Pop Music Reviews : Michelle Shocked Highlights Benefit at Wiltern

John Doe is a brave man. The former leader of X certainly knew the risk of performing Merle Haggard’s “Are the Good Times Really Over?” for the audience at Sunday’s benefit concert “commemorating 10 years of civil war in El Salvador” at the Wiltern Theatre.

He even warned the rhetoric-drenched crowd that it might not want to hear Haggard’s paean to times when the flag and the Liberty Bell were respected and “when a girl could still cook and still would.” True to his warning, the latter line drew loud hisses.

Doe wasn’t taking an anti-feminist view, but an anti-closed-minded one--a point underscored by its placement between a Kris Kristofferson-Jackson Browne duet of Little Steven Van Zandt’s balance-encouraging “I Am a Patriot” and an admonition from Michelle Shocked that politics shouldn’t be treated like a religion.

But otherwise it was a heavy-handed afternoon of music (highlighted by Shocked’s hot, blues-based swing), speeches and dramatic readings that left no room for opposing views. Songsters including Browne and Billy Bragg, and host Howard Hesseman and fellow actors including Esai Morales, Peter Horton and Alfre Woodard seemed to have no interest in debate.

The event served to kick off “In the Name of Peace,” a project in which people are asked to write names of killed Salvadorans on what is intended to be a permanent memorial. The project will be located in Exposition Park through March 23.