Immature Displays Poise, Potential at Wiltern Gig

Every black teen group that wanders down the pike has to cope with comparisons to the Jackson 5 and New Edition. Los Angeles-based Immature is no exception. To their credit, the three 14-year-old boys who make up the group possess a degree of professional poise and sophistication that even their predecessors lacked at that age.

Sporting their trademark wraparound shades--a style emulated by many youngsters in the audience on Saturday afternoon at the Wiltern Theatre--the trio didn’t let the too-hot-for-summer leather jackets they also wore deter them from their de rigueur crotch-grabbing choreography.

The group’s female fans stood precariously atop the theater seats for the duration of the set, and they also delivered the kind of unabated, high-decibel screams that threatened to send the few parents in attendance under the seats. Eliciting most of those screams was Marques “Batman” Houston, a regular on the “Sister Sister” TV sitcom whose Michael Jackson-esque vocals are Immature’s most appealing feature.

While this trio has a cool aura that might leave anyone past the age of, say, 21, unmoved, you have to respect their musical references. Any teen group that can weave a funky snippet of ‘70s-era George Clinton into its own music has the taste and potential to go places.