Pop Music : Motorhead Revs Stale Bill

It can’t be easy trekking around the country as the tangy mustard in an otherwise bland noise sandwich, which is Motorhead’s lot these days.

“Operation Rock & Roll,” which landed at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Friday night, finds Motorhead stuck in the middle of a heavy-metal bill whose headliners are a dated caricature (Judas Priest) and a rock vaudevillian who remains competent but mired in the same old shtick (Alice Cooper).

Also along for the ride as early evening filler: a faceless young speed-metal act (Metal Church) and a pathetic Warrant wanna-be (Dangerous Toys).

Motorhead had just 35 minutes to ply its crude but brutally effective brand of hard rock. The veteran British band’s approach is limited and loud, but its aggression was bracing and genuine. It avoided that wheedly wheedly squiggle school of metal guitar; the tandem of Phil Campbell and Wurzel Burston played shrieking but shapely leads and crunching riffs.

Singer Lemmy Kilmister’s lyrics espouse no faith in humanity, which he views with a cynic’s curdled wit. That leaves only rock and its attendant hedonism as timbers to hang onto. Motorhead hung on fiercely.

As for Cooper, well, there isn’t a more bizarre and fascinating character in show business today. Oops, that’s Agent Cooper.

This 45-year-old Cooper simply gave us another look at the same old sadism, the same old boa constrictor. Still, nostalgia buffs and a new generation of fans might be legitimately amused by Alice ’91.

Aided by an enthusiastic, if overly metalloid young band, and armed with some credible material from his new album, “Hey Stoopid,” to fill in blanks between the oldies, he rocked well before getting bogged down with theatrics--including a dummy co-star--too silly to call macabre.

Judas Priest is said by its fans to be the quintessential heavy-metal band. They’re probably right. For those who have a need to bang heads and throw fists, Priest is surely utilitarian.

But anyone wanting more out of a concert had to wonder how a couple of quirky, potentially interesting choices of outside material, Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust” and Fleetwood Mac’s “The Green Manalishi,” wound up getting homogenized into the same screaming sludge that Judas Priest manufactures on its own.