Choppy Ocean

It takes a special kind of talent to come from Trinidad, collect a top-flight band of musicians from international climes as disparate as Barbados, New York, London and Zimbabwe and then put it all together to make happy, homogenized, easy-listening music that sounds right off the American assembly line. Hitmaker Billy Ocean brought that talent to the Universal Amphitheatre on Friday (the first of three weekend dates).

Ocean has less dubious faculties, of course--a fine, British-accented voice, an almost catching amiability and a knack for penning catchy singles like “Loverboy.”

In concert, that song was followed by a hit ballad, “There’ll Be Sad Songs.” Then came an upbeat number, then another slow ballad, an upbeat number, a ballad. . . . Did we detect a pattern emerging here? Moreover, did we detect impending narcolepsy headed our direction?

Ocean’s final number--a slick rendition of Creedence Clearwater’s “Proud Mary” during which the stage lights went down and his jacket lit up--was not his proudest moment. But it offended not his mostly upper-demographic audience, weaned on such “Tonight Show”-like shenanigans.

Brenda Russell opened with a set that was simultaneously more sophisticated and funky, in the style of a Donna Summer (for whom Russell originally wrote “Dinner With Gershwin,” a song she doesn’t do half-badly herself).