MC5 members and friends, 100 Club, London

Forged in Detroit in 1965, The MC5 played rock'n'roll in an America where motorbike police charged their fans, and ferment and trouble trailed the band everywhere they went. Their talismanic debut, Kick out the Jams, had a title ordering its listeners to have a basic good time – but such a good time, it implied a revolution might follow. They split in 1972, and their famously Afro-ed singer Rob Tyner and co-guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith died in the 1990s, but their sound – amped up, heads down, feedbacking Chuck Berry, with a space-seeking touch of Sun Ra – was one of the fuses for punk.

Now, the three surviving one-time sonic revolutionaries have been invited to this tiny, 1960s-era basement club for one night, sponsored by Levi's jeans. They've brought whichever of their famous fans could come to beef up the numbers and what follows turns out to be partly about their timelessly astonishing music, and partly about time's mangling effect on everyone playing it tonight.

With a black leather waistcoat, crew cut and leathery, serious face, the bassist Mike Davis looks like the oldest, wisest street tough in Detroit, and is the irresistible centre. He locks into an immediate groove while Wayne Kramer, beakishly professorial in black-rimmed glasses, takes guitar. Drummer Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson completes all the MCs we'll ever see again. And then there's a baseball-capped Swede, The Hellacopters' Nick Royale. As with most of the guests who'll troop through, you know he's come in homage but feel he's getting in the way. The Bono impersonator with the ridiculous, jet-black quiff, for instance, seems a pale singing substitute for Rob Tyner.

Until, that is, you realise it's Dave Vanian of Britain's pioneering punks The Damned, and try to show retroactive respect. The former Cult front man, Ian Astbury, fresh from similar duties with "The Doors", also lacks the charisma to take Tyner's place. Only when Lemmy of Motorhead arrives does a guest inject something special. With flashing black eyes and a cigarette-scraped growl, soon he's dragging a harmonica across his mouth and helping send "Sister X" and "Back in the USA" into space. But what really matters are the three men standing behind him, leaning into their snaking, squalling notes without fuss, nodding and smiling quietly to each other. The MC5's motor is still running, and it's good to have them back.