POP MUSIC REVIEW : Center Sails to Reggae Beat

With all elements factored in, Friday’s “Ram Slam Dub Jam” at the San Diego Convention Center scored a solid “B” as a musical production. An “A” for effort, moreover, raised both the overall average and one’s hopes that the center’s sail-canopied special events area can become a viable concert venue.

The five-hour program, which featured reggae acts Steel Pulse, Special Beat, Daddy Freddy, Shelly Thunder and the local Cardiff Reefers, was a triple litmus test for the Convention Center. It would determine if fans accustomed to attending concerts at other venues would make the effort to see a show at the multiple-use facility, it would gauge the special event area’s adequacy as a music environment, and it would address the compatibility of an amplified-music production with the nearby San Diego Symphony Summer Pops series.

The first two issues were settled early in the evening. Long lines formed outside the center before the event, and a respectable tally of about 5,000 fans (capacity “under the sails” is 7,800) filed through the doors and up the escalators to the show. Area favorites the Cardiff Reefers opened with an excellent, nicely varied, high-energy set that got people moving while the sun was still high above the horizon.

But the Reefers’ segment of the show also provided a measure of the venue’s ability to accommodate amplified music. In the first two sections of seats, the sound was OK. But as you moved away from the stage area, the sound quality dissipated until all that was left of the band’s mix were the vocals and the rumbling thump of the rhythm section. Near the riser-mounted seats at the back of the floor, the sound remained a reverberant mush throughout the evening.

Part of the problem was that the stage was erected in the southwest corner of the open-air space and aimed away from the bay, in deference to the Pops. According to center officials, acoustics in the special event area are much better when the stage faces the bay.

Less variable are the special events area’s physical properties. In designing the ideal concert environment, such things as peaked, Teflon-coated sails, open air, concrete and glass probably would not be included on an acoustician’s short list of building materials.

Sight-lines are also a double-edged sword. Because the special events area has no columns holding up the sail-roof, there are virtually no visual obstructions between audience and stage from any point on the floor. That’s good. But this is a 100,000-square-foot room. With the majority of the seating fanning out at floor level, by the time you get to the last few sections the stage looks like it is in another county. At Friday’s show, most fans ended up standing on their chairs. A system of staggered risers might solve that problem, and also would better contain the sound.

In fairness, the venue’s drawbacks are largely mitigated by its aesthetic bragging points. Visually, this is a beautiful setting for a show. A vista made up the downtown skyline in the forefront, the nearby Coronado Bridge, and the distant mountains provided an almost surreal backdrop to the stage, which sat at the right edge of the wall-less east side of the room.

The immensity of the space itself is less daunting than liberating; there’s plenty of room to roam, and the natural ventilation, high ceiling and no-smoking rule keep the air fresh. Concession carts stationed around the perimeter offer, among other things, Pannikin coffee drinks and pastries, frozen fruit bars, nachos and calzones--welcome alternatives to the hot dog and popcorn counters in most multiple-use facilities (although those items are available, as well).

The seats themselves are comfortable, cushion-upholstered folding chairs. Rest rooms are clean and easily accessible. The adjacent carpeted lobby offers a retreat from the bombast, and its long bank of pay phones adds to the convenience factor. The place has genuine potential.

That’s less than can be said for Daddy Freddy and Shelley Thunder, two artists whose individual segments represented the evening’s two-fisted nadir. The two, who apply a Jamaican patois to a lackluster mix of reggae and rap, expended as much energy trying to coax enthusiasm from the crowd as they did actually performing. There’s a word for this stuff: boring.

Special Beat to the rescue. This nine-piece maelstrom, which featured vocals by Neville Staples, “Finny” and former General Public frontman Ranking Roger, would have raised the roof with their ska attack, if it weren’t already raised. Opening with a humorous, horn-blasted version of “Rocky Top”--the country-Western tune that recently was adopted as the fight song for the University of Tennessee--the nonet got the whole place skanking with such selections as “Enjoy Yourself,” “Concrete Jungle” and a hyperkinetic version of “Tears of a Clown” that Smokey Robinson might not have recognized.

The crowd-movement generated by Special Beat’s sprinting tempos activated another odd trait of the special events area. One gradually became aware of the somewhat unsettling sensation that the floor was undulating. Indeed, the movement became so pronounced that one could stand in place and still bounce up and down as though in time to the music. Ride, ride, ride the wild cement.

As for the show’s volume and its effect on the Pops, the jury is mostly in, but some crucial votes will have to be taken in the coming months. Standing in the middle of the seating area at the Pops site during Special Beat’s performance, one could hear the music and cheering emanating from the special events area only between Pops selections. Although the sound was plainly audible at those times, it was no impediment to enjoying the Pops.

But then, this Pops show was a “swing era” tribute featuring the San Diego Symphony Big Band Orchestra, not the regular symphonic instrumentation. Competing sound drifting across the marina between the venues might not stand a chance against a brassy arrangement of Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol,” but the results could be entirely different during a quiet string passage in an orchestral piece.

By the time the headliners, Steel Pulse, gained the stage at the special events area, most Pops patrons had filed out and gone home. The band (three horns, a keyboardist, two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer) managed to maintain the excitement level generated by Special Beat, albeit with a style that’s not nearly as frenetic.

In truth, while Steel Pulse is terrific on record, its live show has never been a study in contrasts. Highlights of Friday’s concert included a great reading of “Said You Was an Angel” from 1988’s “State of . . . Emergency” and two cuts--”Gang Warfare” and “Taxi Driver”--from the band’s current release, “Victims.” But the sameness of the rhythms and tempos from one selection to another--especially following almost four hours of music by other acts--wore thin as the midnight hour approached. In retrospect, a lineup featuring the Cardiff Reefers, Special Beat and Steel Pulse--minus Daddy Freddy and Shelly Thunder--would have been perfect.