By BILL O’NEILL

HYANNIS — Here are two things no one ever saw at a Beatles concert: Paul McCartney saying “Check out our Web site,” and audience members waving their cell phones in the air.

Other than that, watching Rain: The Beatles Experience Thursday night at the Cape Cod Melody Tent was as close as you can hope to get to seeing the Liverpool quartet.

The mood was set when speakers blared “Rock Around the Clock” and three screens showed video of hula hoopers, a space chimp and President John F. Kennedy. A faux Ed Sullivan on the screen introduced Rain, and the band took the stage and launched into “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Other than the fact that he plays bass right-handed, Joey Curatolo, who stands in for Paul McCartney, was the closest thing to a real Beatle, in sound and in appearance. David Leon looks about the way John Lennon might have if he’d lived to be 50. After putting on a moustache during a costume change, Joe Bithorn resembled Tony Orlando, rather than George Harrison. Drummer Ralph Castelli doesn’t look like Ringo Starr, but he does a great imitation of Starr’s head bobs — so vigorously during “I Saw Her Standing There” that it appeared he might tumble off his stool and so frequently that he must have needed a chiropractor by the end of the show.

But let’s not get too fussy.

The costumes were a hoot, from the simple dark suits and crisp white shirts of the early days to matching Nehru jackets to the mock military outfits of the “Sgt. Pepper” era to the later hippie outfits that showed the Beatles starting to drift toward their own paths.

Curatolo looked most relaxed onstage and that was part of what made him a convincing McCartney, along with nearly dead-on vocal imitations on such songs as “Yesterday” and “All My Loving.” Leon fared better at screaming on “Twist and Shout” then he did mimicking Lennon’s more subtle vocal work. While he’s a decent singer, Bithorn didn’t sound much like Harrison on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” He made up for it with terrific guitar solos on that song and “Come Together.”

The band’s secret weapon is its fifth member, keyboardist Mark Lewis, who stood almost behind the drum kit and dressed all in black to remain inconspicuous. But his role on the synthesizer was vital in supplying strings for “Eleanor Rigby,” bells for “When I’m 64″ and all kinds of flourishes for “A Day in the Life” — and that was just in the first half of the show, which presented 32 Beatles’ songs mostly in chronological order.

Many of the songs Rain performs are ones the Beatles never performed live, since the group’s last concert (besides the “Let It Be” rooftop session) was in August 1966, almost a year before “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released. It’s one thing to bash out “Twist and Shout”: it’s quite another to play a convincing “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Since the group promises there’s no prerecorded music in the show, Rain couldn’t pull off the complex later songs without Lewis.

During the intermission I spoke with an audience member who’s seen “a bunch” of Beatles tribute bands (this was my first). He said some do a better job with the sonic imitation and some do better with the physical impersonations, but Rain is the best at combining the two. I don’t doubt it. Be sure to catch the group the next time Rain drops into town.