Pop Music Reviews : Smithereens Deliver Right-Left Combination

Louder, looser and sweatier than their records, the Smithereens blew through an hour-plus, more-killer-than-filler, end-o’-the-tour show at the Hollywood Palladium on Thursday before an adoring if not quite capacity crowd.

With his gleaming pate, hawk nose and Vandyke beard, Pat DiNizio looks more like a demented biker poet than the frontman in a POP! group. His three cohorts look about as exciting as a box of rocks, too.

Ah . . . but when it all comes down to that right-left combination of craftsmanship and raunch, these Jersey devils whip every glamourpussed power-pop group that’s packed the pipe in the last 18 years where it counts--in the wallet.

So the hits after semi-hits after hits after semi-hits just kept right on comin’. And if not all of them are up to the shimmering, shattering, mindbust status of the ’87 career breakthrough numbers “Behind the Wall of Sleep” and “Blood and Roses,” they’ve still got the kind of hooks you can’t forget.