POP MUSIC REVIEW : Golden Oldies Stars Show Why They’re Still the Rocks of Ages

When presented with a gold record in the midst of Saturday’s “Magnificent 7” oldies concert at the Pacific Amphitheatre, veteran rocker Freddie Cannon held the award up and announced, “This is for George Foreman.”

It’s understandable if Cannon and fellow golden-agers Ben E. King, Ronnie Spector, Mitch Ryder, Leslie Gore, Little Anthony and Brenton Wood found a certain resonance in the 42-year-old Foreman’s solid showing against heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield the evening before.

In a culture which values old people less than it does old cars, any bit of respect is a blessing. And except for a precarious few--has anyone sawed into Mick Jagger and counted the rings recently?--aging rock performers are an especially devalued species.

Similar to Foreman’s fortitude on Friday, most of the acts at Saturday’s show went the distance (not that doing a few songs is particularly taxing compared to getting punched in the head for an hour), but none came close to scoring a knockout.

Show opener Brenton Wood applied his still-elastic voice to his “The Oogum Boogum Song,” “Gimme a Little Sign” and “Baby You Got It,” with the latter song’s bouncy soul seeming not so far from what the Londonbeat is presently getting on the airwaves.

Host Brian (Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll) Beirne noted that Leslie Gore did her first K-EARTH oldies show about 20 years ago. That long span on the retro circuit didn’t keep her from putting a lot of enthusiasm into her handful of well-crafted ‘60s pop songs.

Gore’s voice still has a plaintive quality, with an appealing bit of rasp, put to good use on “Maybe I Know,” 1967’s “California Nights” (which she prefaced with a pro-ecology statement) and a dramatic rendition of “You Don’t Own Me,” a defiant song of independence which presaged the feminist movement by several years.

Little Anthony offered the slickest performance of the evening, a pat, Vegas-ized routine that was almost too oily to touch. Amid his pre-programmed patter and smooth dance steps, though, his fabulous high voice still won through. On the 1965 “Hurt So Bad” his voice had a genuine cry to it as he pleaded “Please don’t go” near its end, while “Goin’ Out of My Head” closed just as strongly, with one powerful, long-held note earning him a standing ovation.

One had high expectations for Mitch Ryder, both because his ‘60s successes were such propulsive masterpieces and because he has struggled to remain a contemporary artist (there are currently eight albums of his original material out in Europe). But Ryder’s performance was defused by a heavy-handed band with little feeling for the music and by his own apparent reticence to invest much of himself in his old songs.

Ryder seemed aloof behind a pair of shades and scarcely bothered moving as he sang, a sharp contrast to his tear-it-up shows of old. He still has a great set of pipes, with one of the grittiest shouts this side of Wilson Pickett. But on his old hits that voice only seemed connected to emotion on the tail end of the “Devil With the Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly” medley. The saving grace of Ryder’s performance, and a frustrating hint of how good the whole thing could have been, was a passionate, vital reading of Prince’s “When You Were Mine.”

Without her ex-husband Phil Spector’s wall-of-sound productions, Ronnie Spector’s set lost a lot of their teen-aged majesty, which her often-overblown vocals weren’t able to restore. Spector sure must be popular in some higher circles though, because literally at the instant she began to sing “Walking in the Rain,” the sky began pouring down on the amphitheater.

Working under an enormous head of hair and wearing a skimpy dress perhaps better suited for a nightclub, Spector also sang “I Can Hear Music,” “Do I Love You,” “Be My Baby” and other early ‘60s hits, along with 1977’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood,” penned for her by Billy Joel.

Ben E. King’s deceptively relaxed, good-natured set carried the most weight of the evening. There was little vocal grandstanding in his six songs, which included “On Broadway,” “Save the Last Dance for Me” and “Spanish Harlem.” But his tenor voice finesses with a lot of feeling, giving some soulful strokes and shadings to “Under the Boardwalk” (embellishing Johnny Moore’s vocal on the Drifters’ original) and his immortal “Stand by Me.”

Freddie (Boom Boom) Cannon deserves an A for effort, putting a lot of vocal energy and sharp dance moves into his show-closing performance. But that enthusiasm wasn’t sufficient to make up for the inane novelty hits that birthed his career or the limited, often awry voice he has to work with.

Though he and the Monte Carlos (the solid backup band that had accompanied most of the acts) got the crowd up and dancing for the show’s end, his “Tallahassie Lassie,” the Chuck Barris-penned “Palisades Park” and characterless renditions of Chuck Berry oldies just weren’t in the same league with most of the other performers.