Morris Day’s Sundae Best

Why do people eat hot fudge sundaes? Because they’re tasty, indulgent and fun. And because life’s too short to only eat peas.

Well, a Morris Day and the Time concert is the musical equivalent of a hot fudge sundae. It will not sustain you for very long, or enrich your soul particularly, but while it lasts, it’s bound to be mostly pleasurable.

So it was Sunday night at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, where the Time served up a gooey helping of danceable funk and soul that satisfied middle-age fans’ cravings for nostalgia.

Day and his group are best known for their appearance in the 1984 film “Purple Rain,” which yielded two hits for them, “Jungle Love” and “The Bird.” The band’s first two albums, “The Time” (1981) and “What Time Is It?” (1983), both sold well, and Day had a semisuccessful solo career in the mid-’80s. But a reunion album (“Pandemonium”) in 1991 failed to generate much excitement, and the group has no new record to peddle now, so Sunday’s concert stayed almost exclusively within familiar territory.

The first clue that this would not be a stylistically ambitious outing came early, during the opening: A prerecorded, metronome-like beat went on for several long minutes, growing in intensity until Day--dapper as ever in a black-and-white print vest and jacket--made his grand entrance, launching the band into “Get It Up,” “777-9311” and “Cool.” The problem: That backbeat, embedded in the brain, echoed through these songs and on into the bulk of the show. When you’re a band whose material all pretty much sounds the same, the last thing you want to do is emphasize it right out of the blocks.

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Still, this was fun stuff, with Day roaming the stage, cool-stepping and swiveling his hips, shadowed by his sidekick, Jerome Benton. The fun continued--after a brief break for Day to change coats--through a smooth, disco-pop rendition of “Gigolos Get Lonely Too.”

Then the show temporarily derailed.

In what might be one of the most misguided examples of between-songs patter ever, Day instructed Benton to choose a woman from the audience for the dubious honor of coming onstage, where a cozy table and a bottle of champagne awaited.

“Is it ready yet?” Day asked Benton once the woman had been seated at the table. “Can I look at it?”

Then Day glanced disdainfully at the white woman seated onstage--let’s hope she was a plant--and instructed Benton to remove her, saying, “I’m sure she’s good for someone, just not me.”

Dutifully, Benton selected another subject, this one a black female.

Now comes the offensive part.

Day looked his companion over, then had Benton parade her--as in a horse auction--for his closer scrutiny. This was followed by Day’s idea of witty verbal foreplay (“Your name is Kelly? Kelly means ‘lots of sex’ in French, so let’s hope you live up to your name”) and the woman being forced to drain a full glass of champagne as a primer for her exit to Day’s waiting limousine, the crowd was told.

To quote the lofty Morris himself: What time is it?!!!

Time to lose this unfunny routine. Not only is it sexist, racist and way out of touch with very real prejudices confronting women of all colors, but it also stopped the show cold for a full 10 minutes which, even Day and his cohorts should be able to see, is a bad thing.

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Luckily, the show got back on track with the lively, heavily choreographed tandem of dance songs “The Walk” and “The Bird” and closed strongly with the feverish, rhythmic combo of “Jungle Love” and “Pandemonium.” An encore of “Jerk Out,” with its rap-like verse, sent the crowd of dancers in the Galaxy pit bopping toward the exits.

In addition to Day and Benton, the current incarnation of the Time features Gary “Jellybean” Johnson on drums, Terrell Ruffin on guitar, Ricky Smith on bass and the keyboard trio of Monte Moir, Keith Harrison and Robert Grisset.

Benton, by the way, is officially listed as a singer, though his chief duties seem to fall more in the category of manservant: He wipes Day’s brow, assists with his coat, even holds up a mirror for the star’s onstage vanity checks.

For his part, Day--that ugly aforementioned interlude aside--is still the same personable, well-dressed master of cool he always was, constantly jerking and preening and prone to launch at whim into trademark screams of “What?!!!” or a loony, tropical birdlike cackle.

No, this definitely wasn’t peas.