Tears for Fears Trades Gloom for Funk at Forum

When Tears for Fears last came through town 4 1/2 years ago, the English duo--made up of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith--was pretty much the Doug and Wendy Whiner of techno-pop. For all their talk of Jungian catharsis and the need to “shout it all out,” their gloom remained shrill, their manner stiff, all that terribly weighty youthful anxiety apparently unexorcised. They could have been voted Least Likely to Get Loose.

Well, guess who got funky.

“I want you to put your hands in the air, and wave ‘em like you just don’t care!” This was the familiar cheer Thursday at the Forum, led not by Orzabal or Smith but by one of their black female back-up singers, who was wrapping up an honest-to-gosh rap run-through of the lyrics to, yes, “Shout.”

Who needs primal scream therapy when you have rap radio KDAY, right?

Few would disagree that Tears for Fears puts on a far more enjoyable and less self-serious show now than in days past, though cynics may not find it ultimately any more satisfying. In this R&B-oriented; mode, non-fans will likely see the duo as simply having traded one set of pretensions for another, having shed the mantle of Tortured Artist to go native and take on the mantle of Soul Men.

Certainly it’s easier to throw on the clothes of black music than it is to actually inhabit them. And, as much fun as they sometimes appeared to honestly be having on stage, Orzabal and Smith are still enough the English stiffs that, when they sing alongside their Kansas City-based pianist/vocal partner, Oleta Adams, it’s a little like Lee Atwater sitting in with B.B. King.

But if Lee Atwater playing the blues beats Atwater giving a speech, Tears for Fears adopting a joyful, indigenous American music beats TFF sobbing crocodile computer tears in their British ale.

The use of pre-programming was toned down, limited largely to older songs, like the mini-retrospective that started the show off. (“It’s nice to come to a place where they all know the first album,” said Smith, kissing up to the sold-out crowd. “Here is where we started,” he added, referring to L.A. fans’ early, pre-platinum Tearfulness.)

Then the recent album “Seeds of Love” was introduced with “Woman in Chains,” a lovely (if mawkishly feminist) ballad featuring the gloriously voiced Adams--who sat behind a piano on a riser at stage rear--as a duet partner. From then on, it was even more clear that Adams is the secret weapon in Tears for Fears’ latest musical move, without whom the show would be a well-mapped bust; if only they were wise enough to feature her lead vocals on some of their older material as well.

It was the old Tears for Fears that had Smith, in the somber but friendly tone of a high-school English teacher addressing his class, introducing “Famous Last Words”--an end-of-the-world ditty having to do with lovers dying together and such romantic notions--as “a song about the acceptance of mortality.” Danger sign! But it was the new TFF that had the song’s coda be a rousing version of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” followed by a wonderful mid-tempo gospel number sung solely by Adams.

From there, the band launched into the very gospel-driven “Badman’s Song”--another duet with Adams--by which time the celebratory mode was strong enough that it likely alienated those very teens who came specifically to feel alienated. Much of the new material, and some of the rearranged old, sounds more like latter-day Joe Jackson with its congas, piano and sax than it does like the techno-pop of yore. Orzabal even introduced their drummer as “the man who would make anybody throw their drum machine out the window,” and the heresy was complete.

The final encore of “Shout,” while still saddled with a fairly doomy arrangement, finally was--in the context of the cheerfulness that had come before--the cathartic capper always intended. It wasn’t necessarily convincing, but scored for craft and intent.

A well-received Deborah Harry opened the show with a likable muzzle of loose (but, of course, sequencer-updated) power pop and a flash of lingerie.

OBSCENITY ACQUITTAL: A jury in Alexander City, Ala., Thursday acquitted a record store owner of obscenity charges for selling a tape of the rap group 2 Live Crew’s sexually explicit “Move Somethin’ ” album. The Circuit Court trial reversed a Municipal Court’s guilty verdict against Tommy Hammond for violating a 1983 city ordinance.

Though the charges carried a fine of only $500, many observers, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Miami-based Skyywalker Records, 2 Live Crew’s label, considered the case a potential landmark, saying that it was the first time music had been found to be obscene. After the acquittal, one juror said that the recording, though explicit, wasn’t any more offensive than other films, magazines and music that are tolerated in the community.

GRAMMYS VERSUS CRITICS: Bonnie Raitt swept the music industry’s Grammy Awards on Wednesday, but her “Nick of Time” album finished only 19th in the Village Voice’s annual poll of 255 U.S. pop music critics, behind Grammy-nominated entries from Tom Petty (No. 11 in the Voice poll) and Fine Young Cannibals (No. 13).

On the singles front, Bette Midler’s Grammy-winner “Wind Beneath My Wings” was nowhere to be found on the Voice’s Top 25, in which Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” (a nominee, but not a winner, in the Grammy rap category), took the honors. The B-52’s “Love Shack,” at No. 8, was the only other best-single nominee on the list. Rap Grammy winner Young M.C.’s “Bust a Move,” finished sixth.

The critics named New York rap trio De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising” the best album of 1989. The rest of the Top 10, in order: Neil Young’s “Freedom,” Lou Reed’s “New York,”, the Neville Brothers’ “Yellow Moon,” Neneh Cherry’s “Raw Like Sushi,” N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton,” Elvis Costello’s “Spike,” the Mekons’ “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Soul II Soul’s “Keep on Movin’ ” and the Pixies’ “Doolittle.”

“Fight the Power” was trailed on the critics’ list of 10 best singles by Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance,” Soul II Soul’s “Keep on Movin’,” the Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy,” Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing,” “Bust a Move,” Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” “Love Shack,” Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” and the Rolling Stones’ “Mixed Emotions.”