POP MUSIC REVIEWS : A Night of Rock ‘n’ Roll Mavericks : Shucks! Replacements on Best Behavior at Palladium

The Replacements were, from all indications, sober throughout Thursday night’s show at Hollywood Palladium.

Occasional lyrical muffs aside, the playing was decent, the set energetically well paced. The group didn’t do anything truly goofy, like switching instruments mid-set, or playing mostly bad versions of other bands’ songs, or replacing the drummer with a member of the opening band--all of which the Minneapolis quartet has done on previous trips to town. In fact, the band thoughtfully played all of its most popular numbers for the eager fans.

So what was the matter with them, anyway?

Not that there’s anything exactly wrong with sobriety or semiprofessionalism or reliability, mind you; it’s just that the multitudes of renegade rock fans who quite understandably regard the Replacements as the current “world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band” have come to expect the unexpected.

With this wonderfully erratic group, there are good “lousy” shows and there are good “good” shows, and either way, the faithful wouldn’t trade away a one of ‘em.

This was one of the good “good” shows. Dressed uniformly in work jumpsuits, the quartet turned in a 70-minute performance that was, uh, workmanlike in consistency. And if you missed the dumb surprises that usually interrupt a typical Replacements set (i.e., no Kiss or BTO or Alice Cooper songs this time, shucks), you were amply compensated by the best ballroom blitzes of singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg--surely one of a handful of the great rock songwriters of our time--pumped up to the appropriately feverish, kick-butt clip.

Billboard magazine recently suggested that the group’s new single, “Can’t Hardly Wait,” might be commercial enough to follow new superstars R.E.M. up the pop charts. And the once super-irresponsible Replacements showed sure signs of responsibility Thursday by playing that single, as well as “Alex Chilton” and all the other college radio faves--when R.E.M., now a Top 10 act, was too elitist to muster up any of its most popular songs (including the current hit) during its latest visit to town.

Still, there are signs that the Replacements remain a long way from the kind of mass respectability R.E.M. is engendering these days.

Westerberg enunciates his often brilliant lyrics even less clearly than that band’s Michael Stipe, and strives for vocal tonality only about half the time (a generous estimate). Though the increasingly commercial albums have been increasingly produced , in concert the band’s guitar barrage still recalls the tiny motto printed on that crude first LP back in 1981: “File under power trash.” (The poor Palladium acoustics can take some credit for that as well.)

Yet if R.E.M. has passed beyond the stage of being the world’s most popular cult band, the Replacements surely have the potential to at least claim that mantle. Most of the thousands of fans at the Palladium looked bookish, smart even; yet the “slam” pit in the middle of the floor was highly active with the dunderheads susceptible only to power chords (a mostly post-punk motley crew now, but one that could easily spread to more mainstream hard-rock fans).

Key: No band appeals to both the masculine and feminine characteristics in rock fans more directly than the Replacements. When you can make him out, Westerberg is astonishingly sensitive (though the only truly blatant example Thursday was the set-closing ballad “Unsatisfied”; no doubt much of the crowd remained unaware that “The Ledge,” for example, is a harrowing song about suicide). But boys will be boys, and the Replacements will be cocky and aggressive and a little obnoxious in working it out. Were that we all were so well-balanced.

(Also, if you can judge a band by its covers, the Replacements still made time to trot out three good ‘uns: a mellow James Burton instrumental, the Stones’ “Happy,” and--for the final encore--the Petula Clark classic “Downtown.”)

L.A. power trio Concrete Blonde was the perfect other half of this bill with its own tough ‘n’ tender mix. A highlight was Johnette Napolitano singing a new song, “Little Conversations,” accompanied only by acoustic guitar, with the subject matter--the futility of small talk--serving as an apt metaphor for trying to communicate anything at the Palladium.