LYNN — For all the talk about screeching guitars and drug-laden lyrics, much of the rock ‘n’ roll from the mid-to-late 1960s consisted of rather tame, and rather sophisticated, pop music that wove its way into the heart with jaunty melodies and themes of love, often unrequited.
Three of the best from that particular genre teamed up Saturday night at Lynn City Hall for a nostalgia of ’60s power pop, with The Box Tops edging out The Grassroots and The Association for the night’s best performance.
The Box Tops, second on the bill, are from the Memphis area, and were lumped in with the “blue-eyed soul” category. However, to listen to them play some of the rockabilly music that ended their set, you can see where their hearts are.
Two of the original members are still in tow: Bill Cunningham, who looks as if he could post up his namesake Billy Cunningham (ex of the Philadelphia 76ers) on a basketball court; and Gary Talley, the lead guitarist who, in the absence of Alex Chilton, now sings lead.
The group sang its three hits (“The Letter,” “Cry like a Baby,” and “Soul Deep”) and they were done well. But their appeal was in the other songs they played, including a searing cover of Booker T and the MGs’ “Green Onions” that brought you back to that era like no other song any of the groups played Saturday evening.
The litany of credits each member of the band has as session musicians is impressive, and their playing showed it. Every note, every lick, was picture-perfect, right up to, and including, Talley’s electric sitar on “Cry Like a Baby.”
Cunningham, as front man, was folksy and funny, especially on his introduction to “Neon Rainbow,” the group’s one forray into 60s psychedelia. The song deserved to go nowhere, and it that’s exactly where it went. But the self-deprecating humor was much-appreciated.
Opening the show were The Grassroots, who have no originals left, but have two who looked as if they should be (and one who could have passed for a later-in-life Joe Cocker).
The Grassroots, like The Association, stuck to the hits, rattling them off like a live juke box. They are, of course, all wonderful, and the group handled them very well. The one-two punch that ended their set, “Temptation Eyes” and “Midnight Confessions,” are still two of the great pop songs from the era.
However, the personal favorite here was “Live For Today,” which, guitarist/Cocker double Dusty Harvey noted, was a go-to song for Vietnam veterans who endured the jungles of southeast Asia during the war. Harvey gave a special salute to Vietnam veterans before playing the song because “they were our only soldiers who came home from war without a hero’s welcome.”
The Association were good. They pretty much traced their evolution from being a very good group with folk-rock roots to middle-of-the-road icons, with numbers such as “Windy,” “Cherish,” “Everything You Touch,” and “Never My Love” — songs that neither threatened nor offended anybody.
That’s a far cry from their signature song from their heady days of 1965, “Along Comes Mary,” which was a thinly-veiled paean to marijuana, and was considered too controversial for many radio stations to play; or the song they opened the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival with, “Enter the Young.”
The Association are traveling these days with two originals, Jim Yester and Jules Alexander, the latter looking like “Mini-Me” of “Austin Powers” fame from a distance, with his trademark white suit (interesting juxtaposition of images when keyboardist Jordan Cole, son of original bassist Brian Cole, spoke of the ’60s as a “colorful” decade as the group stood on stage, all of its musicians looking like John Lennon crossing Abbey Road). Cole, by the way, has inherited his father’s ability to play the penny whistle.
Nostalgia tours such as this one will always sell well (as this one did Saturday night) because as much as the Baby Boomers want to wear their freak flags proudly (as many did at City Hall), the truth is these middle-of-the-road pop groups are much gentler, and happier, reminders of those “peace and love” days when optimism still prevailed in the world.
