POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rockers From Out of Town Spike ‘Fun’ Raiser’s Punch

The Ringling Sisters’ ninth annual Holiday “Fun” Raiser may have sprung from a well of good intentions, but, Monday at the Palace, the six-hour benefit show--featuring a roster of rockers, poets and performance artists--let off more of a constant fizzle than a resonating bang.

Local punk luminaries X, the Circle Jerks, former Blaster Dave Alvin and the host Ringling Sisters, along with newer bands such as Possum Dixon, all played 20-minute sets, mostly with seasonal gusto. But it was out-of-towners Jim Carroll, 7 Year Bitch and Babes in Toyland that proved high points in the generally slow night. (Proceeds will go to the Hollygrove Orphanage, Rock for Choice, the free speech rights organization F.A.I.R. and the Los Angeles Youth Network.)

Carroll, a noted New York poet who found a niche in the early punk scene, joined L.A. popsters Possum Dixon for one of the evening’s best songs, a rowdy version of Carroll’s 1980 classic “People Who Died.” That followed an earlier reading by Carroll, which emerged as one of the night’s most compelling sets, although half of the audience talked through it. Carroll focused on the inhumanity of the Bosnian war and the downward spiral of Kurt Cobain in simple yet gripping terms, minus the dramatics and cryptic imagery that often make spoken word unbearable.

Seattle’s 7 Year Bitch was perhaps the biggest draw for the bohemian crowd, many of whom left after the quartet’s driving, mean set. Singer Selene Vigil’s raspy and demanding delivery of tunes like “Kiss My Ass Goodbye” and, fittingly, Carroll’s “It’s Too Late” pumped vibrancy into the half-filled venue, while the band played big, fat rock grooves somewhere between AC/DC and Black Flag.

Babes in Toyland, the Minneapolis trio that laid the groundwork for bands like Hole and even the entire Riot Grrrl movement, blasted the room with pounding beats and Kat Bjelland’s louder-than-God roars. The singer-guitarist manipulated her voice from eerily sweet whispers to rabid expulsions, a much-needed dynamic for the tired crowd.

X was the biggest disappointment of the evening, seeming as if it hadn’t played together for a while. Its usually tight delivery was sluggish and careless, while singers John Doe and Exene Cervenka never hit the bent harmonies that made up half the band’s original appeal.

The recently reformed Circle Jerks closed the show with the speedy, hit-and-run sing-alongs that made them hardcore heroes 14 years ago. The quartet, which is working on its first album in years and just happens to be resurfacing during a supposed punk resurgence spearheaded by Green Day and the Offspring, didn’t really do much more than deliver a blast from the past. But so what? It’s their past to reclaim.