POP MUSIC REVIEW : Morrison’s Oddly Mixed Classic-Style Blues Revue

Van Morrison needed to do even less than usual to earn cheers from his audience at the Shrine Auditorium on Tuesday. He just had to return to the stage during one of sideman Brian Kennedy’s lead vocals and the crowd roared out its pleas for the star to take over.

On a night when Morrison himself was, by his standards, a solid, generous, occasionally almost playful central figure, his eccentricity as a performer manifested itself in some strange choices for his stage lineup, and a disorganized feel as singers and players came and went, apparently not always on cue.

Kennedy was the big problem, not because his high, soulful voice was bad, but because he was called on to sing songs the audience wanted to hear from Morrison, and because he undermined everything with distracting dancing--he looked like Andy Kaufman doing a berserk Boy George impression, and before long his every entrance was met with groans from the audience.

Appearing testy at the beginning, when harmonicas and mikes let him down, Morrison picked up steam and directed his energies into making this show a classic-style blues revue, complete with a warm-up jam, guest appearances by Jimmy Witherspoon and opening act Junior Wells, and a cheerleading emcee (trumpeter George Dickinson) to see him off at the end.

The price paid for this emphasis was the breadth of Morrison’s work: He offered little of his meditative side, and fairly perfunctory statements of some of the hits. But Morrison concerts are absorbing not because they compile a definitive career overview, but because they capture and expand into resonant art his feelings of the moment.

By that measure, mark this one down as an oddly memorable shade of blue.