TOP-RATTED ROCKERS BLOW OUT THE CIRCUITS

I don’t think much of Ratt’s music, but you’ve got to admit Ratt is a clever name for a hard-rock band.

Much of the fun of the quintet’s homecoming concert Saturday at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre was seeing the plays on the name. Among the phrases spotted on T-shirts: “Ratt ‘n’ Roll,” “Ratt Patrol” and “Ratt-a-tatt-tatt.”

But the most amusing variation came when a power failure interrupted the band’s performance for an hour. The group’s army of “rodent rockers” got a chance to dig into their Ratt dictionary for the perfect complaint: Ratts.

As it turned out, the interruption may have been the most memorable part of the night. Everyone loves misadventures. You can imagine nostalgic Ratt fans reminiscing someday about the night they waited five, 10 or 20 hours for their heroes.

When I say reminisce, I’m speaking, of course, about six months from now. Ratt’s “Out of the Cellar” LP may have sold millions, but this isn’t a gripping or original band. It’s the kind of temporary teen fave that is often shed the same time high school seniors clean out their lockers.

But the interruption did give everyone a chance to people-watch. And this audience came to be watched--at least the girls, most of whom were in their late teens.

Though attire ranged from mini-skirts to Spandex pants, the common denominator was tightness. This was real Body Talk. The girls paraded up and down the aisles when the houselights were on--much like cars cruisin’ the boulevard, drawing loud whistles and ratt-calls.

Because Ratt has generally been lumped into the head-banging heavy-metal school of rock, you’d expect the males to be decked out in black leather jackets, chains and motorcycle gloves. But this Ratt pack tended toward more modest garb. Many of the guys had enough traces of renegade clothing to make you think they had ridden to the concert on motorcycles. But with hard-core heavy-metal fans, the idea is to appear so tough and weathered that you look as if you had been run over by motorcycles.

Ratt did put on a flashy, energetic, crowd-pleasing show, but the music, staging and visual antics were a shameless compendium of numerous semi-heavy-metal outfits, from Aerosmith and Kiss to AC/DC and Van Halen.

The good news is the band also shares the sense of good-natured, show-biz hucksterism of many of those bands. There’s none of the dark, demented or humorless traits associated with many hard-core heavy-metal groups. The emphasis may be on sex and partying, but it’s not on devil worship and violence.

The “rodents” sat patiently through the long delay and cheered with all their might when the show resumed. By midnight, however, I had enough. The power shortage may have been solved, but the idea shortage wasn’t.

Bon Jovi, the opening act, is another melodic, hard-rock group that believes in giving the fans everything they want in a fast-paced, party-time package. The fact that it drew such a strong response on Ratt’s home turf is a sign that it has a future. However, the East Coast quintet could use a better name. Bon Jovi doesn’t exactly lend itself to puns.