POP MUSIC REVIEW : Crowd Is Immune to Garcia Death Throes : Deadheads: Who else but a member of the Dead could emerge triumphant with such a low-key approach?

On Sunday evening, the most famous of the Grateful Dead spinoffs--the Jerry Garcia Band, an intermittently active project formed in the early ‘70s by the Dead’s avuncular lead guitarist--played to almost 8,000 happy fans at Southwestern College’s Devore Stadium.

Like a scaled-down version of the Dead’s own shows, the Garcia gig served as a rallying point for a late-’60s time warp of loose-fitting, tie-dyed clothing, free-form dancing and prevailing mellowness--much of it fueled by medicinal compounds not available over the counter.

Garcia was backed by longtime associates Melvin Seals (keyboards), John Kahn (bass), David Kemper (drums), and vocalists Jackie LaBranch and Gloria Jones. This outfit essentially is a high-profile “cover band” that enables the 50-year-old guitarist to dip into his repertoire of favorite blues, R&B;, rock, pop and gospel tunes.

Together, the musicians maintained a slack-grooved musical pace that provided the final becalming element to this anachronistically idyllic, three-hour interlude. The few reminders of harsh, post-Reagan reality included one synapse casualty who wandered in front of the stage, randomly bashing people in the face with his fist, and the fact that tickets cost anywhere from $22.50 to $25.

Reviewing such an event as a “concert” presents problems, the most immediate being that the music is no more than co-equal with its peripheral components. It is less for the art-fix they offer than for the bonhomie they inspire that Dead-related concerts remain a strong draw. The audience’s relaxed standards place fewer performance demands on the band, which, in turn, makes the application of accepted critical yardsticks seem misplaced and curmudgeonly.

That handicap is exacerbated if the reviewer lacks the Deadhead chromosome that gives one access to the band’s encoded appeal. The indefinable “something” that makes even a horrifically sloppy Dead performance seem special to its followers is lost on nonbelievers, and that inscrutability extends to the Garcia aggregate.

With the exception of the occasional original tune plucked from one of Garcia’s solo albums, Sunday’s dinner-hour set-list consisted of other artists’ material. Most songs were given the Garcia treatment. That means they were slowed, warmed to a mellow glow, stretched until flaccid and painted with a Happy Face, as though Garcia’s interpretive apparatus were governed by Salvador Dali timepieces.

The band’s buttery approach was nicely complemented by the atmospheric element. The concert started at 5 p.m., when the sun still was high in the sky, but no longer threatening. The stage was erected at one end of the stadium, but the band’s sound equipment enabled them to play at a surprisingly low volume and still be clearly heard at the other end. From those remote reaches, one could imagine oneself lolling in the late-afternoon sun listening to a high-quality stereo.

The Garcia Band’s limp, loping version of Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell” and a sun-softened reading of Eric Clapton’s “Lay Down Sally” provided perfect groove-ground for the blissed assemblage, some of whom spent the entire concert deliriously spinning in place--for several minutes at a time--at the back of the crowd.

The first, hourlong set also included two Garcia staples--the slightly countrified gospel tune “My Brothers and Sisters,” and the shuffling “Deal” from the guitarist’s 1972 solo opus. To these, Garcia introduced his trademark lengthening agent--the rambling guitar solo--and his fans responded with the unobtrusive variety of enthusiasm characteristic of people in the grips of behavior-modifying pharmaceuticals.

Following a 45-minute intermission, Garcia led the band in a lax rendition of the already-slow ballad “(You Are My) Shining Star,” which was a 1980 hit for the soul-pop vocal group, the Manhattans. Complying with a pattern he established years ago, Garcia’s discursive solo turned the song into a 15-minute tranquilizer. At this point, one felt compelled to override any critical disclaimers.

At his best, Garcia is a good guitarist with a recognizable style that strings crystalline, blues-rock-country phrases together in a sort of lyrical shorthand. When he’s not at his best--and he wasn’t Sunday night--his improvisations assume a noodling shapelessness that locks them in place.

Several times during Sunday’s show, Garcia fumbled notes and failed to negotiate tricky transitional passages that ended up as a heap of broken licks. Although you wouldn’t have known it from the audience’s response, none of his solos built to anything resembling an improvisational resolution.

For all its apparent shortcomings, the concert must be considered a success. Who else but a member of the Dead could bring such a low-key approach to a stadium show and not only get away with it but emerge triumphant? Deadheads and their ilk left the concert imbued with the zeal of the faithful, having partaken of another quasi-spiritual, peace-love tune-up. And anyone wishing to quibble about the artistic values of the performance would be missing the point entirely.