FRIDAY

With their gold lamé jackets, soul-rooted garage-rock, and dope-sex-and-revolution politics, Detroit’s MC5 were late-’60s America’s strangest show band: mostly James Brown and Chuck Berry, but with crucial infusions of Sun Ra and Che Guevara. Ideologically guided by “manager” John Sinclair, the Five combined working-class party attitude with Vietnam-era generational fury, and were groomed for an absurdly unlikely commercial success by both Warhol scenemaker Danny Fields (who found them “so, so butch”) and future Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau. Given the band’s dedication to ungovernable intensity—and some powerful enemies—its collapse was inevitable. By 1972, the almost-unraveled MC5 undertook a European tour with only two of the original lineup, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred “Sonic” Smith. The newly reunited version boasts a full three members, including Kramer but not Smith. (He and singer Rob Tyner both died in the ’90s.) “DKT” stands for Davis, Kramer, Thompson, a trinity that brings bassist Michael Davis and drummer Dennis Thompson back from long musical exile. Kramer has had a worthy solo career, and he did sing some lead on a few Five songs, but D, K, and T won’t attempt to relight Kick Out the Jams’ inferno alone: They’ll be joined by Evan Dando (hardcore, albeit long ago), Mark Arm (grunge, still), and Marshall Crenshaw (pop-rock, but from Detroit). It may not work the way it once did, but since almost no one saw them the first time around, who’ll be able to say? DKT/MC5 plays with Cobra Verde at 9:30 p.m. Friday, June 18, on the Black Cat’s Mainstage, 1811 14th St. NW. $20. (202) 667-7960. (Mark Jenkins)