POP MUSIC REVIEW : Molly Hatchet Hangs Tough With Boogie : Southern band no longer plays stadiums but still musters a pretty good mix of mainstream rock and beer-boogie.

Introducing Molly Hatchet at Peppers Golden Bear on Wednesday, some KNAC jock or another declared, “Yeah! We’ve got some true Americans up here! They’re gonna make you proud! We’re gonna kick some Iraqi (tail)!”

Somehow when the issue of linkage was raised in recent weeks, no one noted that Southern boogie bands were somehow tied up in resolving the Middle East crisis. And, all things considered, it might be best if the kicking were left to someone else, for if music were munitions, Molly Hatchet isn’t exactly what you would call a smart missile.

The band is named for a 17th-Century Southern prostitute notorious for, by some reports, cutting off her client’s heads; other accounts cite another body part. Not that the band would have needed either for the show it put on Wednesday: Its 12-song set was chock full of lowbrow intent and unadventurous musicianship.

Surprisingly, within those limits the group was really pretty good. They’re certainly more musical and less pose-happy than Cinderella and slews of other video-age metal-lite bands. And did they swing? A bit, with a solid-rocking rhythm section and some well-meshed guitar and keyboard parts. While far from being on a par with such golden-age Southern guitar bands as the Allman Bros., Marshall Tucker, or even Lynyrd Skynyrd, the six-piece outfit still hit a pretty good mix between pop and beer-boogie.

And for a band that has slid from playing stadiums to gigging in clubs, the members still seemed to have a lot of enthusiasm for their work. Perhaps that’s because most of the band’s present lineup wasn’t there when the group was churning out hit albums in the late ‘70s. Indeed, the only member left from the initial lineup is the original drummer’s foot, which fortunately had retained the rights to the band name. Actually, singer Danny Joe Brown still fronts the band, but the rest of the membership has changed.

True, he and the others could do to spend some time on the NordicTrack before making another run at the charts (1989’s optimistically titled “Lightning Strikes Twice” didn’t fare so well). Still, they acquitted themselves well on such songs as “Take Miss Lucy Home” and Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now” from their early albums and on the more recent melodic rocker “Heart of My Soul.” Guitarist Bobby Ingram played a few tasty solos, but “fast and loud” summed up most of his efforts. While that may be fine, perhaps even necessary, for one’s adolescent years, seeing these aging musicians still at it was embarrassing, sort of like having a dad who still blows up mailboxes with M-80 firecrackers.

Nowhere did that seem sillier than during the encore, when each musician in the band took an unaccompanied solo turn, which chiefly involved: playing very many notes; having a look of supreme exertion on their faces, as if they were lifting a car; and then taking big pauses for us to thank them for this effort. Fortunately singer Brown then announced, “We’ll play just as long as you’ll stay!” In arena-rock lingo, that invariably means, “You fools, we’re going to play exactly one more song,” which is just what Molly Hatchet did.