Of all the curiosities out there in the rock world, none is more curious than the state of Love. As in Courtney Love, Hole's iconic lead singer-songwriter- guitarist.

Will she wear Versace, as she did in Vanity Fair? Or maybe ripped Versace? Is she a starlet? A junkie? A rebel? A poseur? Questions linger about her talent and fame - is it by merit or association? Did she ride the coattails of her late husband, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, to the top? What about her detour into acting and Hollywood with ''The People vs. Larry Flynt''? What about her and Hole's reemergence earlier this year with the hard-edged but pop-oriented ''Celebrity Skin'' CD, a steady-selling gold album? How will this all play out live?

All these imponderables hung in the air as Hole took the stage 35 minutes late last night at the Orpheum, headlining the hottest gig of WBCN-FM's multi- venue, 31-band charity ball called the XMas Rave. The last time Hole played a local radio-sponsored gig was for WFNX-FM in 1994; someone may or may not have phoned in a death threat, but Love advanced the rumor by telling the crowd, ''If somebody's gonna shoot me onstage, what a great footnote to rock 'n' roll history. ... I don't care!'' She was not shot. Later, she shed her dress and crowd-surfed. No dress shedding and no crowd-surfing this time - at least through the point when we were forced to leave, 45 minutes in, midway through the set, to make deadline. Love did, however, drop her low-slung black velvet top twice (''How could I resist?'') and played the deranged chatty Cathy she's long been, drugs or no drugs.

Say this: Love looks good. She again blurred the line between falling apart and coming together, between playing the damaged-goods punk rock priestess and mainstream supernova. She played the nasal diva, whining at the roadies for muffing her sound mix in ''Awful'' - ''Roadie guy! Somebody fix this!''

She chewed out the industry suits who dared sit in the front rows while others stood and screamed. She praised Boston bands the Lyres and the Pixies, and she (once again!) slammed the Boston busker (Mary Lou Lord) who evidently dared to date Love's late husband, before Love and Cobain had even met. Go figure. She cooed about ''the sweetest Bostonian'' Evan Dando and covered his band the Lemonheads' ''Into Your Arms.'' She praised singer Shirley Manson, of the preceding band Garbage, as being ''a better rock star.'' Love, it seems, has no internal filtering mechanism in her head. Hole's music, though sculpted in a less abrasive fashion than it used to be, still curdles and coils. The quartet (besides Love, bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, drummer Samantha Maloney, lead guitarist Eric Erlandson) has a visceral, cathartic clout that suggests - no, demands - that whereever you come down on Love herself, you can't help but respect the raw power of which this band is capable. It was a glorious mess, with guitar chords crashing and crunching and sound meters undoubtedly ratcheting past the 120 decibel pleasure/pain threshold.

This was Hole's first US show in more than three years and if it was ragged at times - well, that's a chunk of the charm. Love brought her old self - the punk rock mess full of loathing, self and otherwise - into her latest self, which is just a bit more open to the world at large, but still largely self- fixated. But this is what a successful rock star often does. Hence, there was both liberation and folly expressed in ''Celebrity Skin'' - ''When I wake up/in my makeup ...'' - and there was the old venom of ''Miss World.'' Love is the celebrity who rages against the machine, the machine being anything that might remotely slow down the bullet train that is Love. It's to her credit that she can enrapture us so in this narcissism, to make her rocky, glamorous life one with ours for a night. She's still fascinating. Garbage preceded with an hour of electro pop and edgy rock, with Manson showing the athleticism and energy of a Spice Girl but packing 100 or so more IQ points into the mix. Like Hole, Garbage likes mixing dark thoughts with brighter music, subversion with melodic sustenance. Canadian singer Tara MacLean opened with an incongrous but at times compelling set of spiritually inclined folk-rock. (This was just the first of five radio-sponsored shows Hole is doing. They'll undertake a tour overseas in the new year and likely return to the States in the spring.)
 
 
 

Jim Sullivan
Boston Globe, December 2, 1998