Black Rock Coalition Benefit at the Music Machine

The audience was the most racially integrated seen in a local rock club in years, and the atmosphere at the Music Machine was genuinely charged for Saturday’s concert benefiting the recently formed Los Angeles chapter of the Black Rock Coalition. The organization’s founder, Living Colour’s guitarist Vernon Reid, was on hand to emcee along with veteran singer Nona Hendryx, but the showcased L.A. bands ranged from muddy, mediocre metal (Black Sheep) to screaming, cliched speed-metal (Gangland) to banal, Foreigner-style rock (Heart of One).

It took New York’s Eye & I to put everything into perspective. Led by bassist Melvin Gibbs and featuring diminutive dynamo D. K. Dyson on vocals, the quintet fluidly fused kaleidoscopic elements of avant-jazz, sophisticated dance music, hard rock and traces of reggae, including a startlingly vivid version of the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs.”

The Black Rock Coalition seeks to reclaim rock for musicians often shut out by racist preconceptions, and Dyson’s sassy, street-wise persona, coupled with Eye & I’s dynamic, progressive musicianship, presented a righteously eloquent justification for the cause.