POP MUSIC REVIEW : Kid Creole Stirs Mixture of Hot Music, Theatrics

August Darnell (a.k.a. Kid Creole) has lots to offer: style, wit, a band that’s large, hot and precise, a sense of show biz tradition, and a trio of sexy blond chorines called the Coconuts. Besides all that, he even weaves subtle threads of social consciousness into his repertoire’s generally light fabric.

But in the 10 years he has led his large funk-pop-calypso-salsa ensemble, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Darnell hasn’t had a mass audience to take him up on all that largess, at least not in his home country. The New York-based bandleader does much better in Europe.

Kid Creole & the Coconuts’ show Saturday night at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre before several thousand fans illustrated how Darnell makes use of nearly everything he comes across--including career adversity. The nearly 2-hour concert (the sixth and last in the Parliament Sound Series of free shows at Irvine Meadows), was fast moving and briskly stirred, although slow to reach a boil. Darnell turned the disappointments, reversals and struggles of a cult artist into one of the more tart flavorings in a stew of Caribbean, Latin and R & B ingredients.

“Part of My Design” was a reggae lament about starting with high ambitions of “giving the world alternatives,” only to find out the world might not be all that interested. A few minutes later, in a rap interlude, Darnell complained about having “lost my dream, lost my hope.”

But in each case, he kept downcast thoughts in perspective. “What the hell, why the fuss? I still got the Coconuts,” he chanted as he exited with his three comely comrades for a change of costume.

In Darnell’s historically minded follies, the synchronized, fashion-coordinated Coconuts are a campy equivalent of vaudeville’s Ziegfeld Girls. His slick soft-shoe steps and changing array of ‘30s and ‘40s zoot suits owed a debt to precursors who worked in Latin cabarets and Harlem jazz clubs. In percussionist Eddie (Bongo Eddie) Folk, who served as master of ceremonies, Darnell had a comic foil in the R & B tradition of Bo Diddley’s sidekick, Jerome Arnold.

It took about an hour for all these elements to ignite. The show began with a long, pompous taped overture and a slowly unfolding intro number hosted by Bongo Eddie. After that, the pace quickened, but the songs tended to be overshadowed by the Coconuts’ choreography. Not an especially strong singer, Darnell relies on a knack for role-playing to get across the wry vignettes embedded in his songs and on help from his backup singers in accentuating the melodies. For most of the early going, the byplay didn’t click, and with featured backup singer Cory Daye having a rough night, the show lacked an impressive vocal element.

It was worth sticking around for the last third of the concert, though. The element of musical comedy became more clear during “Endicott,” as the Coconuts harangued rascally free spirit Darnell for not emulating male paragon Endicott, a conscientious, upstanding type. “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy” carried on the theatrics, while also showing the band in its best light.

At one point, guitarists Danny Blumenfeld, a rock-oriented player, and Eugene Grey, whose forte was a lightly rippling West African sound, set up an interlocking pattern of riffs that blended their complementary styles. Saxophone and trumpet lines twined above that pattern to form a lovely structure (the two-man horn section was a strong presence all night, even though the third-horn chair was empty except for a fedora propped on a bottle).

Noting that Kid Creole & the Coconuts was marking its 10th anniversary, Darnell thanked his fans at the end and promised another decade to come. Judging from its hot home stretch, the band is in no danger of wearing out its welcome.

The Untouchables opened with an appealing set of ska and funk that kept bodies bobbing in the orchestra dance pit.