KROQ’s Almost No Acoustic Christmas

You could skip over the title and tell instantly from the lineup that this is a celebration of the modern-rock radio kingpin’s playlist.

Previously unreleased live tracks from No Doubt, Hole, Smash Mouth, Bush, Blink-182, Radiohead and half a dozen more span the decade of multi-artist holiday-season shows KROQ has sponsored. (See review of this year’s edition, held Saturday at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, on F1.)

The idea has always been for bands to cut loose and go for the unexpected. Initially, the format borrowed from “MTV Unplugged” and insisted that musicians check the electronics at the door. Armed with acoustic guitars and other non-crankable-to-10 instruments, performers consequently put their focus on songs and intensified vocal performances.

That lasted only a couple of years. Soon Stratocasters, synths, sequencers and other hot-wired musical tools crept in, prompting the addition of the adverb “almost” to the moniker. Now the acoustic component is “almost” nonexistent.

Blink-182 strums politely at the start of the album-opening “Dammit,” from 1998, but within 30 seconds they’re thrashing at full tilt. Rapper Everlast delivers an even grizzlier, more harrowing rendition of “What It’s Like” than the recording that continues to be a KROQ staple.

Ever-trusty Violent Femmes went back to basics in 1993, bashing away at acoustic guitars on “Blister in the Sun.” Radiohead’s Thom Yorke is at his most plaintive singing of “Fake Plastic Trees,” another of the few tracks that hints at the original stripped-down idea. The song, however, isn’t specifically a reference to Christmas trees.

Allusions to the holiday tend to be pretty rare at these shows--that seems to be the domain of KROQ morning team Kevin & Bean’s annual holiday compilations.

Here, Everclear is one of the few that does, castigating those “who have never known the joy of a welfare Christmas” in a fiery “I Will Buy You a New Life.”

Performances are consistently committed--the only thing missing is the sense of occasion that has cropped up at some point each year.

Let’s hope for future volumes that include some of the really offbeat moments, such as something from Beck’s electrifying set in 1997 or Rage Against the Machine’s incendiary Christmas-trashing performance that stole the show in 1993, the same year Tony Bennett outshone a bevy of musicians half a century his junior.