POP MUSIC REVIEW : War Retreats to Nostalgia During Anaheim Concert

War, the Los Angeles band that once dared color its menacing blues-funk with dark Afro-Cuban passion before a Latin tinge was fashionable in rock, seems to have surrendered its ambition for simple nostalgia.

In a concert Friday night at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, the group, which once produced such distinctive hits as “The World Is a Ghetto” and “The Cisco Kid,” was content to merely pander to its heavily Chicano audience.

During its hour set, War not only abdicated the stage to a half-dozen tone-deaf amateurs who were invited on stage to take the lead on some songs, but also seemed to romanticize drug use with remarks that were cheered by teen-agers in the crowd.

The five-member band opened with “Low Rider,” a sort of Southwest anthem for members of a primarily Latino subculture whose most visible symbol is the ranfla, or customized car driven slow ‘n’ low.

For some, the low-rider life style is its own expression of rebellion. War has always had an instinct for this style of defiance.

In classic hits, including “The World Is a Ghetto,” the band synthesized the rage and despair of a generation of blacks and Latinos--especially for those who were victims of the Vietnam War or those who were trapped in Watts or East Los Angeles. Lee Oskar’s soaring, soulful harmonica solos and the primal rhythms of “Papa” Dee Allen on Latin percussion also provided fresh evidence of War’s unique duality: the rage-filled wail of the blues fused to the seething sensuality of the son montuno.

Early in “Low Rider,” however, guitarist Howard Scott broke into a homily about the virtues of home-grown marijuana, suggesting that the drug is an intricate part of the low-rider culture. Though feeding an offensive stereotype with his marijuana reference, Scott proceeded to go further by appearing to equate the low-rider culture with heroin use--slapping the inside of his arm as an addict might do before shooting up.

Later in the show, War performed “Slippin’ Into Darkness,” the early ‘70s hit about the evils of heroin addiction, but the song’s message seemed overshadowed by Scott’s actions.

In an interview backstage after the concert, Allen said the band didn’t endorse drug use, but merely reflected it as a social reality. “We recycle life in our music,” the 57-year-old percussionist said. “We refer to things that may be distasteful; we paint a picture of the world as it is or was. But people have a right to react against it.”

Still, the drug references seemed part of the band’s overall game-plan to pander to the crowd, a shtick that included an irritating parade of fans asked to sing on stage.

But there was one distraction that wasn’t the band’s fault: a fight in the rear of the 2,500-seat concert hall that led to a half-dozen police rushing in to stop the disturbance. Anaheim police said that one man was arrested for being “drunk and causing a disturbance.” But a second disturbance occurred, according to security staff and witnesses, when some other audience members battered a rear door in an apparent attempt to free the man arrested by the police.

The siege was ended when police brought in a police dog and cleared the area near the door.

The opening acts, El Chicano and Tierra, are also veteran Los Angeles bands. Despite their long-standing popularity with Latino audiences here, both bands refused to give into the demons of nostalgia.