POP MUSIC REVIEW : Kid Creole Keeps Good Vibes Flowing

Audiences will find no rage in the uplifting stew of pop, soul, calypso and swing of Kid Creole & the Coconuts. No bad vibes in the Afro-Caribbean riffing of such songs as “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy.” Leave that stuff for the ‘90s pop world.

At the Viper Room on Friday, Creole (a.k.a. August Darnell) came off like something from another era: a funky Cab Calloway wannabe, decked out in an orange zoot suit, shades, scarves and straw boater and flanked by two platinum-haired female background singers (the Coconuts, of course). Behind that grinning, campy facade was a lesson learned from the days of Basie and Ellington, when larger-than-life showmanship and good times counted almost as much as the music itself.

The nearly two-hour Creole revue began as his eight-man band crowded onto the small Viper Room stage to the recorded rumble of Holst’s “The Planets,” suggesting monumental sounds to come. What soon followed was a rowdy tropical beat that only occasionally let up, once for a funked-up rendition of the Beatles’ “Things We Said Today” and for the jazzy grind of what Creole called “music to get pregnant by.”

Over the last 15 years, that sound has earned a large following across Europe and a string of Top 10 singles in England, though only a cult following at home in the U.S. But Creole remained a tireless host for his packed Viper Room audience.