The San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, November 2, 1997

Robert Levine, Steffan Chirazi, Lee Hildebrand, Beth Winegarner, Gary von Tersch, Gary Graff, Aidin Vaziri

Tibetan Freedom Concert Capitol/Grand Royal, $34.99

Especially because they rarely offer more than a song or two from each act, live albums made from benefit concerts tend to reveal less about the artists than where the pop music zeitgeist is headed. In that and several other respects, the impressively diverse but uneven ``Tibetan Freedom Concert''-an album of performances from the 1996 and 1997 benefit shows-is typical.

The three-disc set offers an interesting aural picture of several styles and subcultures intersecting for a good cause. If the album, which benefits the awareness-raising Milarepa Fund and is due in stores Tuesday, doesn't offer a central musical moment, it still contains plenty of powerful music with a lineup of heavyweights including the Beastie Boys, Beck, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith, KRS-1 and half of R.E.M.

That said, the album has at least one serious flaw. Although including a track from every artist at the New York show is in keeping with the community spirit of the concerts-there are also a few highlights from the San Francisco show-the sheer number of acts meant the organizers had to leave off worthy material and sacrifice continuity. Sure, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones are entertaining, but who would prefer their lightweight ``Noise Brigade'' to another song from Beck's brilliant acoustic set?

Many of the high points come from veterans. Smith delivers a fragile, beautiful take on her ``About a Boy.'' U2 packs the emotion that was mostly missing from its outsize stadium extravaganzas into an elegiac ``One.'' And R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and Mike Mills perform a haunting, unadorned ``Electrolite.''

Most of the other major acts also put in a good showing- especially the Beastie Boys, whose Adam Yauch helped organize the benefits. But other fine moments belong to the slightly less popular rock groups. Pavement turns in an appealing, fragmented ``Type Slowly.'' Radiohead stretches beyond its Britpop origins on a stirring ``Fake Plastic Trees.'' And the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion shows its less farcical side on ``Blues Explosion Man.''

Some of the alternative rock acts come off as lightweight, especially Alanis Morissette, who all but yodels her way through ``Wake Up,'' and Porno for Pyros, whose attempt at exotica on ``Meija'' owes more to Spinal Tap-style pretension than world-music eclecticism. The bands here have little in common, and few of them set aside their standard performance styles to make a musical statement about the situation in Tibet. But that's not such a bad thing. Even though ``Tibetan Freedom Concert'' is a choppy listen, it's also an excellent sampler of several kinds of vital music.

Robert Levine