POP MUSIC REVIEW : Little Fluff in Rabbitt Show : The veteran country performer has no bag of tricks, but his old standards seemed to satisfy an adoring audience at the Crazy Horse.

SANTA ANA —  Country music is getting a little weird lately. It used to be a world of beer-bellies, fistfights and muddy pickups. Now it’s like Chippendales, with singers who look like male models, replete with bulging pecs and stomach muscles so corrugated you could grate cheese on them.

One expects screaming and carrying on at a show by Billy Ray Cyrus or these other new test-tube country stars. But when an easy-going, veteran performer like Eddie Rabbitt starts getting wolfette whistles, you’ve got to wonder if they’re putting something in the water.

Six songs into his first show Monday night at the Crazy Horse Steak House, Rabbitt began getting loud calls of “Take it off!”

“That’s California girls for you,” the singer remarked. “They don’t start off easy with wanting just the jacket either, do they?”

Although the most the fans got him to doff was his blue jacket, Rabbitt seemed to satisfy on most other accounts, if the boisterous applause from the packed house was any indication. The Jersey-born singer may not do anything wonderfully, but he does a lot of things well.

As a songwriter, he has a knack for hooks that are as easy to listen to as they apparently are for him to write (he claims to have penned some of his biggest hits in less than 10 minutes). As a singer, he has a serviceable voice that sounds a bit like a throatier Mark Knopfler. As an entertainer, he has a relaxed command of his craft, making even the scripted, oft-repeated bits of his show seem moderately fresh.

Perhaps encouraged by the lively audience, Rabbitt turned in a longer-than-usual performance, clocking in at nearly 1 1/2 hours. There weren’t any surprises, but with the huge catalogue of hits he has to draw from, he didn’t need any.

He opened the show with “Rocky Mountain Music,” “Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight” and the insidiously hummable “Drivin’ My Life Away,” all of which sounded about as country as Journey or Boston. Rabbitt, who rode the late-’70s “Urban Cowboy” boom, isn’t exactly a traditionalist, new or old.

He followed those songs with a couple of his early honky-tonk barroom hits, “Drinkin’ My Baby (Off My Mind)” and “Two Dollars in the Jukebox.” While nice bits of song-crafting, there wasn’t much feeling to them, suggesting that their protagonist was perhaps crying into a lite beer.

Some of the other hits tackled by the bearded singer included the soft rock “Suspicions,” “Pure Love” (which gave Ronnie Milsap his first No. 1 hit), “Step By Step,” “On Second Thought,” “American Boy” and “I Love a Rainy Night.”

Minus the female voices, he also sang his Juice Newton duet, “Both to Each Other (Friends and Lovers),” and “Just You and I,” which he recorded with Crystal Gayle.

Rabbitt was backed by a tight-knit quintet. Unlike a lot of touring musicians, they seemed to actually enjoy their jobs, and that was conveyed by the music, although one wishes they would find a more appropriate tonal palette. Their musicianship sometimes seemed wasted because their heavy arena-rock volume and tone settings swamped some songs and obliterated Rabbitt’s vocal on “Kentucky Rain,” which might otherwise have been his best performance of the evening.

As he did last year, Rabbitt trotted his tour manager Bill Rehrig out for a bit of humorous banter.