CALGARY - Those who see it, get it.

That was the message from INXS guitarist Kirk Pengilly during a recent interview.

He was referring to those who might enter a concert by the band skeptical of what they were about to see and hear, knowing the current incarnation of the veteran Aussie rock act features a replacement for late frontman Michael Hutchence -- a replacement chosen via the wildly successful reality show Rock Star.

Pengilly, who admitted he didn't pay any attention to those skeptics and less to reviews of the show, said it would become apparent to anyone who saw the band with its freshly crowned vocalist -- Canadian J.D. Fortune -- what exactly they were trying to accomplish and how the new INXS was very much in keeping with the old INXS.

Fair enough.

No, they certainly didn't disprove the skeptics with their pale and empty CD Switch, an album which fit nicely into the '90s oeuvre of INXS -- aye, it stanks that much -- but after a quarter-century of making music, some people are entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

So, putting aside all biases and mixed feelings (such as: The band was dead years before Hutchence, and, of course the surviving members should be able to perform the songs they wrote, but wasn't the vocalist in many eyes and ears the essence of INXS? etc.), last night's Saddledome show was the chance to finally get it.

Um, I still don't get it.

Perhaps it's because I left my ovaries at home -- many of the far-from-sell-out 8,000 shrieking fans were of the egg-producing variety -- but unmoved and unfazed was how the night of hits and mainly misses left me.

The main reason? Fortune is a lame replacement for Hutchence.

Literally.

Suffering a mishap the previous evening in Saskatchewan, Fortune was hobbled by a leg-brace and kept slightly less frenetic than reports have had him at other shows.

Still, it's hard to imagine mobility was the biggest factor in Fortune's ineptness.

Yes, the rest of the group can declare him very much a part of INXS, but he still comes across as a pretty-boy poseur trying waaaaay too hard to live up to the man who came before him.

For their part, the five Aussies behind Fortune were as tight and exceptional as you'd expect from a band which has been playing the same songs together for 25 years -- even if those songs have lost a good deal of their power with age.

Kicking off with the debatably tasteless Suicide Blonde, the show flopped between those oldies -- Mystify, Taste It and Devil Inside -- and new duds -- Devil's Party, the limp U2 homage Afterglow, Hungry, and Never Let You Go -- never achieving a real moment.

So, for another few months, INXS will enjoy the kick provided by the newness and hotness of Fortune. But after last night, taking them seriously with their new charge and believing those 8,000 fans will be back next time out is something the mind has a tough time being open to or getting.

An open mind was also needed for opener Scott Stapp, whose recent woes, legal or otherwise, are a better example of karma put into practise than My Name Is Earl -- or proof that if there is a God, He actually has good taste -- and just as funny.

But mere moments of his crouching, denim-clad, faith-shrouded mediocrity was enough to bolt, bar, power-tool and security- system that entrance shut forever.

Be it underbiting and overly emoting hits from his Creed days or his one-CD solo career, or spewing noxious earnestness between songs, Stapp deserves everything the universe throws his way.