Pop Music : Sweetness Prevails in Smokey’s World

For 30 years, Smokey Robinson has held the public’s attention without resorting to most of the proven grabbers that everyone from Shakespeare to sitcom writers finds indispensable.

Noise, tumult, spite, torment, sarcasm, obsession, arrogance, eeriness, evil, violence and villains are banished from Robinson’s floating world. Sweetness and light and gentle romance prevail. Heartbreak enters, of course, but it’s tender and wistful, not depressive.

Consequently, when Robinson goes on stage, the building blocks for an emotional and psychological roller coaster aren’t there, although an arsenal of memorable hits certainly is. On Friday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, Robinson tried to carry his two-hour show with a tenor that remains creamy and rich, a song catalogue that has placed him in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame, and a stage manner that was warm, humble and extremely solicitous of his full house of fans.

Those qualities carried him about halfway there.

Robinson began with a fine idea: He’d do the ultimate crowd-pleasing show, encouraging fans to shout requests, then singing their favorites on demand. He certainly wasn’t in any danger of running out of good material.

But eventually Robinson began following his own plan, and the concert began to settle into a pleasant but placid groove. His rendition of the theme from “Lady Sings the Blues” regained some dramatic intensity, but instead of building from there to a forceful ending, he marked time with numbers like the laid-back “Cruisin’,” which stretched into a long contest to determine which side of the hall could sing the chorus the loudest.

The fans joined in lustily, but Robinson would have been better off trying to fire things up with such lively but omitted hits as “Being With You,” “Mickey’s Monkey” and “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me.”