Mellencamp Delivers an Intimate Concert

The Universal Amphitheatre is a lot bigger than your average bar, but John Mellencamp’s fast-paced 70-minute concert Friday felt distinctly like a TGIF celebration at your local watering hole. The veteran heartland rocker’s set of greatest hits sprinkled with several new tunes capped “FM 101.9 Unwrapped,” a Toys for Tots benefit that also featured the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

As on his latest album, “Mr. Happy Go Lucky,” Mellencamp spiked his traditional guitar rock with urban dance rhythms, giving his sound a contemporary edge. While the combination occasionally was infectious, the dynamic seven-piece band often played too slickly for the older material. Moments that should have seemed spontaneous--when backup musicians broke into rap, for instance--felt overrehearsed and stylistically incongruous. But these were offset by the genuine roadhouse excitement generated during a couple of ensemble jams.

Occasionally playing acoustic guitar, Mellencamp was relaxed and downright sociable, dancing around in his familiar, awkward-cool shuffle-and-jerk style.

For all the shenanigans, Mellencamp’s messages remain painfully sincere, and even his prototypical barbs were blunted. His paean to average America, “Pink Houses,” became less a resigned sneer and more a respectful ode. The tension and drama of “Rain on the Scarecrow” sounded real. But the rebel posturing in “Authority Song” seemed positively silly, even though the line “dyin’ to me don’t sound like all that much fun” has gained some resonance after Mellencamp’s heart attack in 1994.

Whether he keeps his sound au courant or not, Mellencamp probably always will have an audience--as long as there are people who believe as firmly as he apparently does in the power of teen romance, the purity of ‘60s rock and the nobility of the working class.