ORLANDO — Things had been getting seriously surly for a while in the Tangerine Bowl, and finally the capacity crowd of 64,000 gave the B52s the hook, hungry to see The Who live for the last time.

Unpleasantness had darkened the field as surely as the long shadows of late afternoon. The B52s just gave up and left the stage after a scant 20 minutes, and cans and Dixie cups and jeers rained after them as they fled. The Who were still more than an hour away.

“Please move back, please move back,” the security man on stage kept urging. “We don’t want anybody hurt here.” Pointedly bloodquieting softrock began from the P.A., and the crush of bodies up front shifted sufficiently to let the guards lift a few more inert forms over the rail.

Eventually, a calm of sorts prevailed, and the security jitters eased; for an instant, it had seemed as if the good name of Orlando might be blighted by the historical imperative of a rock ’n’ roll trample, the sort of thing that occurs at The Who concerts and papal visits.

But it was cool now that the B52s were gone. This band, in fact, plays pretty irritating music.

“Owwww,” Jerry Dilsaver said, his practiced rock promoter’s eye seeing a bad talent package. In fairness to the B52s, he offered, it probably wasn’t the case that the band had been so terrible. “The crowd is here to see The Who. Basically, they’re just putting up with the opening acts.”

For sure. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts had opened the show at 3 p.m. Saturday, a certified killer group that had to be surprised at how little excitement it generated. The crowd let Jett leave without calling her back for more, which happens not a lot to acts of her stat-

Putting up with Joan Jett was one thing; this was definable rock ’n’ roll — devoid, perhaps, of anything much more than crude insect intelligence, but full of sneers and struts and a dangerousness appropriate to the day.

The B52s, on the other hand, were over their heads the minute they came out. Purveyors of a particularly inaccessible brand of tuneless tub-thumping New Wave, the