American Music Festival a salute to camp, kitsch

VIRGINIA BEACH

Camp and kitsch are perhaps the only artistic aesthetics that allow us to laugh at ourselves, to take part in a reality where bad puns, cheap humor and questionable taste are redeeming traits.

As such, the Verizon Wireless American Music Festival, the annual event that salutes the end of the Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon and summer, was a delight. For three nights, revelers flocked to the Oceanfront to romp with groups whose appeal, at least in 2008, is understood to be greeted with an ironic nod and wink.

On Friday night, the '90s R&B group En Vogue kicked off the festival. The group's occasional diva histrionics are in fact part of its infamous break-up-to-make-up saga, and they performed a sturdy set (albeit without Dawn Robinson, the group's diva-in-chief.)

Bell Biv DeVoe followed, wooing a sizable and diverse crowd with its R&B/hip-hop pop. They sounded astonishingly good for a group whose biggest hits were from 1990, and their closing song, "Poison," prompted one of the first mass karaoke moments of the weekend.

After a prolonged delay, Morris Day - whose flamboyance, Minneapolis funk and man-diva antics make a hurricane of campiness - rocked the crowd with his hits, including "Cool " and "Jungle Love."

Saturday night featured Billy Idol, who despite being massively popular in the '80s, is still kicking it career wise, thanks in part to popping up in cutesy pop culture stuff like "The Wedding Singer."

Idol looked good too; judging by some women's curdling shrieks - he's still got it. As they had the night before, people watched from the boardwalk, down in the sand and from their hotel balconies. He ripped through favorites including "John Wayne" and "Hot in the City," which he altered lyrically to include Virginia Beach. Cute.

Few acts, though, epitomize cute camp like the B-52s; they're part of the very definition of the mood, alongside John Waters movies and drag queens. Though the girls and guys from Athens, Ga., are usually categorized as New Wave, they may as well just switch their genre to "fun."

The B-52s drew what looked to be the largest crowd of the weekend, perhaps since the half marathon had finished, and participants - with their impossibly tight skin and lithe bodies, curse them - were looking to unwind with a beer (or several) and a good show.

Indeed, the B-52s might technically be a New Wave group, but their music also has a beach music quality that becomes so readily apparent when the group performs, well, on the beach.

With xylophones, sequins, light-up guns and guitars, the B-52s moved smoothly - starting right on time and finishing that way too, - through favorites old and new, including "Private Idaho" and "Roam," which Kate Pierson reminded us was written by Virginia Beach's Robert Waldrop. N ow in their 50s, they are still unapologetic silly; during "Love in the Year 3000," from their new album "Funplex," Pierson did a fantastically awful "robot" dance.

They closed, of course, with their monster hit "Love Shack," and as they had two nights prior, fireworks shot into the sky. It was cool, and with that, the summer of 2008 ended with a bang.

Malcolm Venable, (757) 446-2662, malcolm.venable@pilotonline.com