ALL-4-ONE: GRAMMY WINNERS AT SHOW ME CENTER

Paris, Malaysia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong and Korea weren't exotic enough for the California singing group All-4-One, so they added Cape Girardeau to liven things up.

The platinum-selling group, which boasts the third highest selling single in the rock era with "I Swear," journeys into the Show Me Center at 8 p.m. Saturday (tickets are still available) after returning to the United States from two sold-out shows in the Hong Kong Coliseum.

All-4-One's Blitzz Records manager Chris O'Brien said the group is looking forward to the energy of performing for an American audience again.

"It's the same show if they're performing for 10 or 10,000 people," O'Brien said. "But it's more intimate here. People really get up and dance and let you know they're getting into it. And you don't have the language barrier."

The language barrier didn't prevent the 13,000 All-4-One fans in Hong Kong from singing along as Delious, Tony Borowiak, Jamie Jones and Alfred Nevarez put on a show.

"It's a real evening of entertainment with All-4-One," O'Brien said. "There's a lot of costume changes. There's some choreography thrown in and they like to converse with the audience."

Delious, Borowiak, Jones and Nevarez believe in a clean, harmonious sound without many of the studio effects that are so common in modern pop music. O'Brien said the four years they have spent together has brought them so close they seem like a single entity at times.

"They blend so well together," she said. "Nobody's more important than the group. They all have their individual roles but they blend them together."

That blend comes across better on stage, where the group can draw from the audiences. During their tour of the Orient they had to adapt to a more conservative, more polite audience than they are used to in the U.S.

"We like the energy of performing live with the whole band behind us," Nevarez said in a prepared release. "It takes the songs to a whole different place."

The group sold more than 5 million copies of their self-titled 1994 debut album. That album brought All-4-One the American Music Award for Favorite New Soul/R&B Artist and the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "I Swear."

All-4-One's stop in Cape Girardeau is one of many on their promotional tour for their latest album, "And The Music Speaks." O'Brien said they will do between 180 and 200 shows this year.

"We had to grow somewhere so we grew vocally," Jones has said. "We tried to do neat things, stretch ourselves.

"I'd rather we be known as a singing group not a pop group, doo-wop group or an R&B group."

None of the four members of the group has had formal vocal training and each credits singing with their church choirs as the start to their careers.

"That's where we all learned how to sing and how voices can blend together," Delious has said.

Nevarez and Borowiak had been friends since high school and they met Jones at a recording studio where they were singing jingles. The trio met Delious at a local talent show. Los Angeles-based Blitzz Records auditioned the foursome and signed them on the spot.

The results speak for themselves.

"Our vocal blend has gotten a lot tighter over the last year and a half," Borowiak has said. "Both on a practical and a musical level. It's a lot easier to get us all around one mike instead of each person doing a single track."

O'Brien said January will see the release of a new single entitled "I Turn To You."

Jones has said he sees no end to their arrangement. "We plan to be together for a long time making great music."