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And how exactly do they do this? Well, they master recording-studio technology. (Cole: "It's hard to reproduce a guitar sound without being able | to play a guitar, but you can do just about anything else with a keyboard and a computer.") Then they hit the streets to find their stars. "We just go out and look," Cole insists. "We look in churches, clubs, restaurants. You see somebody walking down the street humming to themselves. You walk closely so you see how they sound. Then you ask them. You see someone who has the right look. You stop them and ask them." The C+C method is to use the vocalists to front its house productions, then develop solo projects for them if the hits keep coming. Clivilles and Cole play drums, percussion and keyboards, write the songs, and do all the arranging. The result is as slick as the Rockefeller Center ice rink in February, and just as chilly: plenty of fancy footwork, and a radical shortage of heart.
That is not to say that C+C lacks energy or an infectious sense of playfulness. A Groove of Love is a funny parody of macho music posturing, Ice- style ("Love to me means tight butt jeans/ Girls they only waste time with crushed dreams/ The mike is my bitch"). C+C's dance-music dazzlements have attracted such heavy-duty commercial talent as Mariah Carey, for whom it is helping produce the follow-up to her 4 million-selling debut album; and funk mistress Lisa Lisa, whose new record it is producing while she and Clivilles strike up a romantic association to complement the professional one.
There is no love lost, however, between C+C and Martha Wash, who has been singing for it for three years and earlier this year slapped it with two lawsuits, for improperly crediting her on the album and for not including her in the video, allegedly because her big voice and waistline are of the same approximate size. The two Cs both admit to not paying Wash's contributions sufficient attention but deny that this is yet another Milli Vanilli episode of the puppet masters being tangled in their own strings. "We've always been in Martha's corner," Cole maintains. "Her new gripe is that she wasn't in the video. She sued us the day after she did the ((vocal)) session! If someone is trying to burn your house down, do you invite them for dinner?"
Fracases like this only underscore the fact that if dance music is the hottest commodity on the charts right now, it still lacks cachet. The wasp- waisted Zelma Williams handles the majority of female vocals on the record, yet it's a struggle to fix her with any strong identity. She might as well be a digital sample dressed in an evening gown. If producers are the stars, then they better have star quality. Or develop it. Some things just can't be made in a factory.