SAN DIEGO — What’s in a name? At what point does pop-music nostalgia lead to possible misrepresentation?

Those were key questions Friday night during the mostly crowd-pleasing 2025 Happy Together Tour performance at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay. Alternately spirited and creaky, engaging and perplexing, the 130-minute stroll down a very well-worn memory lane featured one artist who rose to fame in the 1950s, the doo-wop-bred vocal great Little Anthony. The other five performers, who each rose to prominence in the 1960s with million-selling records — Jay and the Americans, Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, the Vogues, the Cowsills and headliners the Turtles — were represented (and, in at least one case, misrepresented) by their latest iterations.

While no one has stated that this year’s Happy Together Tour will be the last, there are several reasons why that possibility may be increasingly likely. To repeat the first question posed at the start of this review: What’s in a name?

Here are some factors that inspire such a discussion.

The current lineup of the Vogues has no original members.

The current lineup of Jay and the Americans has one original member, 82-year-old harmony vocalist Sandy Deane Yaguda. The Americans’ lead vocal role has been filled since 2006 — the same year the group reactivated after a 33-year hiatus — by Jay Reinke, who at Friday’s concert here introduced to himself as “the third Jay.” (The first two are deceased.)

The Cowsills, who opened the show with a buoyant four-song set, were represented by brothers Bob, Paul and their sister, Susan. (The group’s other four original members are deceased.)

Puckett, a San Diego music mainstay for much of the 1960s, still leads a band called The Union Gap. But, apart from him, it has no original members.

His Humphreys set saw the veteran singer accompanied not by the latest edition of The Union Gap, but by the same four-man group of hired hands that expertly backed all the evening’s artists. The group could not compensate for Puckett’s enthusiastic but increasingly shaky singing on such favorites as “Lady Willpower,” “Over You” and the still-creepy 1968 chart-topper, “Young Girl.”

Of course, only the most devoted fans can name the original members of The Union Gap, the Vogues or Jay and the Americans. And it is unrealistic to expect bands that started 60 or more years ago to still have their original lineups, just as it was when the Happy Together Tour’s second edition stopped in San Diego in 1985 with groups containing only one or two of their co-founders, including headliners the Turtles.

Co-led by singers Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman, who use the stage names Flo & Eddie, the Turtles launched the first Happy Together Tour in 1984 for a four-year run. They revived it in 2010 and have been the only act to perform on every edition of the annual national concert trek, at least in a manner.

Kaylan bowed out after the 2017 tour, following back surgery and two heart procedures. He was replaced by pop journeyman Ron Dante, the former lead singer for the TV cartoon group the Archies. With the wisecracking Volman remaining on board, the Turtles still boasted one original member. Until now.

This year’s Happy Together Tour is, sadly, the first without Volman. In 2020, he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. The condition leads to a decline in the ability to independently function, think and reason.

Consequently, the Turtles-free Turtles that performed here Friday saw Volman’s parts sung by tour guitarist Godfrey Townsend. The six selections he and the vocally strained Dante essayed, including “She’d Rather Be With Me,” “Elenore” and “Happy Together,” are classics. But their singing lacked range, power and personality.

The question, then, is: How misleading is it to bill the Turtles — or any other long-established band — by its well-known moniker, when not one actual member of that band is performing on stage?

Certainly, for most fans the opportunity to hear reasonable approximations of the hits that they grew up with can provide a welcome night out. Or, as a man seated near me exclaimed during intermission: “That was awesome — I knew all the words!”

But would fans turn out in force knowing they will be hearing the Turtles in name only? Should they be informed, in advance, before deciding whether to purchase tickets?

Whatever the answer, the most enjoyable parts of Friday’s concert offered more than just a chance for attendees to revisit their adolescent years in song by channeling anew feelings of young love, longing and fresh-faced angst.

The Cowsills performed such gems as “Indian Lake” and “Hair” with infectious verve. Best of all was the perpetually charismatic Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Little Anthony. Now 84 — not 79, as he joked — he still hit the glorious high notes in “Tears On My Pillow” And “Goin’ Out of My Head.” And he romped exuberantly through “Shimmy Shimmy Ko Ko Bop,” but only after telling the audience his true feelings about the song: “I think it’s stupid!”

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