By Chris Varias
Enquirer contributor

The second best thing about the Saturday edition of Jammin' on Main was it didn't rain.

JAMMIN' EVENTS

• Jammin' on Main 2004 lineup

The best was the consistency of the performances over the course of the nearly six-hour duration. From the three local acts who concurrently opened the evening (Death in Graceland, the Stapletons and the Tracy Walker Band) to the three headliners (the Offspring, Blondie and Los Lonely Boys), the decision of which stage to watch at any given time was rarely an easy one.

After the Offspring whipped through an abbreviated set of their modern pop-punk hits that ended a half-hour earlier than scheduled, the choice was between Blondie - the queen and kings of pop-punk - and the much-hyped Los Lonely Boys, three Texas brothers whose musical breadth includes the blues-shuffle power-trio tradition of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Santana's Latin-tinged guitar jams, as well as Tejano and pop rock.

Stuck on the Main Street stage, which had the worse sound all night, Los Lonely Boys battled through the static-and-treble-heavy mix to build a crowd of fist-pumping males in their 30s and 40s sold on the popular notion that Henry Garza is the hottest crossover-blues guitar slinger of the moment.

Around the corner on Central Parkway, Blondie pulled the night's biggest crowd. With four longtime members - singer Debbie Harry, guitarist Chris Stein, keyboardist Jimmy Destri and drummer Clem Burke - still around, Blondie the band played competent renditions of '70s classics like "Hanging on the Telephone" and "Heart of Glass" while Harry, wearing a leopard-skin pillbox hat and matching top with plunging neckline, vamped her way through the singalong vocals.

G. Love & Special Sauce preceded Blondie, and the band's cheery mix of folk, blues and rap proved to be effective music-festival fare, as he drew a bigger and more diverse crowd than Melissa Auf Der Maur, the former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist who is beginning the bandleader phase of her career with a bland, forgettable modern-rock sound.

Locals Moth had a smaller crowd than Auf Der Mar and dealt with the same soundman as Los Lonely Boys, but the band again proved it writes the most rock-radio-ready songs of any Cincinnati band, as they buzzed through a tight and entertaining set.

In fact, everyone in the large contingent of local acts (Thistle and Buckra were the others) did well, especially Death in Graceland, who, on the sheer power of their synthesis of Johnny Rotten attitude and MC5 abandon, compensated for the pitfalls of singing with a fake Cockney accent.