REVIEW : Nothing Out of the Blue at Irvine Blues Festival

The sorts of surprises that can give a special aura to a music festival didn’t emerge Saturday at the Irvine Meadows Blues Festival, the first in what promoters hope will become an annual event.

That’s not to say the varied, eight-hour program was not rewarding: The majority of the performances were well above par, and on musical merits alone, the festival was a success any blues fan would enjoy.

But there were no surprise pairings of talent, no special shows of comradeship between performers that might convey a sense that this was a gathering of blues colleagues rather than just a bunch of gigs lined up end-to-end.

Say, just for instance, that Papa John Creach had stuck around to join Taj Mahal for a fiddle-guitar duet on some country-blues standard or that Buddy Guy had come back after playing his own set to wage a guitar battle with Bo Diddley. That would have created a buzz, something special for the 4,500 or so fans to take home with them--something that might heighten expectations for a Blues Fest II at Irvine Meadows. Maybe next year.

The festival’s closing set certainly went a long way toward creating a feeling of upbeat expectation for fans of the Neville Brothers, the funky, one-of-its-kind R & B band from New Orleans.

Recently, the Nevilles have pushed and pulled in different directions, trying simultaneously to honor their roots in New Orleans’ rhythm-and-blues tradition while trying to perfect a slicker form of pop-R & B aimed at establishing the band as chart successes rather than cult heroes. The pursuit of slickness led to last year’s radio-tailored “Uptown” album, which not only failed to register on the charts but failed to please many longtime fans.

At Irvine Meadows, the Nevilles didn’t dip into the “Uptown” material at all. They played their older staples with zest--hot polyrhythmic tunes from the Mardi Gras parades, and Aaron Neville’s predictably sparkling rendition of the exemplary soul ballad “Tell It Like It Is.”

For a while, it seemed the Nevilles’ fallback position after “Uptown” was going to be conservatism--a show of well-played oldies. By the end of the 70-minute set, however, the seven-member band had shown off two new numbers that cooked with special intensity, despite a slightly murky vocal mix.

One was a tale of betrayal set in New Orleans, with Aaron delivering a taut, anguished vocal in the role of a man crossed by a Creole woman. It moved from sultry, edgy funk into a sizzling instrumental confrontation between guitarist Brian Stoltz and saxophonist Charles Neville, who went at it face-to-face with simultaneous, chromatic soloing that ended in an exchange of well-deserved high-fives.

The final encore was another new tune in which the Nevilles put their own imprint on the by-now familiar “free South Africa” theme. Youngest brother Cyril, whose fiery singing spurs the Nevilles’ Mardi Gras songs, lent the same sort of raw joyfulness to the political song, turning it into a buoyant expression of solidarity, set to Afro-reggae rhythms.

The other outstanding set of the day came from John Hammond, whose masterful, emotionally charged performance came off like the answer to a riddle: When does acoustic blues become electric?

Hammond, playing acoustic guitars and harmonica, generated his current from within--an alternating current that kept the show varied by shifting between stomping, driving numbers and slow, painful, moaning blues. Everything Hammond sang was a blues classic that explored the depths of feeling that, if one has a brain and a soul, are invariably intermeshed with sex. It would do us all a world of good if the rock video makers, advertising agencies and Rolling Stone magazine editors who foist trivialized, “glamorous” sex upon us day after day could spend some time listening to Hammond or his precursors.

Hammond consistently managed to sound fresh and immediate while singing some of the most famous blues songs ever recorded--songs by such blues giants as Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf. That spontaneity came from an unpredictable guitar style full of dynamic shifts and surprising turns, and from the singer’s ability to turn the songs of others into a form of personal expression.

Hammond’s booming, physical singing on “Spoonful” would have made Howlin’ Wolf himself nod in appreciation. At the opposite end of the spectrum, his anguished keening as he sang “I got nobody to love and care for me” during “Come On In My Kitchen” was the sound of desolation itself. The audience, convinced, gave Hammond the first standing ovation of the day.

The festival’s other solo performer, Taj Mahal, drew on a tradition similar to Hammond’s in a set devoted largely to easygoing, rustic blues played on electric-acoustic guitar. While folksy songs such as “Fishin’ Blues” and “Light Rain Blues” were pleasant enough, Mahal’s best songs were more highly charged--including a memorable “Spoonful” featuring African rhythms that conjured an air of voodoo mystery, shamanistic dance steps and guttural echoes of Wolf’s own singing style.

Mahal’s encore, “Everybody Is Somebody,” was an earnest folk anthem that didn’t capture the crowd, either because it was new and unfamiliar, or because it wasn’t blues. But the song was an appealing statement of ideals delivered in a heartfelt, gravelly voice.

A few weeks shy of 71 (he was presented with a birthday cake onstage), Papa John Creach was not only the day’s oldest performer but the most versatile. Backed by a good five-piece band that usually plays with festival host Bernie Pearl, Creach spun delightful fiddle variations on jazz-blues, pop standards such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and good ol’ hot boogie.

Instrumental versions of “Rainbow” and “Georgia On My Mind” had enough surprising fiddle embellishments to make them more than sentimental rehashes. The chirping sounds and ascending-note flutters that Creach created at the end of “Rainbow” (just when the mind’s ear was playing back Judy Garland singing “birds fly over the rainbow/Why, oh why can’t I?”) made for an especially nice touch.

Harmonica Fats also fronted the Pearl band for an abbreviated set. The bulky Los Angeles bluesman was effective on two slower numbers in which he established a knack for showmanship, but he faltered on an uptempo instrumental that blew up a storm without going anywhere melodically.

Bo Diddley didn’t play the sort of set that becomes a legend, but his performance with a local pickup band was more focused than some of the meandering, pointless excursions he can turn in at times.

Diddley began in weak voice but had improved by midset to deliver a convincingly trenchant “I’m a Man.” Aside from one passable but overly-long side trip into light soul music, Diddley concentrated on blues and stomp-rock with his own trademark beat. An exceedingly long concluding number with a chunky Diddley groove had moments of interest--Diddley supplanted the drummer to lay down a funkier beat, then slapped his guitar strings to get a sound like timbales--but it took far too long for him to develop ideas. What Diddley needs is a regular touring band that knows how to play his full repertoire. Until then, he’ll do no better than the sort of qualified success he had at Irvine Meadows.

Buddy Guy has the talent to be a success every time out--a hot guitarist with a rangy, forceful voice, a capable band and a sense of fun that comes across clearly on stage. But Saturday’s performance lacked any sense of shape or discipline. Guy said nothing with his blues because he never got beyond clowning and mugging and playing to the grandstand. The grandstand loved it, but Guy was more like an entertainingly hyperactive kid with a minuscule attention span than a musician with a plan for getting feelings and meanings across.

He failed to play a song straight through without distraction. Time after time he would digress: a pause to lead the crowd in call-and-response singing or an unedifying routine of stylistic impressions of the guitar greats.

The nadir of the day was Guy’s long walk into the crowd, in which his soloing was an interminable, repetitious high whine--the aural equivalent of 10 minutes in the dentist’s chair, without novocaine. In an excruciating but emblematic touch, the last sound Guy’s guitar emitted before he left the stage was a torturous blast of feedback. Maybe it’s better that he didn’t return to duel with Bo Diddley after all.