Art Neville sat on the arm of a backstage sofa at the Fillmore Auditorium, smoking a cigarette and sipping a little white wine before showtime. His cane lay across his leg. He had been rolled into the downstairs dressing room minutes before in a wheelchair.

"I'm thankful I lived long enough to see this happen," the 67-year-old musician said.

Leader of New Orleans' first family of funk, the Neville Brothers, Art Neville was about to take the stage with the Meters, the almost legendary four-man band he founded that flourished in New Orleans for 10 years before finally dissolving in 1977 after much frustration and discouragement at the band's inability to succeed anywhere else.

The Meters may have gone away, but the music never did. Hip-hop artists sample the old records practically daily. The public may have never known the group, but musicians always did. Jazz pianist Joe Zawinul studied Meters records before starting his fusion group, Weather Report. Guitarist Leo Nocentelli is one of Keith Richards' favorites.

The band tried out a one-night reunion five years ago in San Francisco and, again, earlier this year at the New Orleans Jazzfest. A few select dates were booked for the month of November, testing the waters for a full-scale tour of Europe next year. Slowly, tentatively, the band may be coming back to life. Although the Meters' biggest hit single, "Cissy Strut," topped out at a hardly stratospheric No. 23 on the pop charts in 1969, the reunion drew two full houses to the Fillmore on Friday and Saturday, way more than the band could have expected to draw during its actual heyday, and this crowd paid a whopping $75 a head for the privilege.

Each one of the band's four members is a certified master of his instrument -- scientists, surgeons, professional assassins one and all. Together, they share a language that only they can speak. For two and a half hours on Friday at the Fillmore, the Meters used the band's songbook as a starting point for explorations and excursions that veered off at surprising, and rewarding, angles. At almost every turn, the musicians passed the baton back and forth with the smooth, practically unconscious assurance of people who literally grew up playing music together. In fact, when Neville first put the band together, the other three musicians were so young, he had to ask their parents' permission before he could book a date.

They stretched out pieces such as "People Say" and "Ain't No Use" past 20 minutes, Nocentelli leading the forays with glistening, dancing, silvery streams, pausing only long enough to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, who has lived for many years in the East Bay, was nothing short of an absolute marvel, his polyrhythmic accents and decorations detonating behind the massive sound. Bassist George Porter Jr. didn't just keep the bottom moving; he propelled the whole sound. Nocentelli and Modeliste started up a loose-limbed tattoo, but when Porter slapped his first three notes on top of them, the music sealed into a groove and "Fire on the Bayou" exploded from the band.

"You're older, but you're still funky," Neville told Porter approvingly.

After the original group broke up -- the Meters recorded the group's final album, "New Directions," in 1977 in San Francisco -- Neville went on to some considerable recognition with his family band, the Neville Brothers. Yet, he still missed playing the kind of music he made with the Meters. He brought back a version in 1989 without Modeliste, who was embroiled in litigation surrounding the group's many contractual disagreements, and although Nocentelli, who also lives in California, drifted away, the Funky Meters, as Neville renamed the second edition, began to develop a following on the jam-band scene. When back surgery that went awry almost killed Neville a few years ago, making it difficult for him to walk, he grew determined to put back together this historic, monumental collaboration.

In the band's day, the Meters may have been too aggressive for R&B audiences and too vernacular for the rock crowd. But as times have changed and barriers in pop music audiences fell away, the Meters appear perfectly poised to appeal to a wide cross section of today's pop music public, who have never heard the kind of ensemble improvisations that are the Meters' specialty.

Art Neville has seen much death and destruction in his life. He started his band with his brothers, with money they got after a hit-and-run driver killed their mother. He was out of town when Katrina struck, but he said he won't go back to New Orleans now. "I'll remember it like it was," he said.

But he has reclaimed the Meters, and his joy was palpable at times onstage at the Fillmore. He drove the band's ferocious sound with keyboards, but then there he was, sitting behind his Hammond B3 organ laughing uproariously and pointing his finger at one especially fabulous George Porter bass solo, just like any other fan in the place, only with the best seat in the house.