DKT/MC5 To Play Special Concert With SUN RA ARKESTRA

Detroit's DKT/MC5, whose current touring lineup includes former GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Glilby Clarke, will perform with the SUN RA ARKESTRA, the legendary avant-garde big band and free-jazz pioneers now directed by Marshall Allen, on Saturday, September 17 at at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in California. DKT/MC5 features the three surviving, original members of MC5 (Motor City Five) — Michael Davis, Wayne Kramer and Dennis Thompson (DKT) — a controversial 1960s group that helped lay the groundwork for punk rock and grunge. For tickets, call 310-825-2101, visit www.UCLALive.org, or contact Ticketmaster.

The raucous, politically volatile and youthful MC5 first opened for their elder revolutionaries SUN RA ARKESTRA in the 1960s. Performing together now, says Kramer, is "an expansion of the work started by both groups nearly four decades ago." Davis, Kramer and Thompson joined the SUN RA ARKESTRA for a sold-out concert at the U.K.'s Royal Festival Hall in February 2005 following a successful MC5 tribute concert in 2003 at the London’s famed 100 Club. The concert at UCLA Live is part of their first tour together in three decades with stops scheduled in Finland, New York’s Central Park, and São Paulo, Brazil, in addition to L.A. DKT/MC5 will be joined on stage by a revolving cast of special guest musicians and vocalists including Clarke, Lisa Kekaula (BELLRAYS, BASEMENT JAXX) and Greg Dulli (AFGHAN WHIGS, TWILIGHT SINGERS); with a horn section of Dr. Charles Moore on trumpet, Buzzy Jones on saxophone, Phil Ranelin on trombone, and other special guests to be announced.

The three current members of DKT/MC5 were part of the original group that "kicked out the jams," also the name of their classic debut album recorded in 1968. They provided a brisk antidote to the flower power pop of the era with their lacerating guitars, propulsive drive and howling vocals. The new group is also intended as a tribute to former members, including vocalist Rob Tyner, who died in 1991 of a heart attack, and Fred "Sonic" Smith, who died of heart failure in 1994. Their radical political stance and pioneering work welding hard rock, soul music, rhythm and blues, and avant-garde jazz cut through cathartic bourgeois sensibilities of the time and ushered in the metal era. The group became heroes for generations of rockers from RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE to the HIVES to the WHITE STRIPES. The band's musical legacy remains as powerful as ever. A new DVD, "Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5", was released in July 2004 on Kramer's MuscleTone Records and even includes archival footage from the Nixon government taken during an investigation of the band after a riotous performance coinciding with the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.