MUSIC REVIEWS : Marathon Events Overshadow the Performances : Pop music: KROQ’s alternative-rock ‘Pre-Palooza’ is more miss than hit at Irvine Meadows. X’s comeback set is ferocious punk but ignores some of its best songs.

As we’ve learned from the “Lollapalooza” tours, marathon alternative-rock concerts, whatever their carnival value, tend to be more miss than hit when it comes to the music. A lot of today’s Angst -fueled, youth-oriented rockers simply can’t thrive in daylight or in big venues.

That’s how it was Saturday at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, where they staged the “Pre-Palooza,” otherwise known as KROQ’s First Annual Weenie Roast & Sing-A-Long.

Eight hours, 11 acts, zero delays. Among the highlights:

* X, flexing its muscle as well as its pride of place as the original spearhead of West Coast alternative rock, closed the show with a ferocious onslaught of straight punk. The pummeling, 53-minute set sounded much like 12 rounds with Smokin’ Joe Frazier must have felt. But as a result, the band, mounting a comeback with an aggressive new album, “Hey Zeus!,” ignored the strong anthem-rock of its middle period that accounted for some of the best, most melodic songs of its career.

* Terence Trent D’Arby asserted his immense, if not yet fully-realized, talent. After a severe slump, D’Arby appears to have re-established himself as a pop force to be reckoned with. Greeted tepidly, he earned the crowd’s attention and applause with kinetic dancing and a merger of tough rock and gritty soul, along with a touch of softer, Rod Stewart-like warmth.

* The Dutch band Bettie Serveert played an endearing, unaffected and affecting set of Velvet Underground-inspired garage-rock in which its unschooled awkwardness became a virtue. Carol Van Dijk’s on-stage reserve couldn’t chill the openhearted honesty of her music and her singing.

* The Stone Temple Pilots, by far the favorite of a sellout house of 15,000, proved that they are the Billy Joels of grunge--no insult (well, maybe just a little insult) intended. Like Joel, the Pilots distilled what’s most accessible in a very popular form and recycled it, making up for an utter absence of stylistic originality with skill, savvy and intense effort.

Singer Weiland, who dyes his shorn hair a bright pink and hails from Huntington Beach, may not have quite the lung-power or dervish presence of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, but he is no slouch on either count. A lot of the time STP sounds like a melodically enriched Soundgarden, or an Alice in Chains without the numbness. It’s no wonder that the Pilots’ debut album, “Core,” has closed in on the Top 10. * Rocket From the Crypt played an uneven but still memorable set. This hard-driving, working-man’s punk band from San Diego wielded two guitars, bass and drums as if they were sledgehammers, yet without the sense of monolithic dumbness that infects grunge. These guys are more into the Beatles than Black Sabbath, although they’re too caught up in roughing it to pay unstinting tribute to such an elegant influence.

For elegance, you had to turn to The The. This urbane, philosophically minded British band offered some power moves early in its second-billed set, but its best moments came with lighter, acoustic textures that emphasized melody and glistening piano.

John Easdale of Dramarama has had better days. Introduced as “the KROQ house band,” these longtime Southland favorites got an enthusiastic welcome and played a muscular (if horribly mixed) set. But the image that will stick is of Easdale discovering a heretofore unknown hazard of tobacco.

Intent on tossing individual smokes to the crowd as the band played its finale, “Last Cigarette,” Easdale forgot to look where he was going and took a frightening header off the stage. He quickly emerged, apparently not seriously hurt, and waved to the crowd. If he’d used his noggin to come up with less literal-minded stagecraft, Easdale might have avoided falling on it.

The four other bands, all power-poppers undermined by rotten sound as well as more intrinsic problems, were disappointing, although not truly awful (the Gin Blossoms, the Posies, the Lemonheads and Suede in descending order of appeal). The “Weenie Roast” was a benefit, with proceeds going to the environmental group Heal the Bay. There was no announcement of the amount raised.