POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Four Country Acts in Need of a Headliner

The country music bill at the Universal Amphitheatre on Sunday tested the proposition that four second-echelon (at best) acts can do the job of a genuine headliner. But the results--it looked like half a house, if that--suggest a return to the drawing board.

Marty Stuart, billed as headliner and playing the evening’s penultimate set, is the guy who trumpets his deep country roots the loudest, but he’s also the one who made his entrance from a downed rocket ship, and whose outfit made him look as if he’d crawled through a crystal chandelier on the way. His sentiments seem sincere, he touched on some older traditions, and his honky-tonk-oriented music was fairly spirited. But there’s nothing distinctive about anything he does.

Doug Stone, who closed the show, was the bill’s main commercial draw, and its only act with a song on the current country singles chart. His voice is light and agile, and on the ballads he showed a feathery touch that made him sound like a country Johnny Mathis. But as a performer he was a nonentity, with nothing to say between songs and no compelling vision during.

Billy Burnette opened with a set that ignored the potential of his unusual resume--rockabilly cat on the late-’70s L.A. new-wave club scene, a member of Fleetwood Mac for six years, Nashville performer and songwriter. His fiddle player’s startling tumble off the stage and subsequent recovery overshadowed Burnette’s faceless country-rock.

The dreadful rock-pop-country band Pirates of the Mississippi inspired post-set discussions in the audience about the story line of their cornball hit “Feed Jake.” Is it the dog that’s dead, or the guy? Answer: Neither, yet. But, if the Pirates promise to go away, we’ll promise to feed all their pets.