POP MUSIC REVIEW : Stray Cats Tear Up the House : Music: The trio set the already hot Sound FX on fire with gunpowder tunes bridged only by the roar of the crowd.

It was so stiflingly hot inside a people-packed Sound FX on Thursday night that the club’s open side doors were like steam vents.

But, if the damp bodies clogging the venue’s interior testified to the sweltering humidity, the patrons didn’t seem to mind. That’s because there was something even hotter in the joint: the Stray Cats, with the original configuration of guitarist Brian Setzer, stand-up bassist Lee Rocker and drummer Slim Jim Phantom.

The neo-rockabilly trio--once disparaged by skeptics as a garish, midway gimmick--smoked through an 80-minute set of new and old tunes with the fervor of a band trying to reclaim some forsaken legitimacy. Which, in a very real sense, is the case.

On its first go-round 10 years ago, the Stray Cats epitomized the axiom about being careful what you ask for. In 1980, the New York-based threesome ventured to England to mine that country’s deep vein of early-rock fanaticism. By the time its British records were compiled into 1982’s debut American release, “Built for Speed” (which included the hits “Stray Cat Strut” and “Rock This Town”), the Stray Cats was a phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, the band’s stateside ascendance had less to do with its rocket-fueled ‘50s sound than with the media puffery surrounding the musicians’ retro-freakazoid style: Setzer’s Old Faithful coiffure and tattoos, Rocker’s whirling-dervish bass playing and Phantom’s wild-man drumming on a Spartan, stand-up kit. The Stray Cats became MTV dolls--the antithesis of rock ‘n’ roll--and front man Setzer felt increasingly trapped in a cartoonish concept run amok. The Cats took several extended hiatuses, then officially disbanded in 1985.

Too often in pop’s cruel history, the next part of such a story has some unknown band come along to reap the harvest painstakingly sewn by a defunct group. But the hype aspect of the mid-’80s, roots-rockabilly revival flared up and burned out years ago, chasing the pretenders and leaving only the genuinely committed, as well as a leadership void caused by the Cats’ defection.

After Setzer, Rocker and Phantom jammed at Setzer’s New York home one day in 1988, the group realized, first, that it still had the chemistry, and, second, that it had left some business unfinished. Thursday’s show, which was consistent with reports of a tour begun seven weeks ago, saw the band restaking its turf with a vengeance.

Setzer, it must be said, has always been a terrific, underappreciated guitarist. Ironically, he had to play with Robert Plant and the Honeydrippers and later front his own self-named band to demonstrate a six-string prowess that had been lost in the video haze of his first Stray Cats tenure. Still, Setzer must have bargained with the devil to acquire the extra chops he brought to the Sound FX gig.

His solo during one hard-rocking tune was a two-stage launch. On his first improvised passage, he twisted, inverted and generally reinvented rock licks with a mad scientist’s maniacal skill. After another verse, he turned on the burners for the solo sequel.

Driven by Rocker’s rumbling slap-bass and Phantom’s locomotive snare work, Setzer seemed to wring the guitar neck for the baddest riffs it had absorbed over the years. He then sped them up and played them with jazz fluidity, blues intensity and rock power. The house went batty.

With only the crowd’s roar bridging the tunes, the Stray Cats poured out a gunpowder set that created its own sparks. The primitive beat of “Elvis on Velvet,” from the band’s current CD, “Choo Choo Hot Fish,” coaxed an improvised killer-bee attack from Setzer’s guitar that elicited an arm-pumping response from the audience. “Crybaby,” an aerobic rockabilly-pop cut from the new album that will be the band’s next single, provided a light, melodic lift. And a pummeling rendition of the Bobby Fuller Four’s “I Fought the Law”--which a playful Setzer introduced with the theme from “Hawaii Five-O”--threatened to raise the roof.

The new album’s version of “Sleep Walk”--the 1959 guitar instrumental by Santo and Johnny Farina--not only provided a respite from the slam-bang intensity, but showcased the band’s interpretive skills as well. In recent years, the familiar tune has been covered by a number of great guitarists, including Jeff Beck, Ronnie Montrose and Larry Carlton. But Setzer is the only one to freely interpret the tune without abandoning the original’s sweaty-gym, baggy-pants ambience.

He did this by wrapping the song’s melody in a chord progression and through liberal application of the instrument’s “twang bar,” rather than playing it in straight, linear fashion. Naturally, Setzer also contributed a rippingly lyrical solo that even momentarily strayed into Wes Montgomery territory.

Getting back up to speed, the Stray Cats prompted an audience sing-along with back-to-back renditions of “Stray Cat Strut” and “Rock This Town”--the latter sandwiched around a brief fling at “The Train Kept A-Rollin’.” The crowd’s response was pure, spontaneous combustion.

In attempting to relight the fire of a long-gone generation, some nouveau rockabilly bands resort to a sort of contrived frenzy. The Stray Cats, however, generated a natural, impulsive energy, as though the guys were whacking a backbeat with slats ripped from the nearest fence.

An encore of “Beautiful Blues” and “My Heart Is a Liar” (both from the new release) and, finally, vintage Cats-scratching on “Rumble in Brighton,” chased an excited throng into what, by comparison, seemed the cool air of Clairemont Mesa.

There could be no question that these Stray Cats had found a home.