‘Voca People,’ Paul Simon delight crowds in 2 concerts

By WOODY WEINGARTEN 

For a peak musical experience, and an acute musical contrast, all you needed this month was to be at two concerts — one by Voca People; the other, Paul Simon.

The former, in a limited run at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre, flaunts gamboling, non-instrumental vocal harmonies and non-stop fun.

Simon, star of the one-shot Black and White Ball, a San Francisco Symphony fund-raiser, was the compleat musician, a guy who featured ever-changing, complex rhythms. His own band, the orchestra and a local choir that amalgamated three were his backups. 

Both Voca People and Simon were exciting to watch.

One big difference was age. Simon, now 70, has performed since he was 13, when he formed a duo with Art Garfunkel. Voca People, which didn’t launch until 2008 and attracts a younger demographic, consists of performers from 23 to 53.

The group mixes vocal, beat box and a cappella sounds with comedy, and purportedly consists of aliens from the planet Voca seeking musical energy to recharge its stranded spacecraft.

The vocalists, masters of simulating drums, percussion, basses, guitars and other instruments, were dressed in white suits and ties, shirts and shoes, and tight cloth head-coverings that masked their hair and gender.

Ruby lips and dark eye makeup stood out from their stark appearance, but their overall image was of an octet that had been cloned from a single white-faced mime.

Pulling audience foils into the act has become a stage cliché. But the three male Voca People singers, the three females and the two male beat-box specialists outclassed most others as they playfully humiliated more folks than your average alien.

Opening night, Voca People didn’t wait to plaster smiles on the faces of its audience. It instantly glistened with a five-minute musical history tour that began with Neanderthals and zipped past calypso music, a Hallelujah chorus, “Wimoweh,” “Mr. Sandman,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Who Let the Dog Out?” and “Billie Jean” (replete with faux crotch-grabbing choreography).

Another successful medley was a cinematic exploration of 007, Pink Panther, Rocky, Titanic and Mission: Impossible themes.

Delightful, too, was a “Ladies on the Hunt” sequence with “Fever,” “Big Spender” and “I Will Always Love You,” and a classical assortment that showcased extracts from Beethoven’s “Fifth Symphony,” Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker,” Bizet’s “Habanera” and Mozart’s “Magic Flute” — with a little “Hava Nagila” and “Flight of the Bumblebee” tossed in for good measure.  

The show’s lighting effects were spectacular, shifting easily from a quasi-Hollywood premiere to a moment in which they blinked in time with the music during a beat-box duet.

Voca People’s comedy ranged from over-the-top mugging to intentionally odd movements resembling ducks waddling or robots gone berserk. Spiced up by imitating a cell phone breaking up.

A couple of their set-pieces were wonders to behold — a recurring bit where they took the arms of audience members and played them like instruments (heard a human didgeridoo or bagpipes lately?), and one in which they locked Spock-like onto audience members’ thought patterns and translated them in musical and carnal terms.

No matter what Simon did, he was familiar, like a comfortable old shoe; Voca People also evoked comfort though unfamiliar (would you expect otherwise of alien beings?).

Simon keeps evolving musically. So, although he’d long ago found his voice, the audience was never quite sure what was coming next. At the Black and White Ball, he sandwiched strains of country music between soaring African and jazz riffs.

For Voca People, the future might be a blank but rarin’-to-go musical slate.

Both the octet and Simon were greeted at various times during their sell-out performances with clapping, cheering and whistling. Happy reactions.

Simon’s now gone from the Bay Area, and that’s your loss if you missed him.

But the Israel-based Voca People and its 80-minute show are still here — at least for a short time.

Its videos on YouTube have drawn more than 20 million hits (6 million in the first four months it was up). No wonder. It’s unique, and vastly more fun to experience than the equally monochromatic Blue Man Group.

In a word, go!

Voca People will perform at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter St., San Francisco, through June 17. Evening performances Tuesdays through Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 6:30 and 9:30 p.m.; Sundays, 6 p.m. Matinees, Sundays, 3 p.m. Tickets: $49 to $75, (415) 771-6900 or www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com.