Pop Music : Cameo, Larry Blackmon Rally the Fans With Funk Basics in Anaheim

Friday night in Anaheim was shaping up about as well for Cameo as Super Bowl Sundays have for the Denver Broncos.

Nathan Leftenant, one of the veteran funk band’s core trio of singers, was out sick, leaving the remaining 11 members to face a sea of empty orange chairs at the Celebrity Theatre. The 2,500-seat hall looked at least two-thirds empty. Cameo hit the stage and spent 20 minutes wandering through a grooveless desert marked by a whanging metallic guitar solo, a thunking, muscle-bound drum solo, and song snippets too meager to establish a firm, funky direction. The singing sounded pretty iffy too. The fans, meanwhile, sat on their hands.

At this point, a lot of bands would have decided it was time to turn in a real cameo appearance and hurry through the motions to end the misery. But a band doesn’t last 13 years, as Cameo has, without having a certain amount of gumption. In a fine show of leadership, Cameo’s strapping, muscular, Gorgon-haired main man, Larry Blackmon, broke the band down to the basic elements of funk--a hammering drum beat and booming bass--and rallied the fans to their feet.

“There’s only a few of us in here, but it’s as if the whole place is filled, as far as we’re concerned,” Blackmon said--then backed up his words with charging energy as he exhorted the crowd with the help of that hard-core beat. With the fans up and dancing, Cameo stretched out the number, “Back and Forth,” and firmly established the long-absent groove.

The rest of the 75-minute show came together from there. The ensemble vocals gained strength, and Blackmon kicked in with his idiosyncratic nasal twang, which sounds like a cross between John Lee Hooker going “how how how” and Sly Stone drawling into his Vocoder. A few more tough funk numbers dug the foundation deeper, then Cameo was free to slow the pace a bit before ending on a funky upbeat with the hits, “Word Up” and “I Want it Now.”

On its records, craftsmanship, rather than inspired songwriting, has made Cameo a reliably strong-selling act. This show underscored another attribute that has allowed it to keep a high-ranking spot in R&B;: a determined work ethic and a desire to rock the house under any circumstance.

Page: a Minor Talent, but an Honest Man

Tommy Page must have had a good, ethical upbringing.

At a time when the odious practice of rolling tapes to compensate for negligible talent has become the norm in “live” dance-pop performances, Page played it straight Saturday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim. Consequently, Page proved himself a negligible talent, but at least he proved himself an honest man.

The 20-year-old singer from New Jersey put in a laborious, ballad-heavy hour in which his vocal shortcomings were painfully obvious. But at least Page’s performance was what he could muster at the moment, not some studio-treated evasion of the truth.

Page’s inability to replicate his records didn’t bother his audience of young teens, nearly all of them girls, who greeted him with a barrage of nonstop screaming. The audience response made for a more engaging show than anything the handsome but uncharismatic Page could muster.

With his GQ model’s looks, simple, romantic subject matter and utter absence of sexual aggressiveness, Page is a made-to-order teen-pop fave. On his 1988 debut album, Page drew heavily on British synth-pop influences and put some edge into his music. But this year’s model, armed with a No. 1 hit collaboration with members of New Kids on the Block, “I’ll Be Your Everything,” is strictly pitching puppy love. Somebody has to--and it might as well be somebody who isn’t afraid to level with his fans.

The same can’t be said for Sweet Sensation, a New York Latina vocal trio that seems to be striving to be the Supremes of the hip-hop era. “Vocal” is used advisedly, because the backing harmonies were as canned as Campbell’s soup. That use of electronic falsies called Betty LeBron’s suspiciously perfect lead parts even further into question. Maybe LeBron really is the legitimate heir to Diana Ross she seemed to be in a set-closing rendition of the Supremes oldie, “Love Child.” Then again, maybe she isn’t.