BY JIM ALLEN

For some time now, one might have been forgiven for assuming that roots-rock of the kind practiced in the ‘80s by the Blasters and their contemporaries was largely a thing of the past. While survivors like the aforementioned Downey, CA cats still rock it out last-man-standing-style years after the likes of the Beat Farmers and Jason & the Scorchers went the way of the Wooly Mammoth, in recent times it has seldom seemed like many new flamekeepers were emerging on a national level. On a nippy November night at B.B. King's in New York City, though, the old standard-bearers shared a bill with a young upstart who seems set to turn that trend around.

In a short-but-sweet opening set, mini-dress-clad, cowboy-boot-stomping rabble-rouser Sarah Borges led her band The Broken Singles through a loud, sweaty, exhilarating batch of good-time tunes that poured Stax soul, garage rock, Motown, honky-tonk, and rockabilly in an electric mixer set on "pulverize," till it all came out as hellbent, whiskey-dripping roadhouse rock & roll. Unfortunately, the crowd at the Times Square supper club ultimately proved too inexplicably (and somewhat annoyingly) tepid to be roused to revelry by either the opener or the headliners, but for those who soaked it all in, Borges' defiantly fiery set felt like some kind of roots-rock homecoming. The fact that Borges' bassman Binky, with his impish demeanor and bedraggled, Keith Richards-Chia Pet mane, seemed the spitting image of NRBQ bassist Joey Spampinato came cosmically into place when the band launched into a rafters-rattling version of the Q's swaggering "It Comes To Me Naturally." Seldom has there been a more appropriately themed choice of a cover tune. The kind of rootsy sounds that were made a couple of decades ago by the likes of Lone Justice and the Long Ryders seemed to be right under Borges' fingertips, an itch just waiting to be scratched.

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For their part, the Blasters -- reunited with original drummer Bill Bateman for the first time in 15 years, proved the aptness of their moniker over and over again throughout the evening. While the absence of guitarist Dave Alvin kept it from being a full-scale reunion like the one the band experienced in 2003, that old spark was still firmly in evidence as Dave's big brother Phil led his Downey pals (plus current guitarist Keith Wyatt) through a set heavy on Blasters classics from the glory days. Ever the working-man's band, the guys looked like they might have just rolled out from under a convertible (or at least been puffing unfiltered Camels while kibitzing behind some SoCal grease monkey), but there was nothing commonplace about the sonic storm the band kicked up when in full flight. Now in his mid-fifties, Phil is still undoubtedly the most soulful singing Caucasian alive, whether he's getting theatrical on the Little Willie John R&B jump of "I'm Shakin'," playing the honky-tonk cuckold on the George Jones classic "The Window Up Above," or tearing it up like the love child of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis on the Blasters' own "Marie Marie."

By the time the night was over, it was easy to believe that those roots-rock sounds often thought to be in hibernation these days, were not revived, but rather, alive and well and smelling of Jim Beam, all-night-diners, and pure, honest rock & roll perspiration.