Jerry Lee Lewis

The only explanation for why, in 2000, rock firebrand Jerry Lee Lewis is still among the living after his many brushes with death is that he probably scares the hell out of the Grim Reaper himself. Though his concert Wednesday at the Galaxy Theatre in Santa Ana was by and large a meat-and-potatoes Killer set, as always there were flashes of the infamous volatility that have made the Ferriday Fireball one of rock's true originals and one of its genuinely frightening practitioners.

Merrill Moore, 73, pulls a bench up to the piano at Mr. A's, a popular dining room and lounge where he has been a fixture for years. He stretches his big, beefy hands and knits his brow and proceeds through a series of standards, show tunes and jazz. The crowd applauds politely; Moore beams back a warm smile.

OK, try to put these two images together. First, picture your standard Jerry Lee Lewis groupie from the '50s. Then, conjure a typical follower of Social Distortion, Orange County punk rockers since the early '80s. If successful, you'll have a pretty good idea of what Hootenanny '96 was all about. The daylong roots-rock and rockabilly festival was held Sunday in Oak Canyon Ranch near Irvine Regional Park.

Hootenanny '96, Sunday at Oak Canyon Ranch, is geared to music fans who crave rock 'n' roll that has a strong sense of roots. There will be roots aplenty at this festival, from the shade trees that dot its park-like setting to the 10 acts that will play on two adjacent stages during seven hours of nonstop music. Here's a rundown of the performers. MAIN STAGE * Jerry Lee Lewis: One of the great rock 'n' roll originals, the Killer, at 60, remains a potentially volcanic force in concert.

Long acknowledged as one of the great rock stylists, Lewis is also a marvelous country singer. In these 20 country tracks from the '60s and '70s, Lewis touches you with a heartbreak song, such as "Another Time, Another Place," then amuses you with his vocal exaggeration in the bittersweet "Think About It, Darlin.' " A gem. Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (e ssential ).

Please, Mr. Lewis, your excellency, killership, sir , can we have some more? Just one or two more minutes of Jerry Lee Lewis's piano pounding and wild-eyed carrying on at the end of an uproarious, show-closing "Great Balls of Fire" Friday night would have meant the difference between glimpsing the rock 'n' roll equivalent of the Holy Grail, which is all that we mere mortals can really hope for on any given night, and getting a good, gullet-filling gulp of its intoxicating contents.

It has pretty much all been said about Jerry Lee Lewis, in rock histories, biographies, tabloids and film, not to mention police reports. By all accounts his is a mythic life, consonant with the nearly biblical tone taken in "Hellfire," Nick Tosches' monstrously readable 1982 biography and perhaps the strangest book ever penned about a living human.