POP MUSIC REVIEW : Kid Creole Is Hoping for a Global Warming : The performance offers an international array of sounds, but not many were at the Coach House to see and hear it.

August Darnell must be the Woodrow Wilson of pop.

Wilson instigated the League of Nations after World War I in hopes of drawing a fractured world closer together. The big problem was that he couldn’t persuade his own country to join it.

Darnell has been working on his own league of musical nations since 1980, under the guise of his raffish, stylish stage character, Kid Creole.

Kid is an egotistical but wittily urbane, zoot-suited dandy who is surrounded by a cast of three (always blond, always beautiful) backup-singers and dancers known as the Coconuts. Kid Creole’s object has been to draw a divided musical world closer by opening the floor to a greater multiplicity of styles than any pop group this side of the Neville Brothers.

Salsa, calypso, big-band swing, rock, reggae and several brands of funk have found their way onto Kid Creole and the Coconuts albums. The big problem has been that the New York-bred Darnell hasn’t been able to persuade many folks in his own country to buy it. Like the League of Nations, Kid Creole and the Coconuts has been mainly a European enterprise.

In a recent Times interview, Darnell wondered whether he could keep his musical league going much longer in its 14-piece format without some unforeseen turnabout.

None was in the offing Tuesday night at the Coach House, where Kid Creole attracted no more than a one-third capacity house, perhaps 150 people. While the resulting show wasn’t revelatory, it offered spirit, variety and show-biz flair.

If Kid Creole wanted to comment on his situation, he could have trotted out some of the songs he’s penned that do exactly that. Among them are “Call It a Day,” and “Part of My Design,” both of which can be found on “Kid Creole Redux,” a best-of collection that is the logical jumping-off point for those interested in sampling his work for a modest investment. In “Design,” the Kid Creole character laments how he set out with a plan to improve the world a little bit with his music, only to run into harsh realities that undermined his efforts.

Darnell betrayed no such dejection at the Coach House in a lighthearted selection of songs and a 105-minute show given largely to instrumental workouts. He announced that the band had just arrived from New York before the concert, and at the outset it seemed to be fighting to gain its balance.

The show began with a long, rather tame funk workout that encompassed two songs united only by their rap element: the Prince-penned “The Sex of It,” and “Oh, Marie,” the tale of an innocent girl killed in a gang cross-fire.

No great singer, Darnell is even less of a rapper. Another long segment moved into Latin and calypso styles. It was only with a return to funk--an old-line funk derived from James Brown and George Clinton--that the band began to click.

The spark came from the three-man brass section that Kid Creole has inscrutably dubbed the “Pond Life Horns,” and from Mark Anthony Jones, a guitarist whose metallic solos, not to mention his feathery garb and silly woolen cap, made him appear to be a refugee from Clinton’s circus-like Parliament-Funkadelic ensemble.

The show moved into the lighter, brighter funk of “(She’s A) Party Girl,” in which Darnell invited three enthusiastic women dancers from the audience to augment the efforts of the Coconuts, who were garbed in a flamenco-dancer look, complete with relatively demure flowing dresses and scarves. Later, they’d show more of themselves after a change into halters and hot pants.

“Endicott” found Darnell tossing in a few slick dance moves and interacting more with his backup singers as he played the role of the reprobate Kid Creole, catching flak from the Coconuts for not being more like a certain steady, reliable family man named Endicott.

Darnell, who changed jackets once and donned five chapeaus, ranging from gangster fedora to bandanna, from broad-brimmed plantation hat to straw boater, devoted one long segment to romance, asking his soloists to play their impression of a romantic interlude.

The youngster, Jones, wailed away with Hendrixian heavy blues in protest of his inability thus far to find true love. Each of the veteran horn men offered a steamier, more suavely seductive late-night jazz saloon impression of romance. By the song’s end, the Coconuts had emerged in their scantier look to illustrate the theme with some slow gyrations.

The set finished on a lively upswing with “My Male Curiosity,” in which Kid Creole gives a typically insouciant, typically lame explanation for his rakish progress, and the lively reggae novelty, “Don’t Take My Coconuts.”

In his song, “Part of My Design,” two of Darnell’s stated goals are “giving the world alternatives” and “giving the world some bonhomie.” His music is enough to achieve both ends. Unfortunately, for Kid Creole it remains a small, small world.