POP MUSIC REVIEW : Benatar Takes a Blues Detour

Radio personality Bob Coburn set the stakes high in introducing the star attraction on Wednesday night at the Wiltern Theatre, setting forth the distinction between people to whom the blues is merely a passing thing and those who, as he put it, live the blues. “How many people here are lifers?” he baited.

The overwhelmingly white and well-scrubbed crowd--presumably more miserable than it looked--whooped it up in affirmation. Then that avatar of 12-bar tribulation, Pat Benatar, took the stage.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Nothing--if you’re not too much a purist to let Benatar temporarily take leave of pop-rock for a pleasantly unremarkable detour down blues alley. Everything--if you follow Coburn’s inadvertently damning logic to its conclusion, that only those who “live” the blues should sing it, since this is clearly a flirtation for recent convert Benatar. It’s a role she’s taken up with the voracious appropriation of a good actress, but well short of Oscar-caliber, willing-suspension-of-disbelief credibility.

Benatar ignored her back catalogue for this 75-minute show, relying almost solely on her current “True Love” album. The diva was more than game, husband Neil Giraldo proved an efficient enough blues guitarist, the Roomful of Blues horns threatened to kick out the jumpin’ jive on the up-tempo stuff, and the sold-out, 30-ish crowd ate it up like nouveau gumbo.

But Etta James (or even Lou Ann Barton) she ain’t. Each number--jumpy, lusty or heartbroken--was delivered with the same great gusto and not much emotional gradation. Benatar possesses a terrific voice but is still searching for her own voice, if you will. She seemed to be finding it a few years ago in such low-key, underrated albums as “Seven the Hard Way” but, now, with this affected acting gig, it’s hard to tell. Her little black blues dress suits her only slightly more naturally than the hard-rock spandex she deserted a decade ago.