Today's Calendar Stories	August 23, 1999

Pop Music Review
A Show Solely for Believers
Cher's dazzlingly ambitious concert might please die-hard fans, but glitz can't cover the artistic shortfalls.
By ROBERT HILBURN, Times Pop Music Critic

her's lucky number must be one. After all, she's always gone by just one name, and both her Oscar and her biggest record hit in years have one-word titles ("Moonstruck" and "Believe," respectively).
So it's only fitting that we express our reaction to her concert Friday at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim with one word as well: Painful.
That's not to say that Cher herself wasn't good-natured and committed. She has put together an ambitious show, complete with staging that is so razzle-dazzle--from high-wire acrobats to stilt walkers--that it lived up to her description of the evening as "Cher du Soleil."
The veteran singer and actress also came across as a good egg--a diva to be sure, but without a trace of pretentiousness. She even had fun with her image, wearing (and commenting about) a series of wildly exaggerated wigs and outlandish outfits, including one silver get-up so glittery that she looked like a human mirror ball.
Cher also found time to show video clips on screens above the stage--from old skits with former husband and partner Sonny Bono in which she would get all the good lines, to an endless parade of eye-popping costumes.
Unfortunately, all these extras only took up about 15 minutes, which meant you were left with more than an hour of Cher's music.
As a singer Cher is a vocal assault weapon. She has power, but almost no subtlety or feel for interesting or convincing phrasing. She simply belts out every line, whether the emotion is supposed to be tender or defiant.
She compounds matters with mostly inferior material. Her history of corny or melodramatic songs stretches from the '70s ("Half-Breed") through the '80s ("We All Sleep Alone") to the '90s (virtually anything on the "Believe" album).
Even when Cher gets hold of a worthy song, the results aren't pretty.
After preliminary sets by the drab female pop-funk trio Wild Orchid and the more winning, energetic Cyndi Lauper, Cher opened Friday with U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." The tale of spiritual longing is one of the most eloquent songs of the modern pop era, but the apparent reason Cher chose it is that the title works well with the loose theme of the show: Cher the Survivor.
As her enthusiastic fans well know, Cher has gone through lots of struggles, embarrassments and more career ups and downs than an Internet stock. This current tour, her first in eight years, comes at a time when she is enjoying phenomenal success on record after a drought so long that many in the pop world had once again counted her out.
So it was a nice wink at her own history when she entered the stage on a platform that rose from the darkness below, much like her own rise from the ashes of her infomercial fiasco and other career scars.
But her rendition of the U2 song, stripping all of its depth, reduced it to a lightweight dance number whose "search" involves only Cher's personal goals.
To make matters worse, Cher performed the number while looking like some Looney Tunes character in a 4-foot, carrot-colored wig and goofy attire that seemed pulled from a 20th Century Fox biblical epic.
To her credit, Cher, probably out of respect for the late Sonny Bono, didn't do any of their hits. Unfortunately, that meant we didn't get to hear anything from her most inviting musical period.
Rather than even trying to inject feeling into the remaining songs, Cher--backed by a five-piece band and two female singers--just strutted around the stage, trying her best at various points to avoid bumping into all the dancers who circled her.
But then, it's not the music that her loyal fans come to celebrate, it's Cherdom: the TV show, the movies, the marriages, the divorces, the body maintenance.
The believers who packed the Pond on Friday--the first of two nights there--would probably like nothing better than for their heroine to forget about all the music and just let her real hair down.
Imagine how enticing it would be if Cher turned the stage into a sort of traveling "Oprah" talkfest, or a mock psychiatrist's office. This would allow her to narrate the video clips, lash out at all the tabloids and bring out guests to look back and laugh at the old days.
Besides giving the fans what they really want, this format would allow Cher to take full advantage of her good-natured demeanor and humor. The music? Just throw the biggest hits into a few brief medleys. Now that's a show that she could even take to Broadway.
But this one?
Painful.
* Cher, with Cyndi Lauper and Wild Orchid, plays Tuesday at Cox Arena, San Diego State University, 8 p.m. $38 and $75. (619) 594-6947.

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