Boppin’ in the ‘Burbs

Not once did he grab his crotch as Madonna often does during her performances, and not once did he utter a word of obscenity as the rap group 2 Live Crew is accused of doing. His movements consisted mostly of vertical bounces and his dirtiest words were, “Everybody clap along.”

We’re talking wholesomeness here. We’re talking family entertainment. We’re talking Neil Sedaka at The Hop.

The Hop is not a high school dance but the name of a nightclub in, of all places, the City of Industry, where night life once consisted of watching television after 9:30, except for Thursdays when they bowled and Fridays when they engaged in marital sex.

Now it’s different. We’re in a cultural time warp. They’re boppin’ in the ‘burbs.

Take last weekend. Sedaka emerged from the past like an icon of happiness to bring us the kind of music we swayed to in the 1950s and ‘60s, like “My Little Calendar Girl” and “Happy Birthday, Sweet 16.”

I went to see him not because I’m a Sedaka fan, but because I couldn’t imagine a nightclub in the City of Industry.

The Hop is a big, gymnasium kind of place off the Pomona Freeway, not far from Blimpie’s Sandwich Shop and Henry’s Shoe Fetish.

It calls itself a nostalgia club and features only those aspects of entertainment popular 30 and 40 years ago, such as the $1.50 U-Call Drink and Neil Sedaka and his clap-along, tap-along, sing-along, feel-good music.

Makes you wanna smile.

Sedaka, who is just on the downhill side of 50, is a happy, bouncy, slightly-overweight little man whose upbeat style can make even unrequited love seem wonderful.

Middle-aged ladies who had not squealed in years shrieked in delight when he sang, the way they did back in the days when the Monkees were big, or even before that, when Dick Haymes was knocking ‘em dead.

If you have never heard a middle-aged lady squeal, trust me when I say passing years turn girlish glee into the shrill, desperate sound of a wood saw cutting into steel.

There were many squealers among the 500 or so jammed into each of two Sedaka shows, but the noisemakers weren’t all women.

A man behind me with a voice like the war cry of a water buffalo kept shouting for Sedaka to sing “Copa Cabana.”

I listened to this for as long as I could and finally turned to him and said, “For God’s sake, man, that was Barry Manilow’s song, not Sedaka’s.”

He was shouting and looking at me at the same time, and when my message finally reached his brain, he seemed hurt and puzzled and stopped yelling.

“You’re supposed to have good, wholesome fun here,” my wife whispered, “not challenge the audience to Name That Tune.”

She, of course, was right. I was there to chronicle the return of human decency, and there was much of it to observe that night at The Hop.

Let me say first that I haven’t been to a suburban nightclub since 1968, the year go-go dancer Patty Pineapple almost shimmied her way off the end of a bar at the Danville Inn.

The Hop is no makeshift go-go saloon but one of a chain of five clubs in Southern California whose owners are betting that decency, nostalgia and a yen for suburban night life will make them millions.

Man, I hope so. I’m getting damned tired of smut.

If I heard the word wholesome once on Neil Sedaka Night, I must have heard it 30 times.

I also heard it the next day from Doug Miller, The Hop’s director of operations, who explained that the club represents a longing for the good ol’ days, before explicit sex began permeating every form of public amusement from dirty canasta to topless wrestling.

I can’t remember exactly when that was, but I think it started with a Swedish movie called “I Am Curious (Yellow),” which featured scenes of nudity and, as they say, blatant sexuality. After that, we all got curious.

When you step into The Hop you step into a world before that.

A spinning mirror-ball throws rotating slivers of light over the club, a large screen features scenes from old black-and-white movies, a deejay plays Big Bopper tapes and the house hustles a $9.95 buffet dinner.

You don’t have to eat the dinner, of course, and I suggest you don’t. There are better things to stand in line for than fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

A very funny comic named Dick Hardwick and a mime who calls himself the Human Juke Box preceded Sedaka, who then took us back to a place in time when we heard laughter in the rain, and believed love, sweet love, would keep us together.

It was such a benign evening that at one point Sedaka, who saw me taking notes, looked over, frowned and said, “Write nice.”

Gosh yes.