Garth Brooks at Bowl: It Sounded Good on Paper : Pop music review: In the end, the night’s experiments proved that it’s the song, not the presentation, that matters in country music.

“It’s going to be a different night,” Garth Brooks said good-naturedly at the start of his concert Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl.

“There are times when things are going to fly . . . and times when things will pretty much suck.”

Well, there wasn’t a whole lot of flying.

Not that the capacity audience appeared to notice.

It was Garthmania at the Bowl.

There were more cowboy hats than at a Texas rodeo and the endless shrieking of admiring fans rivaled the annual “1812 Overture” cannon blasts on the Bowl decibel meter.

After all, this was the country megastar’s only U.S. concert of 1994--a World Cup Week benefit that raised an estimated $1 million for One Voice, a Southland group that helps low-income families with physical, employment and educational needs.

Adding to the lure of the evening: Brooks, whose only tours this year are in Europe and Australia, is a performer with a strong sense of occasion.

He promised lots of surprises and they seemed enticing on paper: the first chance to see Brooks in an acoustic setting . . . with an orchestra . . . singing around a campfire with some Nashville songwriting buddies . . . and doing a series of songs by his musical heroes.

Of them all, the acoustic setting loomed as the most noteworthy.

Brooks has gained a lot of attention for his high-energy concert antics, including smashing guitars and swinging Tarzan-style across the stage.

But his real appeal grew out of coming up early in his recording career with uncommonly good songs. The best of them--including “The Dance,” “Unanswered Prayers” and “If Tomorrow Never Comes”--reflected on relationships and dreams with an intimacy and conviction that forged a strong emotional bond with his audience.

By performing these songs alone with an acoustic guitar, Brooks could give us the music at its most intimate. Yet he was joined in the acoustic segment Thursday by his seven-piece band, with drumming as vigorous as any rock show. The result was not that different from his regular performances--except for his own, more subdued manner.

The section with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra was no more involving. In fact, the pairing seemed comical in those moments when the musicians raced to keep up with some of his honky-tonk rev-ups.

Sharing the stage with songwriting buddies around an actual, blazing campfire was an interesting attempt at pop innocence, but the sequence proved self-conscious. You just can’t create the same mood in front of almost 18,000 people that you can back home on the farm.

And, finally, the salute to musical heroes turned out to be a shovelful of pop nostalgia, including Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Candle in the Wind,” James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” and Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Brooks’ renditions of the songs were so respectful that he brought no new sense of character or shading to them.

If there was any lesson from the night of experiments, it was a reminder that the presentation isn’t what matters in country music. The important thing is the song--and that has been Brooks’ weakness artistically in recent years.

Too many of the ones he performed Thursday and on recent albums have been laborious and conventional.

Brooks’ most appealing songs would still sound good if he was joined on a stage by a polka band. His challenge is to find more good songs, not ways to present them. That’s when he’ll fly again.

FOOTNOTE: There is no photograph accompanying this review because Brooks would not allow press photographers for the performance, though fans were able to bring in cameras. A spokeswoman for the singer said it was because he was too nervous about the special features of the show.