Blues guitarist Chris Cain brought his bombastic self to Moondog's Saturday night, and tore the place up, down and sideways with his big guitar and even bigger voice.

Until Saturday night, I'd only known him through his recordings. What a difference a body makes. It was joyfully exhausting just to watch.

The San Jose, Calif., bluesman shows hints of rock and jazz in his versatile guitar work, which is flashy and functional at the same time -- that is, not just flash for its own sake. But his emphasis is the blues, and there's no mistaking that when he bends the wire. He's a manic-depressive on guitar, but minus the depressive.

From the first big guitar notes, he hits the stage with a presence that doesn't quit until the night ends. He moves, his head bobs furiously to the music, he grimaces and mugs and shoots sly little zingers into the audience between songs.

It's a complete performance by a veteran bluesman who knows how to work a crowd -- and work it into a happy blues frenzy.

Of course, I use the word "crowd" metaphorically. The "crowd" was probably 35-40 people at best, and a half-dozen of those were members of John Pergal's tough, bluesy Pawnbrokers, who opened the night with Pergal urging the audience to go home, get some friends, and come back.

I mean, c'mon blues fans. There must be hundreds of thousands of people with a half-hour or so of Moondog's. So it was a Pens-Flyers playoff night. Come out afterward and celebrate with some great music.

It's to the credit of Pergal and Cain that they turned in rousing sets for just a handful of appreciative fans. I guess that's why it's called the blues.

I sat behind a table of four, who it turned out, had motored from deep in the state of Virginia just to hear Cain whip the blues. Now those are fans.

He's a player you won't get to see that often, since he's not a regular in the club circuit on this side of the country -- I asked him how often he got here, and his quip was, "Whenever they let me out." He should get a hall pass more often.

It turns out that the film industry pushed Pergal and the Pawnbrokers into Moondog's.

A DreamWorks romantic comedy called "She's Out of My League" is filming in and around town, and they had taken over the Thunderbird Cafe for four nights of filming. It should be interesting to look for the T'Bird scenes in the film,

By the way, for a little more info on Cain, here's a bio from the Blind Pig records Web site, where he's released some albums.

By the way, if you click on the link under the photo above, you'll go to this article, again, but with a set of image links at the top left. CLick on any one of them for a little slideshow of my photos of Chris at Moondog's. It's kind of a clunky tool, but better than nothing. I think.