POP MUSIC REVIEW : WATERS TURNS FORUM TO ‘KAOS’

Film clips of starving refugees . . . a simulated nuclear holocaust followed by thousands lighting matches in the subsequent blackout . . . a hopeful closing anthem entitled “The Tide Is Turning.” The elaborately staged concert Sunday at the Forum had many of the earmarks of a “We Are the World” veteran at the helm. In fact, from a distance, the chap on stage wearing shades even looked a bit like Graham Nash.

But it was, in fact, Roger Waters, the supposed misanthrope and crank formerly behind Pink Floyd, now debuting his second post-Pink project, “Radio KAOS.” It’s a show revealing to anyone who previously failed to notice that when he’s not detailing his divorce, Waters can love mankind just as much as the next rock philanthropist, and probably on a more informed level.

Rather than picture the world ending with a pessimistic bang (as he did on the Floyd album “The Final Cut”), rock’s master of spectacle-with-meaning is actually feeling good enough with this new work to have his protagonist avert global nuclear destruction.

The main (albeit unseen) character, a psychic computer hacker with cerebral palsy named Billy (got that?), uses his skills to miraculously simulate imminent worldwide war. But, no “WarGames” hacker is he. He only means to scare the living jeepers out of everyone--and let the world’s life flash before its collective eyes, if you will--thus causing peoples of the Earth to stop and smell the roses and, presumably, stop building arms.

If this sounds implausible--even in as suspended a state of reality as at an arena rock show--well, it was. The personal, emotional devastation that has fueled Waters’ most brilliant concert pieces, like “The Wall” and “The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking” (both quasi-autobiographical), is mostly submerged in a narrative fantasy.

But if “Radio KAOS” seemed incomplete and less than moving on record, it’s dramatically improved as a big stage production--still thematically messy as a whole, but fleshed out and filled with many entertaining, even touching moments. Among them:

--Backup singer Doreen Chanter taking a soulful lead vocal as Billy’s aunt on “Molly’s Song” (not, unfortunately, included on the album), standing in front of a film clip of an orbiting satellite, wailing “Baby, when you coming home?”

--Audio-visual comparisons of worldwide defense spending versus hunger-relief spending, interrupted by the spooky, holophonic sounds of cash registers preceding Pink Floyd’s “Money”--sung here by keyboard player Paul Carrack.

--Waters’ reprise of his turn as a TV-saturated, motel-bound, burnt-out rock star in the pathetic “Nobody Home,” a number from “The Wall.”

--And, after a convincingly staged multimedia countdown to destruction, all those thousands of matches . . . a moving enough sight for those able to muster up the childlike naivete necessary to believe in Waters’ dark, liberal fairy tale and its light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel climax.

Forming the framework of the show was a live radio broadcast hosted from onstage by ex-KMET disc jockey Jim Ladd, reprising his album role as an airwave link to humanity for lonely Billy (whose end of the dialogue is represented by a computer-generated voice and printed readout).

The radio format, of course, also formed a convenient excuse for the inclusion of loose renditions of Pink Floyd oldies, some of them appropriate to the occasion and others quite arbitrary (which is the sort of trap you fall into when you’re competing with your former Floyd mates who are carrying on without you, no?).

Highlighting the informal--perhaps too informal--nature of Ladd’s broadcast was a phone booth plopped right in the middle of the Forum, from which fans asked questions of Ladd and even Waters himself (ranging from “Where do your words and music come from?” to “What’s your stand on the IRA?”).

Given Waters’ surprising openness, his move toward less moody and more mainstream rock sounds and the backing band’s lack of reverence when playing much of the Pink Floyd catalogue, it looks as if Waters is more than willing to leave Floyd’s former mysterioso image to his old bandmates/new rivals--without, of course, letting go of his title as reigning champion and king of rock-as-theater. Even with a show as uneven as this one, it’s a hefty mantle.