Grand Stand for Etheridge

During her three-hour concert on Sunday at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, Melissa Etheridge made one thing abundantly clear: A little of her music goes a long, long way. The Grammy-winning artist and her three-piece band stretched her flimsy blues-rock and folk-pop songs about as far as they could go, padding them with extended instrumental soloing, embellishing them with vocal histrionics and grandstanding with shameless self-indulgence. From the first number to the last, each tune was ratcheted well past overblown, and every song ending could have been the grand finale.

But the dizzying succession of arena-rock cliches only underscored the weaknesses of Etheridge’s material. She has won fans and built a career on venting everyday romantic angst, belting out its pain and joy in an agile, throaty roar not unlike Rod Stewart’s. Yet for all the painfully sincere Sturm und Drang, her work remains curiously vague emotionally. And despite the power-chord delivery system, these bland, pale imitation-Springsteen love songs became excruciating after three hours. Not even the excessive rock-show window dressing could alleviate the boredom.

An audience of adoring fans greeted Etheridge warmly as she celebrated the end of an extended tour supporting her latest album, 1995’s “Your Little Secret.” She performed the bulk of that record, including the pleading “I Want to Come Over” and the anthemic “Nowhere to Go,” as well as such older crowd-pleasers as “All American Girl” and “I’m the Only One.” Getting into the holiday spirit, Etheridge at one point donned a monogrammed Santa hat before doing a medley of John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” and “Give Peace a Chance.”

Elated and chatty, Etheridge wasted a lot of time talking between songs, slowing the momentum more than once, but also helping cultivate more familiarity than you get at the average arena show. Indeed, as much as the audience seemed to love every grand gesture, Etheridge’s most successful move came when she briefly set up shop on a satellite stage at the rear of the arena floor. There, she offered a preview of how she might perform as Janis Joplin in a proposed movie, doing a faithful-to-the-note solo rendition of the late blues-rocker’s arrangement of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee.”

Fans in the back of the hall were delighted when the band then stepped up for a mini-set that benefited from the bar-band intimacy of the smaller stage. But the arena gestures returned all too soon, as Etheridge introduced each band member, who then offered up, yes, an extended solo.

All the flashy trappings effectively obscured any genuine emotional notes the performance might have hit. Ultimately, the unrelenting high drama cranked this presentation too high too soon, leaving Etheridge with nowhere to go.