POP MUSIC REVIEW : Louie Louie Offers Entertaining Hour of Radio-Ready Tunes

Garage band music it isn’t.

Though Louie Louie shares his name with the quintessential grunge-guitar hit of the ‘60s, he draws little inspiration from the chaotic, anyone-can-be-a-rock-star sound it exemplifies. Slick and snap-crackle-pop crisp, the sloe-eyed singer’s debut album, “The State I’m In,” could only have been recorded in the most high tech of studios.

Louie Louie, the singer from Santa Ana whose real name is Louie Cordero, makes no secret of just who his influences are. Average White Band and Prince song titles work their way into his lyrics, and in concert Tuesday night at the Roxy in Hollywood, the artist paid homage to Sly & the Family Stone, Madonna and the disco-era S.O.S. Band by slipping snippets of their tunes into the midst of his own. In fact, Louie Louie’s strength lies mainly in his ability to parrot so many styles so ably. Though there’s little original about his act, it is at least refreshingly diverse.

Backed my enough players to put up a football team (some of whose sole function seemed to be to sway with the music), the singer bounded from the imminently enjoyable dance pop of “Pushin’ It Too Hard” and “Stop Lookin’ for Someone Else” to the sly, Latin-flavored “Variety Is the Spice of Life” with unflagging energy. So animated were the performances that it often seemed as if the stage itself were moving from side to side in an effort to keep up.

The quality of the faster-paced compositions, which constituted about three-quarters of the show, ranges from serviceable to extraordinary, the latter of which describes the heady “The State I’m In.” The song could easily slip by undetected on a Prince album as the work of the master himself, though it’s hard to imagine anyone giving it a more impassioned treatment than its own author did Tuesday night.

A canny expression of 21st-Century Angst, the song’s sole failing is an obtrusive horn break. Renowned trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie makes an appearance on one track on Louie Louie’s album, and it’s almost as if horn parts were quickly tacked on to others so that it wouldn’t appear as if Gillespie were recruited for his name value alone.

But the evening’s most significant clunkers came when the group slowed down the pace of the proceedings to allow Louie Louie to try his hand--and voice--at some generic urban contemporary-style balladry. Clearly, he needs to do more homework. Only “Unicorn” displayed any sort of melodic or lyrical imagination.

The nadir came with “Penny Lady,” a pathos-laden ode to a homeless woman in which Louie Louie offers her not food or shelter but a copy of his album.

That sorry exception aside, however, Louie Louis presented a remarkably entertaining hour of radio-ready (critics of the genre might say formulaic) contemporary pop music. But a lack of his own distinct musical personality might hinder his ability to make the leap from the teen positions on the charts, where the sassy “Sittin’ in the Lap of Luxury” has already taken him, into the upper single-digit spots.

Even if his only goal is to hold title to the most important “Louie Louie” in the history of pop music, he faces the formidable task of developing a style to rival the impact of garage rock.

Dance diva Nayobe’s opening set inadequately displayed her considerable vocal talents, marred as it was by a malfunctioning sound system and time constraints that limited her to just four songs.