Isaak hot at House of Blues

Geoff Carter

Friday, March 12, 1999 | 11:12 a.m.

If I could choose three entertainers to perform extended runs at Caesars Palace -- you know, like Dino, like Englebert -- I would choose Chris Isaak, blues singer Candye Kane and old school punk band Social Distortion.

Kane's act is classic, strip-club burlesque; SD frontman Mike Ness has more Sinatra attitude than Harry Connick Jr. will ever have; and Isaak ... well, Chris Isaak has to make the scene because he's pure entertainment, from the top of his pompadour down to his last sequin. And the ladies just loooove him.

Isaak's 1 1/2 hour set Thursday night at Mandalay Bay's House of Blues would have done Dino proud. Best known for the hit "Wicked Game," the Stockton, Calif., performer becomes much more than the sum of his hits when he takes the stage.

His sound, a finely-crafted pop/rockabilly hybrid, gains soul and resonance when played live, and his angelic tenor is something rare (any performer who can take Roy Orbison's "Only The Lonely" and make it his own has to be admired).

But for all his vocal and musical talent, what sets Isaak apart is his stage banter -- spontaneous, often raunchy and always hilarious. His grinning, innocent-faced deadpan allows him to vamp on drummer Kenny Dale Johnson's secret "growth" ("It's not a hematoma, not a melanoma -- but a magic mole"), to beg the ladies in the crowd to "touch his sequins" and declare Las Vegas the champion "city of love" over Paris without sounding like he's reciting material by rote.

By the way, he rocks. "Diddley Daddy," "I'm Not Sleepy," "Somebody's Crying" and "Two Hearts" sounded as good as when you first heard them; "San Francisco Days," "Sweet Leilani" and "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" went beyond even that, fortified by Isaak's addictive personality. And the suit made of disco-ball mirrors only helps.

Isaak may not be ready for Vegas -- he's a surfer, after all -- but Vegas is certainly ready for Isaak. The creepy appearance of "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" in the trailer to the late Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" only confirms this stellar talent's subversive, metaphysical juice. Book the Big Room, Marc Antony, and book it now.