O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : ZZ Top: Recyclers, Indeed : In an Irvine Meadows show carefully crafted to uphold its well-defined sound and video identity, the Texas trio has about as much freedom to depart from the script as a Disney mannequin.

Its prevailing raunchiness aside, ZZ Top’s “Recycler” tour stop Sunday night at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre had all the trappings of a Disneyland attraction.

Virtually every moment of the Texas blues ‘n’ boogie trio’s show was dictated by cued staging effects, choreographed moves and a techno-conscious concept that stanched spontaneity.

This was concert-as-theme-ride, which is fine if “Pirates of the Caribbean” is your idea of excitement. Locked into prerecorded rhythm and synth parts on many songs, hemmed in by the demands of computerized lighting design and mechanized gags, committed to a near-constant sequence of movements and gestures related to its well-defined video identity, ZZ Top had about as much freedom to depart from the script as a Disney mannequin.

(ZZ’s theme ride did contain a lot of un-Disneylike sex. At one juncture, small onstage TV screens offered a nude video sequence that could have been culled from the Playboy Channel.)

On its three latest albums--”Eliminator,” “Afterburner” and “Recycler”--ZZ Top has built a better boogie machine, one that churns out a sleek but forceful brand of turbo-blues. In concert, the only thing freshly applied to that formula was a stage set done up like an automobile graveyard.

ZZ delivered true-to-the-record renditions of its songs, which frequently meant resorting to canned synthesizer buzzes and programmed rhythm embellishments. Under those conditions, the chances of sweat and fire were squeezed as badly as the prop autos that got compacted during the show’s most elaborate junkyard joke sequence.

A real keyboards player and extra percussionist might have given the proceedings a chance for some real-time immediacy. While the show never completely broke through its restraints, most of the freest moments came on such older numbers as “Waitin’ for the Bus,” “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” “La Grange” and “Tush,” which drummer Frank Beard, guitarist Billy Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill could play without the help of invisible hands.

ZZ Top did have some extra personnel on the payroll, but none of them so much as shook a tambourine, including the five female extras who turned up to cavort toward the end of the 100-minute show.

Gibbons and Hill spent the concert going through ambling, synchronized paces intended to play up to their video image as cool, wryly humorous, long-bearded twin shamans. In an apt metaphor for the entire concert, they did some of their pacing on a conveyor belt that allowed them to moonwalk without actually having to move an inch. Why bother to exert yourself when all that technology is working for you?

At least Gibbons provided the throbbing, simultaneously corrosive and gleaming guitar sound that is ZZ’s main feature. But there was nothing to challenge or prod him in unexpected directions. ZZ’s musical palette of chugging rockers, boogies and the occasional slow blues is narrow; under the weight of by-the-numbers arrangements, sameness was bound to set in.

In one of his few asides to the audience, Gibbons practically acknowledged that the show really was about recycling, rather than fresh approaches. After trilling a few notes during “Blue Jean Blues,” he commented: “That (lick) wasn’t on the record. That was just something special for tonight.” In this clockwork concert, those special somethings were rare. Sticking to the record and to the script was about all that mattered.

It should be noted that ZZ Top was playing under sad circumstances. Last week, a murder suspect led Houston police to the body of Cecile Ham, wife of Bill Ham, ZZ Top’s manager and record producer since the band’s inception 22 years ago.

It would be presumptuous to suggest that ZZ Top should somehow have touched on the killing during its show (it went unmentioned). But say the band members had wanted to use music as a way to convey their feelings of the moment--which is, after all, a primary purpose of music, especially the blues. The straitjacket of image and staging that ZZ Top has locked itself into would have made that virtually impossible (the show did include the existential lament, “2000 Blues,” but it turned into just another excuse for visual dazzle, with emotion taking a back seat to fancy laser effects).

Like Disneyland, ZZ Top’s concert world was a safely enclosed, carefully regulated, absolutely predictable fantasy place where anything terrible and real could never be allowed to intrude.

Extreme, a platinum-selling pop-metal band from Boston, met with a tepid crowd response, despite turning in a lively opening set that was well-sung and well-played, though not especially original.

While it is hard to get excited about yet another guitar pheenom dealing out post-Eddie Van Halen squeals and squiggles and classically influenced flurries of notes, Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt is one of the genre’s more listenable players. Within an inherently profligate genre, he showed a sense of proportion that gave his playing a honed thrust to go with more typical flash.

What’s unusual about Extreme is its sensibility: On the hit concept album, “Pornograffitti,” the band takes ironic potshots at casual sex (almost heresy for a pop-metal band) and extols true romance. The 45-minute opening slot didn’t allow for much exposition of ideas; instead, the set turned into a pastiche of clashing styles. There were rockers that could have been done by Aerosmith, Def Leppard or Van Halen, a hit acoustic ballad, “More Than Words,” that could have been crooned by Bread, and a mid-tempo number, “Hole Hearted,” that could have belonged to Supertramp.