POP MUSIC REVIEW : A Tapestry of Old and New : In Costa Mesa, Carole King Rocks With a Graceful Mix of Yesterday, Today

On the cover of her signature album, “Tapestry,” Carole King appeared as a serene Madonna for the soft-rock early ‘70s, dressed in denim and wool and surrounded by her knitting and her tabby cat.

On stage Wednesday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, there were moments when a miniskirted, black-booted King resembled a Madonna of a different sort--or, to pick someone closer to her own age, perhaps a high-stepping Tina Turner. For significant segments of her two-hour show before a scaled-down but extremely happy house of about 2,500 fans, this 47-year-old mellow-pop icon strutted and pranced and behaved like a frisky, fun-loving rocker.

Not a minute of it was forced: Doing the Locomotion for all she was worth, King seemed like a Natural Woman--and the fun she was so clearly having proved infectious.

This unexpected strong suit as a confident rocker gave King a thoroughly winning hand that she played with command and finesse. When she wasn’t bopping out in front of her sharp, young, seven-member band, she could retreat to her reliable grand piano and play those sure-fire selections from “Tapestry”--10 in all, sprinkled judiciously through the set, most of them in crowd-pleasing, close-to-the-original form.

King balanced those mostly introspective “Tapestry” songs with an even older, but more exuberant batch from her ‘60s days as a Tin Pan Alley hit-generator (along with lyricist Gerry Goffin). Splice in seven well-placed songs from her solid new album, “City Streets,” and the result was a show that was familiar without being dated and that shifted constantly in musical focus and emotional mood. It built to a wonderful concluding sequence: a feisty, sexual “I Feel the Earth Move,” touching solo encore readings of “A Natural Woman” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” and a romping finale with “The Locomotion,” in which King and her band were helped out by opening act Wayne Toups & Zydecajun.

King’s one revamping of an old favorite was inspired, as she turned “Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” into a funk tune with a rap break. The song itself underscores the idea that physical affection is fleeting and that a deeper emotional bond is needed to make a romance work. The rap--not too far removed from the sentiment of Neneh Cherry’s recent hit, “Buffalo Stance”--was a fun but pointed demand for some R-E-S-P-E-C-T from a would-be lover who wants to invest in physical affection without paying the interest due on the requisite emotional bond.

Even what appeared to be false steps turned out to be good moves. “Jazzman” was one of the set’s more routine numbers, until King’s band took off with it in a fiery instrumental workout. In “Lovelight,” a techno-pop number, the rolling out of a hokey robot contraption as a prop was a dubious gimmick, and King’s decision to sing the song to canned accompaniment was more dubious still. But the song turned around with a nice sight gag and the band’s re-emergence in the nick of time.

One could quibble that King didn’t belt “Don’t Bring Me Down” with the authority of Eric Burdon, or that the self-consciously hip sarcasm of “Pleasant Valley Sunday” hasn’t worn well since the Monkees first did it. But they were fun, nonetheless. Only King’s new ballad, “Someone Who Believes in You,” was unconvincing, mainly because of a hackneyed Goffin lyric (sample: “We can have it all/No, we will never fall”). But some cliched, super-sentimental rhymes could hardly detract from a show that had about as much variety, warmth, energy and generosity as you could squeeze into two hours.

The opening set by Toups and Zydecajun might not have met purist standards of what a Cajun-zydeco band should be: It wasn’t nearly raw or insistently rhythmic enough to qualify as the real thing. But this is still a tight, zestful roots-rock band in which Toups’ Cajun accordion flair and unaffectedly energetic presence spiced a strong assortment of blues- and country-flavored songs. Toups’ only big mistake was tackling Aaron Neville’s “Tell It Like It Is.” It’s not that he didn’t give it a sincere, competent try. It’s just that Neville’s 1966 original is such a distinctive, sublimely sung moment in soul-music history that any attempt at a remake is going to sound inadequate.