POP MUSIC REVIEW : New Kids on the Block Give Fans the Thrill of Puppy Love

“Little girl” isn’t always just a figure of speech in pop music.

Few audiences at any kind of concert are as homogenous as the one that showed up to shriek along with the New Kids on the Block, currently riding high with a No. 1 hit, in the first of two shows Sunday at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim.

Talk about narrowcasting: A good 80% of the full house was made up of screaming girls under the age of 16, caught up in a frenzied kind of puppy love largely unwitnessed since Donny Osmond was retired from lunch pails and book covers.

Though the wholesomely insipid New Kids have made their reputation as a white vocal group that sounds black, it seems safe to assume from the predominance of white faces at the Celebrity that black kids don’t think the New Kids sound all that black.

The supposed blackness of the sound has more to do with the insistent dance beat than with any vocal soulfulness. The high-pitched, castrato-like whine of Joe McIntyre recalls a pre-teen Donny or Jimmy Osmond much more than pre-teen Michael Jackson, and none of the more grown-up tones of his four fellow singing ‘n’ dancing Kids is going to make anyone forget Bobby Brown, much less James Brown.

(Incidentally, though it was not always easy to tell what might have been on tape at Sunday’s matinee and what wasn’t, it seemed almost certain that the lead vocals of McIntyre--at 16, the youngest member of the troupe--were more Memorex than live. Could it be that the poor Kid has to lip-sync those high parts because, shudder, his voice has changed?)

Musical attributes were of small concern to the gals on hand. It had more to do with hope--the hope that one of the Kids might look your way, or much better yet might point your way, or most dreamily of all would actually touch your hand, which you would then be compelled to refrain from washing for days.

The ultimate dream, of course, was to be kissed by a Kid, but only one little gal of about 5 in the front row had that honor. Later on, the Kids brought her up on stage for a moment, provoking one older girl, jealous with rage, to mutter, “That little girl’s gotten kissed and everything .” That little girl might have been dead meat if she had wandered out unaccompanied among her fellow fans after the show.

The Kids’ ingenuous pre-teen appeal was enhanced by the in-the-round staging of the Celebrity Theatre. With the band hidden in a pit, the five lads were free to skip in concentric circles around the revolving stage, and even when they faced off in one direction for some choreography at their mike stands, the lead singer on that particular number would roam around and play to the other side of the crowd.

To their credit, the Kids--who currently range in age from 16 to 19--don’t yet seem like cynical, street-wise show-biz youths. Their smiles seem genuine (who wouldn’t smile getting that kind of adoration that early in life?), and when they dance they look at each other with slightly goofy grins, like real-live teen boys do.

But they are old enough to have learned how to patronize, and the not-so-tightly scripted between-song shtick grew increasingly belabored and unbearable.

Introducing the title song of the current “Hangin’ Tough” album, Donny Wahlberg (apparently the bohemian of the group with his beret, his itsy-bitsy ponytail and his peace symbols) exhorted, “This is our personal anthem. What we want to do is make this your personal anthem too. Therefore, the result would be our national anthem.”

The tune, of course, is just another mindless dance ditty, with the group’s moniker thrown in for extra name recognition. Thanks, Donny, but we’ll stick with F. Scott Key for now.

The inevitable defense for any of this pabulum is that it’s kids’ stuff and, therefore, beneath criticism. To which the inevitable reply would be: There’s no law--written, natural or otherwise--that says kids can’t have taste too.

The New Kids on the Block return to town June 25, when they’ll open for Tiffany at the Universal Amphitheatre.