exclusion of conviction-based public policy. 

Some people feel that the reason that the MC5 didn't become financially successful like some of their contemporary bands was because of the political posturing that John had the MC5 involved with.They were in John words,"..the force ..and the revolution in all it's applications. There is no seperation." The one thing that became very clear was that the mc5 could not be seperated from the growing controversy regarding off stage troubles and Sinclair. Because of the obscene words they used on stage and on record albums, the dope bust ,and because of heat from the cops and what John Sinclair called,"the pig media", it became more and more difficult to get their message out to people that didn't have a negative preconception about the band and the White panther party. Ben E Jet remembers one gig that he did with the UP in Kennedy square where the F.B.I. was taking pictures of the crowd from atop a nearby building. The Sinclair lead White Panther party was raising the eye of the government and it's investigative agencies.The Michigan State police in a statement to the media called the organization," detrimental to the welfare of this country" Warden Perry Johnson of Jackson prison said Sinclair was a ,"threat to the security of this institution",and so it was that the Mc5 and other Sinclair managed bands became forever associated with the political arm of the movement. Music as a means to an end...Does Marilyn Manson have an end he is working towards? 

They were the opening act for many of the heavy -weights of Rock ; Led Zepplin, the Who and Cream. In a Rolling stone magazine interview in the very early seventies, Mick Jagger said that he was a mc 5 fan. The sex Pistols in the seventies spoke of their affection and admiration of the mC5. They were,in many peoples eyes, the godfathers of Punk, Heavy Metal, and all other forms of hard rock. Many of the rock groups ,even today, look back at the mc5 as an influence on their music and in fact the bands best known hit song entitled "kick out the Jams brothers and sisters" has been redone recently in tribute to two of the mc5's members who have died in the past few years of natural causes. Take note you Generation xer's..they kept on fighting till the end and died of natural causes. We can all take a lesson from Rob Tyner,the lead singer from Detroit, Jesus from Nazareth, and Fred "Sonic" Smith, guitar player for the MC5 .Instead of following the example of Seattle rock-star/ multi-millionaire Kurt Cobain who killed himself because he felt bad one day, look to these people as a model;everything in it's own time including death; Just keep on fighting the good fight until the decision about death is made for you, it will come soon enough... 

(to be continued)

Updated