O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Cash Coasts Through the Classics : He displays a strong voice and palpable excitement while spinning rock/country/folk yarns at the Crazy Horse Steak House, where he performs with several of his relatives.

Johnny Cash, his four-piece backing band, his wife, June Carter Cash, their son, John Carter Cash and her sisters, Helen and Anita--with that crowd on the stage of the Crazy Horse Steak House on Monday, it’s no real surprise that the evening’s show was a little ragged at the edges.

But it was rock solid at the core, where Johnny Cash’s eccentric hybrid of rock, folk and country mingled with the influential music of his in-laws to form a living link to some of American music’s primary currents.

At 60, with more than 130 country chart singles, as a member of both the country and rock halls of fame, Cash can be forgiven for coasting when it comes to designing his show. He didn’t give it the scope that a carefully plotted trip through his past might yield, and he certainly didn’t pretend that anyone was interested in his recent work (he never even mentioned his last album, 1991’s “Mystery of Life”).

But depending on the approach, a parade of oldies can be a mechanical march or a thrilling spectacle, and Cash treated his classic material with utmost respect. He carries a good band, whose slight rearrangements kept the songs vital, and he displayed a strong voice, involved singing and a palpable excitement about spinning these yarns.

That made the show--especially the central segment where the relatives left Cash to front his basic combo--at least respectable, and Cash’s reminiscences gave it dimension: an exchange with a shoeshine boy in Memphis inspiring the rockabilly-flavored “Get Rhythm,” boyhood memories of the Mississippi River flooding his Arkansas home reflected in “Five Feet High and Rising.”

It might be familiar, but it’s essential stuff, and it’s as far from generic as you can get. Cash is a genre unto himself, forging a country subspecies that rejects the adornments of steel guitar or fiddle, relying instead on the drive of gospel and R&B;, and those twangy guitar hooks that frame the lyrics like geometric property lines in farm country.

The lack of a firm hand on the proceedings let the evening get a little sloppy, in an amiable way. The younger Cash was awkwardly shoe-horned into the spotlight, leading a version of Johnny B. Goode and singing an earnest, Neil Young-ish acoustic folk song with a voice as high as Dad’s is deep.

When June Carter Cash rejoined Johnny, she brought along an off-the-wall humor delivered in a cartoon-like, little-girl voice, and just when you got used to that, she kicked off her shoes while dancing and sent them flying into the crowd (material for more jokes).

Meandering replaced focus at that point, but soon she and her sisters (and her daughter, Carlene, called out of the audience) were layering the patented harmonies of their illustrious forebears the Carter Family. When Johnny joined the crowd for some old-time gospel, it was clear that this circle is indeed unbroken.