POP MUSIC REVIEW : Beefcake Band Full Force Plays Strictly for Laughs

Record producers are usually perceived as the technocrats and aesthetes of pop, working their machinations behind studio doors with the manic eccentricity of a Phil Spector or the sure, meticulous hand of a Quincy Jones.

Full Force, a six-member consortium of three brothers and three cousins from Brooklyn, has exerted its fullest force as a production and songwriting team for rap and funk acts such as U.T.F.O., Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam and, most recently, James Brown. But Full Force also is a self-contained recording group and stage band.

In an uneven but enjoyably unself-conscious show Sunday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, Full Force had no inclination to cultivate a producer-like sense of cool mystique. Instead, this band of hefty, muscled body-builders went in for beefcake buffoonery in a loose show that was played strictly for laughs before a sparse but actively engaged audience.

Frontmen Paul Anthony and Bowlegged Lou devoted a good deal of their energy to Casanova moves and macho sexcapades, but the action was too wacky--perhaps unintentionally so--to be offensive. There was a certain purity to Full Force’s hamming. The concert seemed less a performance calculated to advance a career and push a product than the sort of thing Full Force would have kept doing if it never had made it out of the New York dance clubs on the strength of producing mid-’80s hits including U.T.F.O.’s “Roxanne, Roxanne” and Lisa Lisa’s “I Wonder if I Take You Home.”

The early going of the 70-minute show was a miscalculation in which Full Force aimlessly patched together snippets of songs from its three albums. The medley treatment gave short shrift to the songs, and the minute-by-minute shifts in tempo and texture made it impossible for the band’s four sharp instrumentalists to get into anything resembling a groove.

The show gained some focus and sustained funkiness with a stretched-out rendition of “Alice, I Want You Just for Me,” in which Bowlegged Lou had henchmen scour the audience for a woman named Alice to be his dancing partner. In one of the show’s many dips into physical humor, the hulk-like Paul Anthony cut in on their dance and wound up lifting Alice and Lou in a bear hug.

Anthony’s stud-posturing included the sexual equivalent of shadowboxing during “All in My Mind” (it resembled part of rapper LL Cool J’s act, except that teen-ager Cool J has the excuse of being too young to know any better). Later, Anthony stripped to his tiger-striped briefs and struck a Charles Atlas pose after dousing himself with water.

All this was harmless enough, but the foolishness shifted the focus away from Anthony’s ability to sing a ballad with soulful ardor. Instead of emulating Mr. T, Anthony ought to consider patterning himself after Aaron Neville, the New Orleans soul singer who carries his muscular build with a quiet dignity. Full Force already has all the comic relief it needs in Bowlegged Lou, a capable but less striking vocalist than Anthony.

With rapping and dancing help from Dr. Ice (a member of U.T.F.O.), Full Force peaked with spirited funk on “Static” and “I’m Real,” two songs from their recent album collaboration with James Brown that they dedicated to the funk godfather.

They finished the show by throwing open the stage for a dance contest in which audience applause determined the winner among a bunch of contestants culled from the crowd. The drawn-out dance competition was far too strange to become boring. It made for a chaotic-but-home-grown ending to a show that was less a concert than a loose street-corner get-together for the sake of funnin’ around.