Pop Music Reviews : More of the Same From Rappin’ Wendy

“You never know what to expect from Wendy,” a guy walking toward the bar at Bogart’s observed Thursday just before Wendy O. Williams took the stage at the Long Beach club.

That might be true, but you didn’t need a White House astrologer to predict some elements of the show by the ex-Plasmatics singer (and we’re using the term singer quite loosely).

After all, in the early days, accompanied by the Plasmatics’ speedy rock rumblings, she used to bound all over the stage wearing electrician’s-tape pasties (or less), bashing TV sets or chain-sawing guitars and issuing vocals that stuck out like a sore throat.

Her solo career has pretty much been more of the same, at least musically, with Williams operating a bit more as a metal diva. So the audience expected some raspy singing and rip-roaring metal--and got plenty of both.

What they didn’t expect: the extreme brevity (50 minutes, including encores), a full audio-visual nod to the Plasmatics in the form of the decade-old “Butcher Baby,” complete with the chain-saw/guitar shtick, increased modesty by Williams and--get this--some rap songs.

Now Williams’ idea of rap is to have the bouncy verbal passages share equal time with gnarly fret-grinding, or to alternate the rappin’ with some thrash-metal blasts. This stuff was no less dreadful than her previous output. And, at the moment, she appears to be a devoted dilettante, considering that her new album is called “Deffest and the Baddest.” See? We never would’ve expected this from Wendy.