Free-for-all fun for fans, but poor way to showcase music

In the middle of performing "I Get Excited," one of his multitude of '80s hits, former teen idol Rick Springfield invited "anyone" in the audience at Cain Park's Evans Amphitheatre to come up onstage and sing with him. As the stage flooded with eager women, he declared it to be "free-for-all time."

For better or worse, that was an apt description of his entire chaotic, ragtag show. A hint of what was ahead came immediately when the band came onstage with acoustic guitars, saying that local noise ordinances would not allow its electric show.

As Springfield and his four back-up musicians opened with the spirited rocker "I've Done Everything For You" seated on stools, one sorely missed the dynamic rock 'n' roll performances of Springfield's past.

Fortunately, by the next song, the lanky black-clad rocker, still devilishly handsome at a few weeks shy of 51, stood up and threw some body language into the show. Unfortunately, things got stranger from there.

Perhaps because this wasn't his normal full-band show, Springfield treated the whole occasion with a careless spontaneity. He did so much joking, storytelling and bantering back and forth with the crowd that it took him half an hour to wend his way through the set's first four songs. He joked about his own sex appeal ("How does my hair look? At 51, I'm lucky to have any.")

He did some fancy guitar-picking on his acoustic, that ended by with him taking a bouquet from an audience member and using it as a pick, as white blossoms flew everywhere. He went out to the stage apron and found crowd members to help him sing "Don't Talk to Strangers."

He invited the crowd to sing happy birthday to him and then gave the mike to his fan club president, who gave him a large card and a $1,500 check for one of his favorite charities, Ronald McDonald House. He invited the crowd to flash its middle fingers at his sound man. And on and on and on ...

Finally, he went out into the middle of the house and stayed there for a significant chunk of the show, performing with the house lights on and completely surrounded by adulatory audience members. He did a couple of songs well-suited for an acoustic format, including "Free" from his latest album "Karma," written for neighbors of his who lost their 4-year-old son, and "My Father's Chair," written about his own father's death.

Yet standing in the middle of jostling fans waving signs and flashing pocket cameras somehow sapped the songs' impact. It was, as he himself said, like a frat party, or more accurately, a fan club picnic.

Undoubtedly, for the dedicated fans who still hang on every detail of Springfield's, this show was a treat. For those who merely liked (and wanted to hear fully fleshed versions of) his dynamic pop rock hits, it was frustrating. It seemed, however, that the former dominated. Springfield's peak years were 1982-86 and his fan base then was girls ages 10-15. The Cain Park crowd was at least three-quarters women five years either side of 30, many dragging their husbands. Some were older, few were younger, other than a handful of little kids with parents. These women screamed like pre-teens at every remark that could be remotely construed as sexy (a reference to a "gigolo," for instance), happily reliving memories.

Cleveland's Tony Lang band provided a brief opening set. The six-piece ensemble plays pleasant, tasteful but eminently forgettable pop in the style of bands like the Goo Goo Dolls, with Lang singing familiar sentiments like "My soul keeps searching for you" in a delicate, high-pitched tenor."