Buddy Guy and the Damn Right Blues Band, Robert Cray at the St James

Buddy Guy

Those humourless souls who decried rather than applauded the Rolling Stones for still doing it in their advanced years would have wisely avoided Buddy Guy's show on Saturday night: the man still performs like someone a third his age, and gets in some sexy, unspoken innuendo along the way.

Before Guy's blazing, then bewildering, 90-minute set, however, was an hour of Robert Cray and band.

Cray is often considered an MOR bluesman - usually by those who know only his Strong Persuader album of 20 years back and haven't heard recent albums which shift from soul to funk.

And it was when he unleashed the gritty Backdoor Sam or dropped in some Al Green-influenced soul, with killer support from organist Jim Pugh, that he was at his best, although he still keeps his audience at an emotional distance.

Within minutes of his entrance, however, Guy and his five-piece erased memories of Cray.

Guy is an entertainer who pulls out noisy show-stopping turns alongside some of the quietest and most subtle guitar playing ever to come from a stage.

But rowdies in the crowd, who howled like hounds after each melodic filigree, offered inanities like, "Play us some blues, Buddy" ("That's what I thought I was doing"), and someone wishing him an early happy birthday (he turns 70 in three months), led Guy to become distracted and he got into pandering.

After taking off from the stage and playing his way through the audience downstairs and going up to delighted punters on the mezzanine, he came back for a final half hour which was crowd-pleasing but unfocused: he delivered a little of John Lee Hooker's Boom Boom and because we liked that he offered some Hendrix (Voodoo Chile, while playing guitar with his teeth), then a snatch of Cream-period Clapton with Strange Brew. It was amusing but perfunctory.

Guy is a legend and for most of this show he proved it in exceptional guitar playing, that distinctive and emotionally nuanced falsetto he possesses, and some gutsy jamming with his band.

But something went awry. When he got the whisper time was up he tossed off a quick nod to his old musical partner Junior Wells and was gone. The band played on expecting him to return and the audience howled for more.

But that was it: a show that was sometimes thrilling and always entertaining, but somehow slipped away.