MIAMI SOUND HAS ITS VIRTUES

The Miami Sound Machine has nothing to do with the TV show “Miami Vice.” This red-hot pop-Latin band has never even been on the show, though lead singer Gloria Estefan hinted that they wouldn’t turn down an invitation.

Also, the Sound Machine’s big hit, “Conga,” is not, as many apparently assume, on the smash-hit “Miami Vice” sound-track album. Still, people associate this band, which is performing Saturday night at the Beverly Theater, with “Miami Vice” all the time. The title is largely to blame. It really does sound like something concocted to capitalize on the fame of the “Miami Vice.”

Estefan, 28, acknowledged that the erroneous association with “Miami Vice” hasprobably been a boost. “I’m not going to knock it,” said Estefan, a Cuban who was raised in Miami. “Whatever helps get recognition and airplay is welcome. But we haven’t played up the association. People do it naturally.”

The Miami Sound Machine doesn’t deserve the copycat tag. It was around long before the hip cop show. And this was no obscure Miami band either.

For the last four years Miami Sound Machine has been enormously successful throughout Central and South America, performing in Spanish. In some countries the band plays to 30,000-40,000 people in stadiums. It’s a favorite in Miami too. The band is so popular there that the mayor named a street after it--Miami Sound Machine Boulevard.

But in the United States outside Miami, the Sound Machine was unknown to the pop music masses. Only American Hispanics who are tuned into the Latin market are familiar with the band.

But “Conga” has changed all that. “We now have a new career,” she said. “We’re on tour. We’re going to try to make it in the mainstream pop market in this country. We never tried it before because we were concentrating so much on the Latin countries. Our chances of making it here didn’t seem to be very good. It seemed like the American pop stations didn’t want to play Latin pop. ‘Conga’ was a break that came out of nowhere.”

Estefan, who flew in from Miami for this late-afternoon cocktail lounge interview, is a bubbly, talkative brunette who, strangely, claimed to be painfully shy.

“Don’t laugh, I really am shy,” she said, seeming about as shy as Don Rickles. “I’m only talking so much because this in an interview. Otherwise I’d shut up.”

She speculated that her efforts to overcome shyness may have driven her into a show business career. “This is a weird business for a shy person,” she observed. “You can’t last too long if you’re shy; I had to get over it or quit singing. But I just couldn’t quit singing. I love it. I’ve been doing it ever since I was a little girl. It was my hobby, my outlet, my shelter from the world. If I wanted to sing I had to overcome the shyness. Otherwise, I might have become a hermit so I wouldn’t have to deal with people.”

Instead, after high school, Estefan joined the Miami Sound Machine. At first it was just a hobby. Neither she nor the founding members--bassist Marcos Avila, drummer Enrique Garcia and her husband, percussionist Emilio Estefan--felt they could make a living at it.

Seeking a backup career, she got a psychology degree from the University of Miami. Her choice of majors, she speculated, was partly an attempt to get to the root of her shyness. For a while she wanted to be a clinical psychologist. But disillusionment set in.

“My professors were weird, nutty people,” she said. “I was trying to solve my problems but I was trying to do it surrounded by a bunch of crazies. I thought I was going to go berserk. So I gave it up, or I might have ended up as a crazy shrink myself.

“Music seemed saner to me. And I know musicians are weird too. But, believe me, they’re more sane than the nuts in psychology.”

“Conga,” No. 12 on the Billboard magazine pop chart, was one of last year’s best singles and also one of the two or three finest dance tunes. It absolutely sizzles. Its appeal is primarily based on its raging rhythmic foundation, a Afro-Cuban rhythm called--appropriately--a conga. The composer, the Sound Machine’s Garcia, Americanized and commercialized the music with an infusion of funk. The lyrics aren’t much, just typical dance-tune fluff. But the arrangement--the key to a dance tune--is marvelous.

Latin dance aficionados are hoping “Conga” will trigger a revival of the Latin dance craze of the ‘50s, when the mambo and the cha cha were the rage. That might be possible if the single reaches the Top 5. If that happens, Sound Machine will be ready.

“We play in many different rhythms,” Estefan explained. “In one album we did a lot of sambas. On the current album there’s a song called ‘Movies’ that’s a cha cha. Actually it’s a mix of cha cha and a rock beat. In different countries, different audiences like different rhythms. We have songs in Latin rhythms to satisfy almost any demand. But an exception is the mambo. We don’t do mambo songs very often.”

In October, the Sound Machine celebrated its 10th anniversary. The band started out making bilingual albums, one side in English and the other in Spanish. But then in 1980, CBS International decided the Sound Machine would do well singing only in Spanish and launched its international career in the Latin market.

“A lot of our hits are ballads in Spanish,” said Estefan, whose soft, sexy vocals are a large part of the appeal of those songs. “In the Latin market they really like our slow stuff.”

In the international market, the Sound Machine is noted for its blend of Latin and American pop-rock, which, Estefan insisted, is unusual: “Usually groups do all Latin music or all American rock, but they very seldom do this kind of mix.”

Miami Sound Machine first surfaced outside the Latin market two years ago with another smoldering Latin-pop dance tune, “Dr. Beat.” It became so popular in Europe that it earned the Sound Machine an American contract with Epic Records. The band’s first Epic album, “Eyes of Innocence,” featured the Dr. Beat single. Neither was a big hit, but there was enough fan interest to convince Epic to give the band another shot.

The next album was “Primitive Love,” which features “Conga.” The only thing really wrong with the album is that it includes no other congas.

“It’s the only song we have in that beat,” Estefan explained. “We don’t do 10 congas. You can’t repeat a song like that--it’s too intense, too overwhelming. I don’t think the audience wants 10 congas.”

Epic Records didn’t think American audience even wanted one conga. “They didn’t want to release it as a single,” Estefan recalled. “They felt it was too extreme for the American market because it’s so different from what’s in the mainstream. But they changed their minds.

“It was released in England in April and did very well there. Then they released it in Miami and it started taking off there during the summer. So Epic decided to try it in the rest of the country last September. It took off there too.”

People who buy the “Primitive Love” album may be disappointed at the absence of more congas but they’re not likely to be disappointed in the album, which is one of excellent overlooked albums of last year. So far, it’s not doing as well as the single. But there are several other potential hit singles on the album, including “Body to Body,” “Mucho Money” and “Movies.”

Others like me who are itching for Latin dances to make a strong comeback shouldn’t lose hope. This album may inspire a revival yet.