O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Some Sweet and Sour Notes Mark Tribute to Leo Fender

Many moments in Saturday’s Leo Fender Memorial Jam Benefit atUCI’s Bren Center did the late guitar-maker proud, as players of various stripes shared the music that his pioneering electric guitars, basses and amps made possible.

But, as a man who was obsessed with doing things right, Fender--who died March 21 (he would have been 82 on Saturday)--might well have been appalled by the incredibly slipshod production of the event.

First the good stuff: While not able to snare any of the arena-grade Fender players, promoters Leland Jeffries and Dan Cabbell did assemble a spectrum of artists who displayed the vast potentials, for better and worse, able to be drawn from the Orange County genius’ creations.

The memorial got off to a splendid, if very late start, with a set by paired Telecaster masters James Burton and Albert Lee. Since the mid-’50s Burton has been one of the major influences in rock and country guitar, and Britisher Lee is one of his finest acolytes. The two traded hot solos, both incisive and lyrical, over rockabilly standards and the Western swing music Fender loved best, including his favorite song, Bob Wills’ “Faded Love.”

The show’s other strong link to Fender was surf guitar king Dick Dale, who in the ‘60s served as a punishing road-tester for Fender’s products. Dale was one of the first in the ‘60s to push Fender’s electric guitar into new sonic realms, creating rumbling, crashing expressionistic sound paintings of the California surf. Though Dale is 54 now, Saturday he and his band played with an elemental fury which recalled the early Who in its impact.

Robben Ford played some remarkable blues soloing, the finesse and control of which detracted not a whit from its bite. He was joined on two numbers by Smokin’ Joe Bonamessa, a 13-year-old Stevie Ray Vaughan disciple from New York with a staggering facility on his Strat. Ford also had a fine, inventive-but-on-the-money bass player in Texan Roscoe Beck.

Robbie Krieger turned in a surprisingly focused set of Doors-minus-three material. “Love Me Two Times,” the flamenco-themed “Spanish Caravan,” “Roadhouse Blues” and other tunes were played with an economy and fire Krieger hasn’t always displayed in recent years. The late Allman Brothers bassist’s son, Berry Oakley Jr., performed with him, singing the Allman’s “Statesboro Blues,” with guitar perennial Jeff Baxter joining in.

Between the music acts, there was a touching speech from Fender’s widow, Phyllis, and remembrances from Fender associates Forrest White and Bill Carson.

Steve Lukather, Vivian Campbell, Carmine Appice and other musical Charles Nelson Reillys joined in a “top this!” jam ranging over the Jeff Beck arrangement of “Shapes of Things,” and the abused blues standards “You Shook Me” and “Goin’ Down.”

While all the players (excepting Poison’s C.C. Deville, but we’ll get to that) deserve praise for contributing their talents to the benefit (the proceeds, if any, will go to the Newport-based Parkinson’s Education Program, PEP-USA), not all the music was so praiseworthy. Randy Hansen’s closing set was his usual minstrel-show desecration of the music of Jimi Hendrix, full of tongue-lolling and contortions with none of the spirit, or even a passably accurate rendition of the technique, of the Stratocaster’s greatest innovator.

Young god Yngwie Malmsteen smashed a guitar, which his preceding set made seem like a very good idea. While Malmsteen may be the world’s fastest guitarist, with a bravado technique, he seemed incapable of sustaining a musical idea for longer than six seconds. It seemed more than symbolic that during his set the stage fog rose up to obscure the painting of Fender which graced a mural behind the stage.

Malmsteen did provide the evening’s funniest moment. After smashing his Strat (Boy, bet Leo would have loved that!), he clearly intended to torch it, but got his order of events wrong and tossed the body to the audience first. When they wouldn’t give it back, he pathetically poured his cup of lighter fluid on the stage and lit the puddle.

Poison guitarist Deville’s tribute to Fender, meanwhile, consisted of a self-serving, expletive-packed rant and useless ego-wank solo that got him roundly booed off the stage. While Fender’s amplified instruments opened up a new realm of expression to musicians, they also, unfortunately, make moronic tantrums harder to ignore.

While the show might have benefited from a bit less of that, the main problem was, organizationally, the thing was a royal squirrel-fest.

Minimally promoted, the show only drew about a tenth of the Bren’s 5,500 capacity, and that audience thinned out as the evening wore on. Despite several no-shows--including Albert Collins, Dweezil Zappa and Tim Bogert--the 3:45 p.m. start-time event wound up clocking in at over 10 hours, and ending near 2 a.m.

Over half of that time was dead air: In its first 3 1/2 hours--longer already than most major concerts--they only managed to put on two 30-minute sets, one of which was the justifiably unknown band of promoter Jeffries. Somewhat typical of the organization, or lack of it, was the decision at 10 p.m.--with the schedule already running more than three hours late--to add an impromptu look-how-fast-we-can-play jam from Baxter and bassist Jeff Berlin.

Meanwhile, the often muddy sound mix suggested that the event was instead being held to honor the inventor of the bass drum. Between sets the p.a. blasted out faceless metaloid music, when, with a minimum of effort (like just slapping on Rhino’s history of the guitar CDs) it could have offered further testament to Fender’s creations.