POP WEEKEND : Northern Benefit, Southern Comfort : Mostly Old Songs But Some New Ones Too From Beach Boys and Chicago at Pacific

When you think of “oldies” acts, you don’t usually think of bands that have had recent Top 10 and even No. 1 chart hits, as both Chicago and the Beach Boys have. Yet on their first tour together since 1975, the two veteran groups are both clearly dealing as nostalgia merchants for old fans who want to have fun fun fun till their banker takes the Beemer away.

The tour kicked off Saturday at the Pacific Amphitheatre (followed by a scheduled date Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl), where individual hour-plus sets by both acts were followed by a half-hour dual set that opened with the song they recorded together back in ‘74, “Wishing You Were Here.” As the song says, they “have a job to do and do it well,” even if the job requirements don’t necessarily include assuaging those who might prefer continued greatness to past glories. As a Memory Lane trip, it’s an enjoyable evening out, to be sure, but discouraging too.

Yet buried like a nugget in the middle of the show was a reason to believe in at least one group’s future: A three-song mini-set by Brian Wilson actually included brand-new material and indicated that, should the Boys return to recording his work, their best days might not all be behind them. Wouldn’t it be nice?

The Beach Boys’ opening set included only songs from 1967 or earlier, except for the recent singles “Wipeout” (a rap-smothered remake of a ‘60s song) and “Kokomo.” A car-song medley even had them reprising outside songs that--as singer Mike Love noted--are often wrongly identified with the Boys, like “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” and “G.T.O.”

Singing “God Only Knows” and others from among brother Brian’s less novel, more classic repertoire, Carl Wilson still has the sweetest voice. But this was mostly the Mike Love Show, an amiable surfin’ and drivin’ revue--complete with dancing girls in bikinis--that probably isn’t all that different at the Pacific than it is at the Sands.

For its portion of the show, Chicago evenly alternated classic singles from 1975 or earlier with far less distinctive hits from 1984 or later. Some bands lose their hair, while others lose their horns; Chicago is in the latter camp and seems rather schizoid on stage now. The band with horns that performed pop classics like “25 or 6 to 4” (led by likable, low-key old hand Robert Lamm) had far more personality than the band without them that did anonymous David Foster fodder such as “You’re Not Alone” (sung by showier recent additions Bill Champlin and Jason Scheff).

Coming together toward the close, the two outfits alternated each other’s hits to much crowd-delighting effect, though some of the vocal collaborations were still on the ragged or tentative side on this opening night. Eventually “Darlin’ ” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” gave way to “In the Midnight Hour” and “Dancing in the Streets”--Bar Band City.

Disappointingly, original group architect Brian Wilson never did appear on stage with his fellow Beach Boys. But he did borrow their backing band for three mid-set songs--”Love and Mercy,” one of his most beautiful recordings ever, plus two new ones, “Country Feeling” and “In My Car,” both of which sounded as if they could have been late-’60s hits for the band and at least one of which the Boys have been working on in the studio.

Dressed all in black, Wilson looked mighty sharp; his vocal notes weren’t always so, but he was never much of a live performer anyway, and the songs--and in this case, their potential to be crooned by his erstwhile partners--are what matter.

Mike Love asked the crowd how many were over or under 25 (it sounded like a 75/25% split). To the young ‘uns, he said, “We’re even happier to see you. Seriously.” We’ll see just how serious he is about the band’s future, perhaps, by whether the next tour includes some new Wilson gems wedged between all the old ones.