POP MUSIC REVIEW : Canned Heat’s Rusty ‘60s Blues Remain Sparkless in the ‘90s : Oldies: Band from 1960s blues revival offers little except the superb guitarist Harvey Mandel.

On the credit side, the Canned Heat that played the Belly Up Tavern Thursday night is appreciably pedigreed, as “oldies” bands go. The current quartet features guitarist-vocalist James (James T) Thornberg, drummer Adolpho (Fito) de la Parra, bassist Larry (The Mole) Taylor, and, most significantly, guitarist Harvey (The Snake) Mandel. The last three are veterans of the band’s late-’60s surge into the international spotlight.

On the debit side, that ‘60s-vintage Canned Heat was a competent white-blues outfit from L.A., whose reverence for the idiom was never matched by their skill at executing it. So, the fact that the current aggregate burned little more than kindling in a 90-minute set was not as disappointing as it was reaffirming.

The band’s early success was largely a matter of providential timing; they performed at the Woodstock Festival as the British blues invasion of America was peaking, and soon became this country’s de facto counter-invasion force. A few catchy radio hits--most notably, the modal-sounding “On the Road Again” and the pixie-boogie “Goin’ Up the Country”-- watermarked their ascendance. If you can’t play blues with the big boys, you get cute with it, and these novelties at least provided pleasurable driving music.

Canned Heat’s linchpins were vocalist Bob (The Bear) Hite--whose nom de boogie , born of his 300-pound frame, could as accurately have referred to his ursine vocals--and Alan (Blind Owl) Wilson, the guitarist whose harmonica-like vocals were the distinctive features of the above mentioned hits. While they were not extraordinarily gifted musicians, Wilson’s death of a drug overdose in 1970, followed 11 years later by Hite’s fatal coronary, quashed any chances that Canned Heat would survive the ‘70s as anything but a relic.

What saved Thursday’s concert--and remains the only reason to attend any future Canned Heat shows hereabouts--was Mandel, who replaced Henry (Sunflower) Vestine in 1969. A stalwart of both the Chicago and British blues scenes for almost 25 years (he was a candidate to replace Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones), Mandel employs taste and invention to channel his technical prowess into some stirring guitar playing. His brilliant solo during a show-opening Tom Waits tune had the expressive inflection of animated conversation.

Unfortunately, the other Heaters do not possess comparable talents, although Thornberg is a personable and versatile performer. The Poway product worked with John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart, and the late Big Joe Turner before joining Canned Heat in 1984. On Thursday, Thornberg sang well, played some creditable, Elmore James-ish slide guitar, did a satisfactory turn on wooden flute on “Goin’ Up the Country,” and salvaged an otherwise poor reading of “On the Road Again” with his sax-like harmonica fills.

Taylor and de la Parra, on the other hand, still form one of the weakest rhythm batteries in rock. After more than two decades of playing, Taylor works his ax as if he’s afraid to venture past the most fundamental patterns. The result is a low-tone stasis that prevents even the most promising jams from reaching lift-off.

De la Parra kept a moderately large, appreciative crowd awake with a jogging commentary, but his playing and singing had the opposite effect. Game attempts at replicating Wilson’s reedy falsetto on “Goin’ Up the Country” and “On the Road Again” proved especially ill-advised. Apparently, de la Parra cannot sing and play drums at the same time (to be fair, that’s not an easy trick). On the latter tune, whose appeal lies in its hypnotic drone-rhythm, De la Parra couldn’t maintain the all-important tempo once he began singing, and only Thornberg’s harmonica work prevented bad-cover-band disaster.

Perhaps following a blistering set by another early-’70s revival project--Lydia Pense and Cold Blood--only magnified Canned Heat’s lack of dynamics. Either way, tepid versions of “Bullfrog Blues” and Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ and Tumblin”’ reinforced the impression that Canned Heat would be a dime-store blues band without Mandel. There were, nonetheless, a few very bright spots in an otherwise lackluster concert.

The band kicked hard on both “Driftin’,” rockabilly blues from their latest album, “Reheated” (even Taylor, playing amplified standup bass, seemed inspired), and on Howlin’ Wolf’s “Riding in the Moonlight,” a mid-tempo shuffle ignited by Mandel’s guitar mastery. But each time Canned Heat seemed to be approaching a rare high point, one or more of its Achilles heels buckled.

The most blatant foul came late in the show, during a mesmerizing, Spanish-blues-funk instrumental featuring Mandel. The piece was interrupted at a crucial juncture for a lame drum solo by De la Parra that effectively scuttled the music’s--and the show’s--momentum. At such moments, one realized that this flawed band, whose performances rely on its friendly rapport with an audience, is its own worst enemy.