By John Chandler

Jan Berry and Dean Torrence (known collectively as Jan & Dean, for some reason), had a bunch of hits in the early '60s, the biggest being the Brian Wilson-penned "Surf City." ("Two girls for every boy!") And, of course, "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" is a frequently poured cup of novelty treacle on Oldies radio.

Jan & Dean were sub-Beach Boys' stars in the SoCal cosmos, belting out one bitchin' little ditty after another about the beach, the girls at the beach and the swell cars driven in order to get to the beach to see the girls. They were like Joey Bishop to the Beach Boys' Sinatra. Oh, hell, they were better than that.

Anyway, by the time the Beatles splashed down in this country, Jan & Dean's days were numbered. They must have felt like the Neanderthals being muscled off the tundra by the superior tools of the wily Cro-Magnon.

The duo's attempts to adapt were hilarious, sweet and sad. And not without merit. They were not gifted songwriters. They were simply pop stars. American pop stars. Not Chad & Jeremy. Not Peter & Gordon. Jan & Dean.

In 1965, a year before Jan's horrible car accident that left him a shattered shell of his former Golden Boy self (see the TV movie "Deadman's Curve" starring Richard Hatch and Bruce Davison), they put out a record called "Folk 'n' Roll." Months later they had a Batman-themed album called "Jan & Dean Meet Batman" which deserves its own story. Needless to say, they were grasping at straws.

"Folk 'n' Roll" was ill conceived and kind of stupid, but those two guys could really sing. No shit. Dean's impossible falsetto still delivers the shivers to my fossilized spine. Unfortunately, they were a little out of their element here, trying to make sense of protest music and such like.

Their ambivalence is obvious in the songs. Why else would they deliver a letter-perfect cover of "The Eve of Destruction," a popular antiwar song of the day (it kills me that artists of the '50s and '60s would often cover songs that were big hits, like, three months earlier. What were they thinking?), and also include "Universal Coward" on the same record? "Universal Coward" is Jan's scathing song about how draft dodgers are a bunch of sissies. Way to cover your bases, boys!

And then there's "Folk City" which is just a half-hearted rewrite of "Surf City" with silly lyrics about Bob Dylan and Hohner harmonicas.

To be fair, their version of Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" is pretty good.

My Jan & Dean albums were hand-me-downs from my older brother and they were the first rock 'n' roll (OK, pop, if you prefer) act I ever heard. I really liked them. They were clean-cut (more or less), goofy, professional, and could harmonize the hell out of anything. Their albums were loaded with stellar session players like drummer Hal Blaine and guitarist Tommy Tedesco, so they always smoked.

You know what? I still like them. Jan Berry died a while back, and I was saddened, even though he was supposedly a prick in real life. But my memories of the boy I used to be, spazzing around my room to "Horace the Swingin' School Bus Driver" and "Honolulu Lulu" remain intact. Undamaged. Bulletproof. Perfectly preserved in time, like a bug in amber.