POP WEEKEND : Cinderella Proves Calculated, Vacuous at Irvine Meadows

Although Cinderella played until just about midnight at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Friday, the metal-lite quartet did not undergo any of the coach-into-pumpkin transformations of its fairy-tale namesake. But one could easily imagine such changes occurring: guitars becoming briefcases, Marshall amp stacks turning into investment condos and perhaps Cinderella’s members themselves rightfully reverting into inside traders and ad execs.

Perhaps the saddest and most prophetic line in rock music may have been Pete Townshend’s “Meet the new boss--same as the old boss.” Where rock and its attendant youth culture once aspired to chuck aside the hollow affectations of showbiz--striving instead for an unfettered honesty, immediacy and sense of life--rock music as embodied by Cinderella is easily as calculated, vacuous and pandering to the lowest common denominator as anything Las Vegas could have ever offered.

Indeed, compared with Cinderella front man Tom Keifer, Sammy Davis Jr. is practically Muddy Waters.

Keifer and his three band mates enacted their two-hour performance on a befogged, multitiered stage incorporating 120 headlights pointing straight into the audience, creating a visual treat usually enjoyed only by doomed opossums on the highway. Combined with a sound system so loud it ruined hair styles in the front rows, the message subtly implied by the band’s staging seemed to be “we are your gods.”

That sense of Olympian distance was further suggested when Keifer--visually a cross between Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler and pretzel-logo Mr. Salty--ran through the audience at mid-show. When Bruce Springsteen or Peter Gabriel have headed into crowds, it was with an unguarded trust that celebrated their and the audiences’ common humanity. That notion seemed somewhat obscured when Keifer moved into the Irvine Meadows aisles amid a phalanx of security guards who straight-armed any fans who dared get too close to their hero.

Musically, the band combined elements of Aerosmith’s hard rock with a lighter, Bon Jovial approach, though lacking the humor and kick of the former and the craftsmanship of the latter. Drawing upon nothing but their own raw talent (oh yes, and offstage musicians and prerecorded tapes, and drum machines, and some $30,000 of digital processing equipment--all quite handy for enriching, say, a limited voice), guitarist-singer Keifer, guitarist Jeff LaBar, bassist Eric Brittingham and drummer Fred Coury did a competent job of delivering music-video-like versions of their recorded works.

Keifer lacked the power to capture the full-throated silverware-in-the-garbage-disposal vocals of opening acts Badlands and Tangiers, relying instead on a Tyler-esque chalkboard screech to make the band’s 18 songs memorable.

He did have his stage moves down, most notably the fervent thrusting up of the index-finger-and-pinky Satan salute popularized by Richard Ramirez. His other skills included being lowered to the stage on a platform while playing a fake grand piano on “Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Till It’s Gone)” and exchanging overwrought white-guy blues licks with LaBar, each continually wincing and grimacing as if undergoing an extended proctological exam.

Other, er, highlights included an insipid drum solo from Coury, in which he paused every few bars to coax applause from the crowd, and a blizzard of ersatz snow unleashed during the encore “Long Cold Winter,” a minor-key blues with every nuance borrowed , shall we say, from Led Zep’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You.”

The band also attempted the Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” before being joined on stage by other metal luminaries for a closing pose-a-thon.

While opening act Tangiers was virtually indistinguishable from the hundreds of other metaloid bands that crowd the vanity ads of BAM Magazine, the second-billed Badlands, featuring ex-Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee, played with an edge and abandon that at least gave the impression that one was watching a live band instead of a protracted video.