O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Her Voice Was OK, but the Rest Was a Wash

If the dance-floor prescriptions of two decades ago were being filled by Dr. Feelgood--serving up fatback rhythms and soul-soaked voices--today’s ministering physician might be Dr. Frankenstein, using technology and media ostensibly to stitch together the perfect song.

Singer Martha Wash must have signed her organ-donor card, because her uncredited voice has been appropriated by no fewer than three post-mortem dance-music constructs: Seduction, Black Box and C&C; Music Factory. Wash tried to reclaim her voice Sunday night at the NYC dance club, a stark, fog-filled postmodern place that could well double as a prison for evil robots.

In the wake of the Milli Vanilli scandal, much attention has come to Wash and the way producers now manipulate sound and image to make the sleekest product possible: Start with digitally generated music untouched by human hands; then, no matter if the singer is the size of a Taco Bell franchise, just get some svelte model to pose in the video, maybe alongside a dancin’ rapper whose prime artistic accomplishment is a washboard stomach you could grate cheese on; finally, show them all doing calisthenics in the workplace.

After hearing her voice issue from other lips, both in videos and on stage, Wash took C&C; Music Factory’s producers and the others to court. The resulting publicity has likely helped in her recent signing to an eight-album contract with RCA. Prior to her faceless studio career, Wash had some hit experience with the novelty dance act the Weather Girls.

Unfortunately, Wash’s solo bid Sunday was only slightly less ersatz and calculated than the folks she’s recently been complaining about. She told the crowd, “All that music you’ve been hearing and people you’ve been seeing is a lie! I’m not lip-syncing up here.” But she evidently had no qualms about performing with backing tapes instead of a band, or using so much digital echo on her competent, though wholly unexceptional, voice that it might as well have been canned.

It’s curious to think that somewhere there’s a band playing live with a singer lip-syncing Wash’s vocals, while Wash was singing live to a non-existent band.

Performing a mere 20-minute set after coming on stage some two hours later than the announced show time didn’t win Wash any points in the “hardest-working woman in show biz” category. She did keep up a brisk dance pace throughout her brief performance, though.

Her four-song set featured her singing along to Black Box’s “Everybody Everybody” and C&C; Music Factory’s “Gonna Make You Sweat.” One might recall that her original contribution to the latter was to interject some “Gonna make you sweats” and “Let the music take controls” amid a rapped verse that was missing Sunday, resulting in a half-song.

For Wash to predicate a solo career on such scant offerings is a bit like Frankenstein Monster’s larynx going solo after seeing how well the villagers responded to the whole creation.