O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Only the Hair Was Truly There

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO â€”  Word has it that the talent buyer at a hot new Hollywood nightclub had a particularly stressful evening not long ago. His headliner canceled at the last minute, after all 1,200 tickets to the show had been sold. Desperate to somehow salvage things, the buyer recalled that Little Richard lived right across the street. He called immediately and asked Richard’s assistant to see if the rock legend would be willing to fill in.

After several tense moments, the assistant reportedly related the word:

“Richard says he regrets to tell you that his hair just is not prepared for such an eventuality.�

The 61-year-old rock legend’s hair most certainly was prepared for his early show at the Coach House Sunday night, as was his voice and those pumping, flying piano fingers of his. But little else was prepared, and what could have been a true rock event was instead a frustrating, uneven display of talent and pique.

His band showed up hours late for its sound check and wound up doing a cursory one after 7 p.m., when the show itself should have started. The results were a shortened performance, numerous microphone and feedback problems and, even at its best, a sound mix that obscured what people had come to hear: Richard’s voice and piano.

That voice, that piano and the spirit that fired them blazed the trail for rock in the mid-’50s, showing just how wild and unfettered this music could be. Whatever nonsense syllables Little Richard Penniman may have uttered, his inescapable message was freedom.

He was a spectacle, and perhaps by being so--by donning mascara and acting “the Bronze Liberace�--his blackness seemed less a threat to white audiences. In any case, he was among the first to reach across the color line. But maybe that was just because no kid was going to settle for Pat Boone’s pallid cover of “Long Tall Sally� when he or she could have the glorious train explosion that was Richard’s rendition.

More recently Richard has reached a new generation of youth, recording such children’s fare as “Itsy Bitsy Spider� with great success. Most in the audience Sunday, though, clearly were from his first generation of fans.

The 65-minute, 13-song show offered an especially itsy “Itsy Bitsy Spider� and a foray into country with one new song, a ballad called “No Place Like Home� (Richard omitted his current country version of “Somethin’ Else,� recorded with Tanya Tucker). The new song is basically one homey cliche, but it and Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill� offered Richard his only opportunities to display the powerful, emotive ballad voice that lurks behind the mascara and the screaming. Those moments reminded one that Richard’s singing was the prime influence on fellow Macon, Ga., native Otis Redding.

The quiet songs also afforded the only moments when one could hear Richard’s voice clearly above the din of his six-piece band (which shared the stage with various members of the singer’s entourage who were milling about up there).

With two bass players and that murky sound mix (we should point out that Richard’s own sound man--not the club’s--was at the controls), it often seemed less like The Little Richard Show than it did a Ronco “Great Bass Solos of the ‘60s� collection.

Richard’s splendid piano work was even more buried. The set included several of his better burners including “Good Golly Miss Molly,� “Lucille,� “Jenny Jenny,� “Long Tall Sally� and a breakneck “Ready Teddy.� There also was a slowed-down version of “The Girl Can’t Help It,� with the band members chanting the chorus, and covers of Larry Williams’ “Boney Moronie,� Chuck Berry’s “Rock and Roll Music� and a bit of Jimmy Reed’s “Baby, What You Want Me to Do.�

One would think that with those songs, Richard would have achieved a sufficient head of steam to go into orbit. But the momentum of the show was continually derailed by his stopping, sometimes in mid-song, for spoken digressions.

The longest was a complaint that came after he spotted a video camera in the audience. While one can sympathize with his concern about such transgressions, one might have hoped that a greater concern would have been entertaining his audience: He spent three minutes grumbling about the camera and only 47 seconds doing “Tutti Frutti�--and only 12 of those seconds were him singing.

The performance was especially maddening because, amid the awful sound and Richard’s own erratic showmanship, it was clear that the talent that shook rock into consciousness three decades ago remains intact. It takes a lot to keep talent that great just out of reach, but that’s just what Richard and his team managed.

In a brief opening slot, comedian Just June offered a funky and cerebral routine.