“Via Galactica.” “Rockabye Hamlet.” “Dude.” These names ring any bells?

There’s no reason why they would, unless you’re one of those obsessive collectors of flop-musical arcana, the sort of giddy masochists who cherish their “In My Life” and “Carrie” programs and who should be making a beeline for the tin-eared, thuddingly earnest “Glory Days.”

Those titles above were among the slew of rock musicals that opened on Broadway in the wake of 1968’s “Hair,” which threatened to completely upend the way Broadway sang, danced, talked, and dressed. The Broadway landscape did change quite a bit in the 1970s, but more through the advent of concept musicals (“Company,” “Dancin'”), splashy revivals (“No, No, Nanette,” “Irene”), and, finally, British megamusicals (“Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita”), the only one of these three styles to draw heavily from the rock idiom.

A mini-flurry of rock musicals followed in the wake of “Rent,” and now the success of “Spring Awakening” appears to have reopened Pandora’s box among producers on the hunt for young audiences (and fewer musicians to pay). The youth card is being played quite emphatically here: The “Glory Days” advertisements say far more about the fact that composer/lyricist Nick Blaemire and book writer James Gardiner are both 23 years old than about the show’s plot. (Mr. Gardiner has since had a birthday.)

It is not generally my policy to blame the producers for a musical as tedious and inconsequential as “Glory Days,” which contrives to reunite four former little men on campus a year after high school graduation for a night of cheap beer and even cheaper insights. After all, the kindest thing that could be said about Mr. Blaemire’s lyrics is that he finds a fairly clever — and unprintable — rhyme for “Jewish,” albeit one that Busta Rhymes already found three years ago.

His score bears the heavy imprint of Jason Robert Brown’s hook-heavy piano-pop sound, with a dash of boy-band harmonies added in; this latter influence may explain why so many songs sound as if the band decided to play them several keys higher without informing the cast. Also unclear is director Eric Schaeffer’s motivation for having the four children slap, clasp, shove, and maul one another every 15 seconds. And did Mr. Gardiner feel such a need to touch upon every high school cliché that he included a dumb jock within a clique that has defined itself as being superior to the dumb jocks? (His solution is to suggest that the big lunkhead kept running into the wrong end zone during tryouts, thereby relegating him to the outsiders’ club.) This character is introduced via an argument over whether Superman could beat up Batman.

Even when the songs fall outside their vocal comfort zone, all four young actors — Steven Booth is the sensitive narrator, Andrew C. Call is the sensitive-deep-down frat boy, Adam Halpin is the sensitive cynic, and Jesse JP Johnson is the extra-sensitive kid with a Big Secret — do what they can to make sense of lyrics such as “I am not ready to stop being a kid!” while scrambling up and down Jim Kronzer’s bleacher set. The book whips between locker-room crudities and lines that might have passed Andy Hardy’s lips (“You guys are jerks, you know that?”) before petering out to a final song about how “it might be time to try and find a different kind of story.” Now that you mention it …

Not many writers in their early 20s would turn down an offer to come to Broadway on the grounds that their material wasn’t remotely ready yet. That’s the job of more seasoned veterans, such as Mr. Schaeffer or the producers. And besides, performers such as Raul Julia, Nell Carter, and Irene Cara emerged from the wreckage of “Dude” and “Via Galactica.” I like to think that the glory days for Messrs. Blaemire and Gardiner, and their collaborators, still lie ahead of them. This seems odd to say about a Broadway debut, but perhaps it will be all uphill from here.

Open run (235 W. 50th St., between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, 212-239-6200).