POP BEAT : Video Pinup Takes Her Act to Center Stage

“I could do those dances,” uttered a young woman, suitably uncowed, in the middle of Samantha Fox’s local live debut Thursday at the Palace. Which is, of course, the point. Fox is hardly a talent to be reckoned with in any of her chosen arenas--singing, dancing, pelvic thrusting, what have you--but she is game, and she does offer an unthreatening, you-could-do-this appeal. Just think of it: Samantha Fox as 1989’s prime exemplar of the original punk ethos.

Not that this is exactly Tiffany’s territory. The girl next door doesn’t have a body like Fox’s legendary Page-3-girl figure (in England’s tabloid press), outfitted Thursday--fashion fans take note--to accent exposed legs and derriere more than the famous torso. But the girl next door can imagine that--had heaven blessed her with the same head-turning physical attributes, had the genes turned out a wee bit differently-- she could be where Fox is now, chanting the song title “Sex” for openers and begging the so-close-yet-so-far-away audience to “Touch Me” for the big finish.

The act wasn’t nearly as risque as you’d expect from the videos, the nude calendar pinups and the lyrics. After opening with “Sex,” Fox did launch right into “Naughty Girls Need Love Too,” which featured some naaaasty hip grinding more suited for the Ivar Theatre a few blocks away than the Palace. After that, though, Fox mostly limited her moves to the usual rock ‘n’ roll stage strutting until reprising the thrust action for “Touch Me.” (The latter number, ironically enough, had one overheated fan down front apparently grabbing hold of her nyloned leg, to which she yelped “Leggo!” and gave a little kick. It was so perfect it may have been part of the act, but we doubt it.) But naughty? Not very, as these things go.

If anything, Fox may have come off a little better live than in her videos. The more-than-competent band, certainly, lit a rock fire to throwaway disco-pop songs freed from the loathsome Stock/Aiken/Waterman production that curses our land like a biblical plague. The Palace is a perfect venue for Fox; its infamous acoustics mask her vocal limitations better than any pricey studio engineering ever could.

And her stage moves and what choreography there was looked better here than on MTV. In her videos she’s usually plopped down in the midst of professional male hoofers, where she looks like she’s having a hard time treading water. But doing some tentative yet cute steps with her band, she actually looked like she was in control instead of panting to catch up.

There’s a kind of upfrontness (no pun intended) to Fox that’s almost endearing in this age of cynically calculated high-mindedness. Interestingly, the word body shows up in her songs as much or more than standard pop words like, say, love . This is all about fun--not ersatz, idealized romance--and Fox’s act is someone’s idea of it.

Opening the show was a funk-rock band for pre-teens, Double Freak, which had two lead singers traversing the stage like the Beastie Boys imitating Donny Osmond (or was it Donny and brother Jimmy doing the Beasties?). It wasn’t easy to tell at first whether the group was cruelly mocking the young crowd with its stage patter or shamelessly pandering to it; eventually the overwhelming mediocrity of the material made it clear that the latter was the case.