Sunday, 03 March 2002 | The blues

I had hoped it would be an old black man sitting in a chair with a guitar on his lap, rather than six white men wearing sparkly vests who propped their music up on personalized podiums and who crooned and smiled and blew forcefully through their shiny instruments. Despite what I'd been told over the phone, this was new, happier blues, not the stripped-down back porch music I was seeking, the kind that makes you believe the artist has been down and out and left and kicked around and has had his heart dragged through the mud by every woman on the block.

The lead singer, who looked remarkably like Jay Leno, told bad jokes between songs while the fan that was directed toward him moved the front of his hair as one big unit. One of his jokes mentioned adding one of two dancing couples to the band's payroll; I can only imagine that he meant the professional-looking swing dancers that had been twirling across the floor. The other dancing couple was much less composed. The rat-tailed male, who looked like he was controlled by marionette strings, kept groping this female dance partner and erratically stabbing his enthusiatic fists into the air. I made it through three songs before finding a more reliable venue.