Euro treat

A small party for La Bouche

by Michael Freedberg

La Bouche, dance music's most popular act, played Boston last Thursday night (July 10). But you probably missed them. Only 200 fans showed up at Avalon to see a show originally booked into the much larger Harborlights Pavilion. This was to be a dance-music spectacular, a kind of KISS Concert in miniature featuring brief sets by five dance-music acts -- Krush, Amber, Jocelyn Enriquez, Robin S. , and the Quad City DJs -- followed by a full show from the main act. Unfortunately, the concert was mistakenly conceived, wrongly presented, and, it seems, poorly funded.

If you're going to limit your bill to dance-music acts, who in the US draw chiefly a cult-sized crowd, you should at least schedule the show in the 10 p.m.-to-midnight range, the hours when dance music reigns. This show started at 7 p.m. (It would also have been smart to schedule a tour like this to coincide with the school year, when Eurokids are here being students rather than on summer vacation back home.) And if you're going to present six acts of a genre whose essence is continuity, you certainly don't want to let the hip-hop-heavy, comic, too-loud Quad City DJs collapse the mood created by Amber's lighthearted freestyle, Jocelyn Enriquez's delicate house music, and Robin S.'s raw and lustful diva style. As for the underfunding, publicity for the show was scarce, as were ticket sales, and the performers stayed at a motel in downscale Milford. It was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Which was a shame, because Robin S. put her foot down and her voice, too, on "Pack It Up" and "Show Me Love," the night's hardest house, directly following Jocelyn Enriquez, who twirled her slight self gently around some sweetly girlish rhythms. So for a while at least, there was a party going on. The Quad City DJs completely cut the momentum. By means of bawdy humor and some standard-gimmick crowd pleasers (such as "The dirty girls on the left side!" "Da clean girls on the right!") and, most effective of all, the hit "Gonna Ride the Train," they worked up a jive-funk celebration of their own. But like all the opening acts, the Quads were limited to three songs. No sooner was their kind of party happening than it was over.

La Bouche, on the other hand, were allowed to go nine songs deep with a performance full of the jubilant soul and full-stride happy rush that Eurodance aspires to. Like most such live performances, La Bouche's featured off-stage music and on-stage dancers, a planetarium's worth of lights, and an abundance of nonstop singing. The mix was dominated by impatient singing and nothing but major chords. And why not major chords? La Bouche's star, Melanie Thornton, sang her stuff -- "Sweet Dreams," "Be My Lover," and "Falling in Love" -- in a flowery, bright, much too optimistic soprano. Her voice justified the music's impatience and personified its abundance. Unlike Donna Summer, who used to sing motionless, like a sleeping beauty dreaming of love, Thornton danced while she sang. She never stood still. Whether harmonizing with co-singer Lane MacCray or going it alone, she was awake to love, alive to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (So American is her music, it could only have been made in Germany, where American ideals cannot yet be taken for granted.)

The intricate footwork repartee between MacCray and Thornton and the perfectionism of their harmonies recalled the music of Ashford & Simpson. But where those stars of the disco era depicted married love as a difficult if inspiring adventure, La Bouche concentrated on the inspiration only. Difficulty had no place in their songs. The group danced either in unison or in complementary patterns, and the music's harmonies never broke. Emblematic of their idealistic depictions of romance was "I Love To Love," a very fast, European-only club smash in which Thornton voiced the title again and again, affirming her passion without ands or buts in a voice both solid and sweet.

Still, in a new song, "In My Position," which so far they've performed only live, there was a first suggestion that subjects other than perfection matter to La Bouche. Although the beats were still fast, the topic of the song was the difference between the roles of star and audience, a determinism highlighted by the melancholy in Thornton's plaintive singing. It was melancholy with a purpose: if destinies differ, so do one's access to things perfect, love among them. "In My Position" was a poignant, though still danceable, preface to a new realism in what one hopes will soon become La Bouche's overdue second CD -- something for their fans to look forward to on an otherwise disappointing night.