Shooting stars

Bobby Rydell takes a drag on his cigarette right before our filmed 1968 interview for AFTV Spangdahlem's Friday-night "Catch-22" series.

I watched the Malt Shop Memories Concert on PBS the other night, and I had two reactions: irritation and sadness.

Both emotions were caused by the same factor. There are performers who should stop performing when they can no longer get the job done.

The concert was taped April 1, 2011, at Caesars in Atlantic City, N.J. and featured performances by Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Fabian, The Drifters, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Lesley Gore, Brian Hyland, Chris Montez, The Angels, The Tymes, and Little Peggy March. (Click on the names in this paragraph and hear their 1960s hits on YouTube.)

If you were a teenager in the pre-Beatles 1960s, those people are familiar. They all had hit songs back in the day when rock and roll was a more innocent genre. Most of them were teenagers themselves then and are at least in their 60s now.

I can't think of a one of them who's had a hit since.

Most of them just shouldn't be singing any more. They just can't cut the mustard. That was sad to watch. But I was irritated with myself for once more succumbing to nostalgia's lure.

"Keep reaching for that elusive note, Frankie. Maybe you'll stumble across it eventually."

Little Anthony was an exception. He might be 45 years older, but he can still hit every note on the mark. So can Lesley Gore and Bobby Rydell.

Keep in mind that, even in their prime, most of these performers were blessed with more enthusiasm than talent. They looked good. They reflected their times. They had sex appeal.

But, to be truthful, their material wasn't very challenging. Add to that the fact that what we heard on the radio were the very best takes of what were probably lengthy recording sessions, backed up by talented studio musicians and equally talented recording engineers.

In live performances back in the day, it wasn't their musical ability that attracted audiences of screaming teenage girls. It was the fact that they were, momentarily, rock and roll "stars."

More like shooting stars, really. They shone brightly, and then faded and fell to earth.

PBS television taped the concert back in April for one of its endless series of fundraisers aimed at us old folks who used to be young in the 1960s and now have enough money to help support public television.

Most of those programs leave me feeling cheated. But idiot that I am, I TiVo-ed this one anyway, thinking it might be worth seeing. It was a two-hour program. By the time I skipped the pledge breaks and the parts that were just plain lame, it took me about 20 minutes to watch.

I interviewed Bobby Rydell back in 1968 when he was on a USO tour of Germany and appeared at the NCO Club at Spangdahlem Air Base. As we were setting up the camera and chatting with him, one of the crew asked him how he liked being a superstar.

"I'm just a guy from Philly who got lucky," he said. "Please don't call me a superstar."

He was right. And all these years later, I still respect him for saying it.