Commentary

Staff writer Mike Boehm has covered the pop music scene in Orange County for The Times since 1988--an assigment that has taken him from reporting on the rise to national prominence of local bands Offspring and No Doubt to reviewing Garth Brooks and Merle Haggard on Orange County stages.

AWARDS

L.A. Music Awards: Best Music Writer/Columnist

*

Orange County Press Club

3rd Place: Review/Criticism

*

Spit and Polish Styles Please Fans

By MIKE BOEHM

TIMES STAFF WRITER

June 25, 1996

Garth Brooks, phenomenon, and Merle Haggard, phenomenal musician, brought their acts to Orange County over the weekend.

Brooks’ extravaganza at the Pond of Anaheim was a marvel of zealous showmanship geared to create a transcendent contact high for himself and his fans. Any believable relation to a world apart from that shared cocoon of mutual bliss was incidental.

Haggard’s humble outdoor show Sunday, on the dusty grounds of the Taste of Orange County festival at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, wasn’t designed to escape or transcend everyday life but to capture it honestly and without varnish, song after memorable, authentic song, carried by some of the finest singing and ensemble playing a country music fan can encounter.

As the first show of Brooks’ three-night Pond engagement unfolded Saturday, it became clear that his gift as a performer is to be the sincerest of flatterers. Every plotted move and calculated effect in his two-hour show was designed to please his fans, to bridge the gap between stage and crowd, to flatter with unstinting attention. But for all that calculation and choreography, Brooks never seemed contrived. His devotion to his audience appeared sincere.

Scampering and leaping about his wide open stage in a red-striped shirt, tan slacks and a white cowboy hat, engaging in horseplay with his band--lavishing every close attention to his fans up front and every broad gesture to the ones far away--Brooks was a man immersed in wooing his crowd, not that it needed much wooing.