O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : The Beach Boys Give It Another Go ‘round : Things haven’t gone well in recent years. But at the Celebrity, the power of Brian Wilson’s great music is underscored.

The Beach Boys’ “I Get Around” took on something of a more literal meaning Sunday night as the group performed on the Celebrity Theatre’s rotating stage.

The stage only rotates at about the speed of a microwave carousel, so that probably didn’t have much to do with the disoriented look on the faces of the surviving original Beach Boys as they began performing. Actually, it hasn’t been an atypical look for Carl Wilson, Al Jardine, Mike Love and almost-original-member Bruce Johnston at shows in recent years. When they first come onstage, it often is with the grumpy, lost look of someone in a monster movie demanding “Why have you disturbed my rest?” as he’s being dumped out of a coffin.

There are any number of reasons why the Beach Boys might come to regard their shows as a recurring zombie nightmare: For starters they’ve essentially been roaming the planet like a body in search of its head since leader Brian Wilson began his long sabbatical from reality in the late ‘60s. Without his creative drive, the Beach Boys have become a human juke box, re-creating like-the-record performances of 30-year-old hits. And it must be a little strange to still be singing about pom-poms, engine parts and bushy bushy blond hair-dos when you’re old enough to live in Leisure World.

Over the years, enough dark events have cropped up in the Beach Boys’ story to make their golden California dream seem more of a pyrite promise. There have been battles within the band over the best ways to treat Brian’s mental illness, with occasional “Brian’s back!” declarations seeming more exploitative than accurate. Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983 while swimming drunk. The members have been split at times by bitter power plays for control of the band’s finances and destiny.

That destiny is none too assured these days: The Boys typically have played huge arenas and amphitheaters, but their tour stop this time was at the not-entirely full 2,500-seat Celebrity. They have a new album, “Summer in Paradise,” but lacking major label interest, they had to release it themselves. The single hasn’t charted. Not fun, fun, fun by any means.

All of which only goes to underscore the power of great music. By the time the group hit its second song Sunday--”Darlin’,” Carl Wilson’s soaring foray into soul--the music had rolled back the years for musicians and audience alike.

The Beach Boys indeed have given some awful, indifferent and out-of-tune performances over the years. But their show Sunday night was on a par with their appearance at the Pacific Amphitheatre two years ago: It was sparked by some unexpected treasures on the set list and by a backing band that treated the show as more than just another gig. Particular standouts in the six-man crew were powerhouse drummer Mike Kowalski and (Al’s son) Matt Jardine, whose vocal harmonies generally were up to the task of filling in for Brian’s angelic falsetto.

The standout in the band’s front-line is still Carl, whose soulful high tenor voice has remained a marvel through the years. The passion and care he put into his performances gave the impression that he is at once the Beach Boy most concerned with preserving the dignity and magic of the band’s old songs, and the Beach Boy most likely to someday break out of the oldies mold and do something fresh. In his terse, biting guitar solos on “Do It Again,” he indeed did seem to be champing at the bit.

The strongest vocals of the night were his, as he blew life into “I Can Hear Music,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows.”

Jardine--often overlooked in the saga of the brothers Wilson and their cousin Love--also is a fine singer, as he demonstrated with “Sloop John B.,” “Help Me Rhonda,” the Mama and the Papas’ “California Dreamin’ ” and a doo-wop rendition of the Dell-Vikings’ “Come Go With Me.”

Johnston, as ever, looked like a young Ted Kennedy, and smiled throughout the show, taking a couple of breezy leads and adding fine harmonies.

Perhaps the greatest testament to the power of Brian Wilson’s brilliantly evocative songs and arrangements is that they are able to survive Mike Love, who remains one of the smarmiest, most condescending showmen in the business.

Maybe he’s doing his earnest best to entertain. But his efforts only push the show toward being a slick, moribund Vegas revue. His ultra-nasal vocals on the old Beach Boy hits may have been part of their innocent charm; hearing him sing in a flippant seeming parody of that style today isn’t nearly so charming.

By some biographical accounts, Love resisted Brian Wilson’s attempt to expand pop music with the masterpiece “Pet Sounds” in 1966, and he still seems to resist any novelty creeping into the band’s shows.

When one fan in the audience requested the minor but splendid ‘70s hit “Sail On Sailor,” Love cajoled: “Oh, there’s people here who want to hear esoteric songs. No one wants to hear our car songs, like ‘Little Deuce Coupe’ or ‘I Get Around,’ right? Next we’re gonna do, what, something from (another of Wilson’s experimental efforts) ‘Smiley Smile?’ Ha, ha, give me a break.”

Whereupon he launched into a medley of car songs including the aforementioned tunes, “409,” “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena” and “Little GTO.”

There were a few surprises, such as “Hawaii” and “Hushabye,” both featuring the junior Jardine on falsetto vocals. The usual suspects in the set included “Good Vibrations,” “California Girls,” “Be True to Your School,” “Surfer Girl,” “Barbara Ann,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Surfin’ U.S.A,” and “Surfin’ Safari.”

The predictable low points were the vapid “Kokomo;” their 1987 Fat Boys collaboration “Wipeout” (with keyboardist Billy Hinsche, once in Dino Desi and Billy, providing the rap), and a new remake of “Under the Boardwalk,” which Love’s indifferent vocal placed about six feet under.

Somewhat more promising was the current single, “Summer in Paradise,” a pleasant-enough ecologically themed ditty about making things the way they used to be. But with Love steering the Beach Boys, driving in reverse isn’t the best example of how to reclaim California’s promise.