But you pays your money and you takes your chance, as the saying goes, and while what you'll get isn't always totally, like stellar, man, you won't get a performance that's phoned in, either. It all comes down to the interaction between expectation and on the night, doesn't it?
I go back to the halcyon days of the mid- to late-sixties. Popey doesn't quite go back that far but had older siblings with similar musical interests who did (from what I can gather) and seems to have been fairly thorough in giving his offspring an interesting musical experience along the way. They were eight or nine when they got their first dose of live Elvis, and obviously don't mind fronting up for more.
I don't get to hang out with too many folks with similar musical interests, and when I do they tend to be people from more or less the same generation, so the presence of a couple of well-informed and appreciative youngsters is bound to be something memorable.
Particularly if they're sufficiently well-informed (or polite enough, take your pick) to agree that an Easybeats/Purple Hearts tour of North Queensland would have been an interesting experience and one you'd regret having missed.
It contrasted nicely with the demographic profile at the Dr. John/Aaron Neville show the following night, where a youngish couple who might have been in their mid-twenties walking down the aisle towards their seats would have reduced the average age in the audience by about half a day.
All of which explains that first paragraph, dunnit?