Photo by Marc Lecureuil
It’s high season for American politics, and rapper Machine Gun Kelly has entered the fray: “Music is my government. I’m my own president. Tell Uncle Sam, the young gun says,” he told Facebook fans this week.
MGK, aka Richard Carlson Baker, brings his take on life to the Cargo Concert Hall in Reno on Thursday for a 9 p.m. concert. Tickets are $30 for the all-ages show.
Machine Gun Kelly will appear with his partner in crime, Mod Sun. The two recently released a video remix of Sublime’s 1997 hit “Doin’ Time.” It was filmed in the world-famous Pike Place Market in Seattle, complete with human-launched flying fish (Mod Sun caught one on camera.)
Baker, 26, was born in Houston and now stakes his claim to turf on the East Side of Cleveland.
His namesake, the original “Machine Gun Kelly,” George Frances Barnes Jr., was a rapper, too. Or at least he had an extensive rap sheet, including bootlegging, armed robbery and kidnapping. Prisoner No. 117 on Alcatraz following the 1933 kidnapping of an oil tycoon that garnered his gang $200,000 in ransom, he spent 17 years rappin’ about his exploits to fellow inmates on The Rock before quietly being returned to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he died in 1954 after living 24 of his 59 years in prison.
The new-age, totally tatted-up Machine Gun Kelly is a fine, upstanding citizen by comparison, criss-crossing the country and telling it like it is, although admitting that he is a “Wild Boy” who is known to fire a “Warning Shot.” He is touring in support of his latest album, “General Admission.”
He totally killed it in a concert this week in Denver, reported 303Magazine.com: “This one was special and another testament to why he is considered one of the best live performers in today’s industry.” Thompson submachine gun, or not.
-Randy Hashagen
