POP MUSIC REVIEW : Zapp Hits Celebrity Theatre Crowd’s Funky Bone

The music was derivative and gimmicky. The stage show recapitulated familiar pop antics. But Zapp’s concert Saturday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim was an exhilarating, romping success.

The nuts and bolts of the show mattered far less than the spirit in which the Ohio-based funk group and its leader, Roger Troutman, nailed them together. Roger (as Troutman likes to be known) and his seven-man band charged into the task of entertaining with an infectious joy, sharing a clear camaraderie with each other (including Roger’s teen-age son and nephew) and a healthy sense of the outrageous. What Zapp built was a fun house that rocked.

It was built in a jumble, a patchwork of bits and pieces strung together from Roger’s solo albums, older Zapp numbers like “More Bounce to the Ounce,” scraps of songs scavenged from the Top-40 soul archive, and even such out-of-context materials as Chicago blues, George Benson-style picking and scatting, and a joking Elvis impersonation.

Song segments and snippets kept coming without pause or letup in a funk collage. It wasn’t until the encore, when Roger sang his lilting pop-soul hit “I Want to Be Your Man” that Zapp played a straightforward, like-the-record arrangement. By then, Roger was so justifiably pleased and caught up in the moment that he sang the song twice.

Underlying all those shifts, and keeping the show focused, was Zapp’s unwavering attention to hot, pulsing grooves. Zapp’s funk and aerobic ensemble dance routines borrowed heavily from Sly Stone and George Clinton. But that didn’t make them any less delicious, nor any less rousing for a crowd that stayed on its feet for all but a few moments of the 65-minute show. In an era when so much R&B; sounds manicured and slick, this was the real funk, gritty and hot.

Among Roger’s props and gimmicks were his guitars--one pink, the other white and shaped like an automatic rifle--and his costumes, which he changed repeatedly during quick exits to the dressing room and in an on-stage striptease that was played more for slapstick value than erotic appeal.

Roger’s outfits progressed from silver-lame nautical wear (Captain of the Good Ship Zapp) to crimson gaucho garb (trail guide for the Funk Roundup) to natty spring attire in which he could have strutted as funky point man for the Easter Parade. In all guises, he was a humorous, affectionate, rabble-rousing funkmeister.

Troutman’s favorite toy was the “voice box,” a gizmo that allowed him to give notes played on a synthesizer keyboard the texture and definition of his own voice by means of a tube inserted in his mouth.

No innovation there: the gadget can be traced back to the vocoders used by Sly Stone and others almost 20 years ago. But like every other familiar turn in the show, this electronic voice zapping was done with enough zest to make it appealing even through many repetitions.

Michael Cooper, the former ConFunkShun singer who has launched a solo career, generated some heat in his opening set despite resorting too often to an exaggerated, affectedly clipped and twangy style of phrasing. “To Prove My Love” had enough kick to survive this ironic, distancing device. Cooper was far better with the earnest, soulful belting with which he delivered one of his ConFunkShun songs, “Leaving You for Me.”