The surprise guest at Saturday night's opening installment of KROQ-FM's Almost Acoustic Christmas passed away in 1996.

After the majestically earnest 30 Seconds to Mars finished its set of electronics-shaded rock, the Gibson Amphitheatre stage rotated to reveal a wizened quartet surrounded by votive candles, resembling an impromptu street-corner memorial. Once the audience recognized the saxophone riff from the KROQ staple "Date Rape," they seemed thrilled that Sublime -- or "Sublime," depending on whose lawyers you ask -- had returned in part. "These candles are here to remember Bradley Nowell," said Rome Ramirez, who replaced Nowell as the band's singer and guitarist fourteen years after his death from a heroin overdose.

Indeed, much of the first night of Almost Acoustic Christmas -- the second, featuring Muse, Vampire Weekend and Phoenix, is tonight -- stoked the flames of Nowell's contributions to a Southern California rock culture in which punk is the indigenous pop music and the '90s still loom large for today's artists.

That ethic carried over even to artists who long since eclipsed the local strictures. Dead by Sunrise, the new act from Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington, eschewed that act's arena-sized rap-rock for a street-level scruffiness that, though typically hook-centric, wasn't nearly as fully formed as Linkin Park. But even Bennington's B-list songwriting would have been preferable to the relentless dirge of Three Days Grace, a sallow Canadian band whose set suggested that not even single-payer healthcare could heal the wounds it inflicted on those who like rock with rhythm or sex appeal.

30 Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto did much to lighten the proceedings, sprinting through the central walkway of the Gibson while fans reached out to him as if he were a religious icon -- the band's T-shirts for sale in the lobby, which read, "Yes, this is a cult," underscored that feeling. New single "Kings & Queens" has the band's best chorus to date, and though 30 Seconds has a sprawling pretentious streak, it was all in good radio-festival fun.

Although Sublime never introduced itself as such during its set (the question of who owns that band name -- the surviving members or the Nowell estate -- is still in legal limbo), Ramirez filled Nowell's role ably. He's a fine guitarist and played soulful turns on chill-bro anthems like "Badfish" and "Santeria." He nailed Nowell's vocal inflections to the point that if you were in the beer line when the set began, you'd be forgiven for wondering whether Tupac and Elvis might also be in the building.

A similarly re-formed-sans-singer Alice in Chains felt like a curious reminder of a time (the '90s) when alt-rock and pop music were distinct, sometimes opposing genres on radio. The close harmonies of guitarist Jerry Cantrell and firecracker vocalist William DuVall were unnerving, but the band's midtempo churn dragged behind the upbeat pace of its Almost Acoustic peers.

On the contrary, Rise Against is probably one of the fastest bands in recent memory to have a top-five album. "Appeal to Reason," the punk band's latest album, injects some Chomsky-lite political railing into a rock mainstream where most angst is personal, and singer Tim McIlrath showed off Journey-worthy pipes on "Savior" and "Audience of One." There's not an un-derivative note in Rise Against's catalog, but they're an unlikely and welcome presence on the album charts.

AFI, on the other hand, has unexpectedly turned into a challenging top-40 staple that tweaks punk's more masculine impulses. Singer Davey Havok is one of few mainstream rock frontmen toying with androgyny and feyness today, and on the band's latest album, "Crash Love," he transformed into a kind of winking Vegas crooner. He headlined the night in a glittering gold suit (with hair highlights to match), and seemed to finally get that his pleading mewl could express sass as well as boundless suffering.

Singles like "Miss Murder" and "Medicate" had a bit of T. Rex pomp to them, and reminded the audience that though KROQ sets the agenda for commercial rock in L.A., its marquee artists need to stay a step ahead of that culture to remain compelling.

--August Brown

Photo: Chester Bennington of Dead By Sunrise performs for the crowd at KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas concert. Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Loudon Wainwright III and Richard Thompson wrapped up their five-week tour as a duo, under the fittingly ironic title “Loud & Rich,” with a sterling display of songwriting acumen and musicianship Friday at UCLA, but one that wasn’t particularly loud or likely to make anybody rich.

Not in the filthy lucre sense, anyway. These two folk-rock veterans appeared long ago to have achieved peace in the knowledge that their astute brand of music fills clubs and theaters, not arenas and stadiums. They’ve been pals at least since the days when Thompson produced a couple of Wainwright’s standout albums in the '80s, and used the occasion of their stop at Royce Hall as part of UCLA Live’s eclectic music series to revel in the richness of words skillfully strung together and married to music that carries those words straight to the heart. And, on more than once occasion, to the funny bone.

In fact, many times during the evening Elvis Costello’s famous pronouncement -- “I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused” -- seemed to be play, but it was often hard to tell who was on which side of that equation.

Wainwright, perhaps the most adroit humorist in pop music of the last 40 years, opened the three-hour performance with a set heavy on recent-vintage material, including three from his ambitious double album “High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project.” That set showcases the music of the influential but largely forgotten early country singer from Spray, N.C., a freewheeling, wisecracking, hard-drinking, banjo-playing troubadour for whom Wainwright, also born in North Carolina, obviously holds an affinity.

The solo format left him without the deft instrumental and vocal support he gets on the album from a broad swath of family members (including his kids Rufus, Martha and Lucy) ex-family members and friends. But Thompson jumped in to add color on "If I Lose," bending and sliding steely notes and making his acoustic guitar sound like a dobro.

EXCLUSIVE

Of all the things that can come betwixt band and record label, the gulf that emerged between Jared Leto’s 30 Seconds to Mars and EMI appeared insurmountable. All that seemed to separate the two sides was $30 million or, as Leto once described it on the band’s website, “30 gazillion.”

But reunions are standard business procedure in the music industry, and the actor-musician said today that 30 Seconds to Mars and EMI have reached an agreement. Expect a new album, tentatively titled “This is War,” on the major this fall.

“It was a long battle, and the time came for the fight to end,” Leto told Pop & Hiss. “We’re certainly not experts at this. This certainly was the first time we had been sued for $30 million, and the first time we ever really had a battle with a business partner. We’re not a group of fighters.  It certainly is not fun being in litigation. I would avoid it at all costs.“

In a well-covered lawsuit filed last fall, EMI’s Virgin Records filed papers against 30 Seconds to Mars, seeking damages in excess of $30 million. It was widely reported that EMI was claiming the band had only delivered three of five albums due to the label. Leto, in turn, responded on the band’s website, and noted the group had been seeking to cease its relationship with the major long before the suit was filed.

 “There was a point after we had sold millions of records around the world, where not only were we never paid a single penny, but we learned that we were millions of dollars in debt,” Leto said. “That brought up a lot of questions for us, and we started to investigate the strange scenario that we were in. That was kind of the beginning of the conflict.”