There sure were a lot of people at the West Seattle Street Fair on an early Friday evening.

The ol’ Junction particularly teemed with kids. At times you couldn’t make your way down California Ave. without scrambling between traffic jams of double-wide plastic strollers.

Chris Ballew’s “Casper Babypants” act had a perfect captive audience.

On the main stage, Leslie Beattie, Kurt Bloch, and Mike Musburger (with the unseen-here Jim Sangster) in Thee Sgt. Major III warmed up an already warm audience with a rousing set. But the highlight of the night was yet to come.

Yes. For the first time in more than a decade, Bloch, Kim Warnick, Lulu Gargiulo, and Musburger were to perform a full set of their intense, brutally joyous (or is it joyously brutal?) power pop.

The street and the adjoining fenced-off beer garden were crammed with geezers like me who remembered the Fastbacks’ 1979-2001 reign. The street also had dozens who had not been yet born during that time. All were treated to one of the most electrifying, frenetic, and all-out rockin’ hours seen anywhere, at any time, by anyone.

If you ever saw the Fastbacks before, you know what I’m talking about. Even if you only heard them on record, you can imagine how great they were this night. All the great Bloch riffs. All the tomboyish Warnick/Gargiulo vocals, singing with gleeful passion about stuff you might not imagine could be portrayed that way (loneliness, depression, frustration).