POP MUSIC REVIEW : Benefit for El Rescate in Words, Music

Whether to book political or apolitical talent--this is the traditional dilemma of benefit concert organizers, who really can’t quite win either way.

Sunday’s 10th anniversary benefit show for El Rescate at the Wiltern Theatre pulled off an interesting hat trick, then. Musical headliners Melissa Etheridge, Michael Penn and Peter Himmelman, though their politically correct credentials aren’t in doubt, have never been known to write material specific to this cause--Central American refugees and their treatment by Americans--or any other, and they didn’t come up with any for the occasion. Instead, responsibility to get the message across fell solely to the interstitial material between acts.

It’s quite a credit to the show’s organizers that this spoken-word agitprop was often as entertaining as the music. Actors including Rae Dawn Chong, Julie Carmen, Edward James Olmos and Michele Greene read excerpts from transcripts of interviews with El Rescate volunteers and refugees, usually in the form of humorous or poignant anecdotes.

The three toppers’ acoustic sets were short and strong. Most appropriately, spiritually minded Himmelman sang moving tales of transcendence, with titles like “Impermanent Things” and “This Too Will Pass.”

And if crowd favorite Etheridge’s lost-love folk-blues were more tenuously connected to the proceedings, her infamous vocal passion fit right in. A further stretch for some of the largely activist audience was Penn and his more low-key, obtuse writing--though he got a big laugh by changing a line of his “No Myth” to “What if I was rico suave ?”

Bringing the Latin connection home more squarely was traditional group Sangre Machehual, plus comedy troupe Culture Clash, which bypassed opportunities for satire in favor of pure silliness in its brief set.

Unfortunately for El Rescate and its planned community center, the lack of the usual suspects (i.e., frequent headliners Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, etc.)--combined with a perceived lack of political urgency due to the current cease-fire in El Salvador--resulted in a draw well short of sold out.