DATE: Saturday, October 11, 1997            TAG: 9710110051

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E7   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Music review 

SOURCE: BY FRANK ROBERTS, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   48 lines

JACKSON PLEASES FANS WITHOUT GIMMICKS

HAS ALAN JACKSON been cloned? When a singer by that name last appeared at Hampton Coliseum, it was a case of excellent music, boring show. Thursday night it was a different story - excellent music, excellent show.

Jackson, you see, is not a showy character. He doesn't leap or run around the stage. He doesn't have much to say. He does not emphasize his tush or ``beg'' for applause. He doesn't push his fans to join him in song, although they do on many of them.

He simply smiles as he sings traditional country, pure and crisp.

If Jackson is low-key, his fans are the opposite. They go ape every few moments because they have an unabashed love affair going with the tall drink of Georgia water, who began Thursday's show with Tom T. Hall's ``Little Bitty.''

There was nothing bitty about the video presentation. The standard screens were there, but directly behind Jackson and his band, The Strayhorns, was a multiplex-size screen showing them in action and some of the singer's videos.

It went blank only when Jackson did some of his laid-back, acoustic numbers, offering abbreviated versions of some of his hits, a necessity because he has so many.

His songs, most of them self-penned, illustrate another reason for Jackson's popularity. Hit No. 1 was ``Here in the Real World.'' That was in 1990. ``There Goes'' was No. 1 a couple of months ago. In between came such gems as ``Chattahoochie,'' ``She's Got the Rhythm,'' ``Wanted'' and ``Don't Rock the Jukebox.''

Thursday's most emotional offerings were salutes: to Hank Williams Sr. in ``Midnight in Montgomery,'' guess-who in ``Mom'' and John Wayne in ``Wanted.''

Speaking of families, all ages were represented in the audience. They heard a heard a lot from The Strayhorns, particularly during a jamming version of ``Who's Cheatin' Who?''

The night's major jamming came from Deana Carter, who knows how to captivate an audience.

She and her band rocked the coliseum with ``Willie, Turn Those Wheels Around,'' a noisy, exciting tribute to one of her mentors. The highlight of her set, of course, was ``Strawberry Wine,'' which has become her signature piece.

Unfortunately, and this complaint is heard too often these days, her set was marred by bad sound. As one fan noted, ``If I didn't know the words to her songs, I wouldn't know what she was singing.''

At nearly $25 a seat, fans deserve better.

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