Dream Teams Abound Except for One : VH-1’s First Award Show Delivers a Star-Studded Lineup

As VH-1, MTV’s sister network, has struggled to resolve an identity crisis and come into its own, it was inevitable the process would involve the cable web establishing its own annual awards show-cum-industry schmoozefest. But what, at this late date, to give awards for?

Honoring celebrity charity endeavors was what finally was settled upon, making public hoopla out of private altruism.

But wait.

Didn’t this spring’s first annual Jackson Family Honors already nail that angle? And sooo definitively.

Well, there’s always room for two. The first issuing of the VH-1 Honors, telecast live Sunday from the Shrine Auditorium, may not go down in charity-event infamy with the Jacksons’ juicy debacle.

But it did provide another example of MTV Networks doing what they do best: event programming where the ostensible purpose of the event is markedly less significant than giving viewers one-off performances they won’t see anywhere else.

So, while VH-1’s lineup of performing philanthropists--Bonnie Raitt, Garth Brooks, Al Green, Michael Bolton, Melissa Etheridge, Stevie Wonder, Kenny G and “the artist formerly known as Prince”--was predictably star-studded, the real draw was the promise of duets, trios, million-dollar quartets and what have you.

This indeed proved the case, with results that were alternately fun and forced, but pretty consistently above the awards-show norm. Despite some hokum, you didn’t feel overly charitable for staying tuned in.

The opening anthem, “Heaven Help Us All,” had Wonder joined in quick succession by Green, Raitt and Etheridge for a peppy group sing that was more good photo-op than sustained thrill. But the evening’s calculatedly historic confabs picked up from there.

Initial honoree Brooks, who’d already done a bang-up “Baton Rouge” with a bluegrass band, stuck around to duet with the presenter who introduced him, James Taylor, on “Sweet Baby James,” the country crooner’s apprentice-like awe evident in his beatific look during his professed idol’s turns at the mike.

Next, the Rev. Al worked the house like his Memphis congregation, reviving “Let’s Stay Together” with all his pre-clergy magnetism intact.

Green’s solo spot was the evening’s highlight, though his subsequent soul-o-rama teaming with Raitt and her presenter, Mavis Staples, on a medley of “Tired of Being Alone” and “I’ll Take You There” was the clear crowd favorite through sheer quantity of charisma.

Unfortunately, presenter Kathy Ireland did not duet with her honoree, Michael Bolton, whose arena-rock revivalism on “Ain’t Got Nothing If You Ain’t Got Love” could have used either a fly or a super model in the ointment. Neither, alas, did Kenny G, Mr. Circular Breathing, make use of the heavy breathing of his introducer, Jon Lovitz.

Other pairings included a near-sublime match of Wonder with Take 6, and a fair--if outclassed--meeting between Etheridge and Sammy Hagar on “Honky Tonk Women.”

Not surprisingly, the artist known as “the artist formerly known as Prince” (in lieu of reinventing the language, we’ll call him TAFKAP for short) didn’t deign to share his climactic spotlight with lesser mortals. And didn’t need to.

While TAFKAP understandably provokes cynicism among the grown-ups toward which VH-1 is geared, his galvanizing barnstorm here was a timely memory-jogger to the effect that he’s as stunning a concert performer as he is a cheesy self-packager.

Never mind the dancers in pasties and fright wigs: TAFKAP’s “Interactive” (currently available only on the CD-ROM of the same name, in a recording far outstripped by the live version) momentarily re-established him as a monster of a rock ‘n’ roll guitar-wielder, a vein he hasn’t much mined since the mid-’80s.

Ellen DeGeneres hosted the 2 1/2-hour-plus overtime telecast, usually quite amusingly (though someone should have warned her the “More Than a Woman”/”Bald-Headed Woman” schtick in her monologue is as old as the ages). Jermaine Jackson couldn’t have done it better.