Down through the rough and bloody years since Elvis first smashed through the gray flannel wall of square America, innumerable rockers have spouted off with phony fiery rhetoric and made with the wannabe rebel swagger, yet so many of these were completely full of crap. Definitely NOT in that category is the one and only MC5 ax-man Wayne Kramer, a true-fine genuine big-beat radical and the most worthy subject of tonight's Grammy Museum celebration, Great Guitars: Wayne Kramer. Kramer hit the ground running as a 16-year-old phenom with MC5, and swiftly transmogrified from epochal mid-'60s garage raver into a stomping insurgent hard rocker of such breathtaking vehemence that no one else has ever quite rivaled him. His lurid revolutionary exploits with manager and White Panther firebrand John Sinclair, his own dope-bust penitentiary hard time and subsequent ascendance to the very pinnacle of rock & roll underworld demonology rank as a pedigree of rare and wonderfully weird proportions, and Kramer's music has always easily matched, if not outstripped, this vaunted and inarguably legendary resume. Tonight's discourse, acoustic performance and screening of the Kramer-centric short film The Beast and the Angel are guaranteed to be riveting, but one night is scarcely enough to give this man's artful outlaw legacy its rightful due. Grammy Museum, Clive Davis Theater, 800 W. Olympic Blvd., #A245, dwntwn.; Thurs., Jan. 24, 7:30 p.m.; $20. (213) 765-6800, grammymuseum.org.

Thu., Jan. 24, 8 p.m., 2013

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