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Lisa Lisa was good good at her Fender’s Ballroom concert in Long Beach on Tuesday, but the company she kept was only so-so. Fronting the group Cult Jam (beefed up from a duo to a full sextet
for the live show), Lisa Lisa proved to be a first-rate singer whose potential may match her considerable vocal power. She has the pipes to cut through a busy, bottom-heavy romp like “Can
You Feel the Beat” with impressive force, then downshift to invest just the right sensitivity and shading into the melancholy ballad “All Cried Out.” She’s also loaded with poise. And though
her charisma is on the understated side, she showed a distinct personality, so it wasn’t surprising to see the audience peopled with Lisa Lisa wanna-be’s. She sprinkled her between-song
patter with innuendo, at one point surveying the crowd and purring, “The guys are looking fine. I’m going to take one home--who shall it be?” That, of course, was the lead-in to the Brooklyn
group’s smash single and final tune, “I Wonder if I Take You Home.” In “Wonder,” Cult Jam’s playing and snazzy choreography melded into such a glorious blow-out it almost made you forget
that most of the show’s material wasn’t worthy of Lisa Lisa’s talent. The group Full Force, which wrote and produced “I Wonder” and created Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam to record it, opened its
headlining set with an answer song, “Girl, if I Take You Home.” It would have been a nifty segue if an hour hadn’t passed between the two acts. The sextet (which again shares the bill with
Lisa Lisa on Saturday at the Palace) came across as enormously self-impressed, which makes _ some _ sense given its string of writing/producing successes for other outfits, including Lisa
Lisa, U.T.F.O. and Warren Mills. But Full Force didn’t back up the swagger, and was tripped up by a surprisingly limited musical scope, thin songs and sound problems. There was hope for a
reprieve when singer Bowlegged Lou announced that labelmate Eddie Murphy would join the band on stage--except it turned out he was kidding. Not funny, guys. Maybe you should just stick to
writing and producing the tunes. MORE TO READ