ON PAPER Horslips shouldn't work. They are an absurd concept - cycles of songs based on Celtic mythology, rock guitar riffs built on traditional Irish tunes, delivered in a swirl of psychedelic organs, jazzy flutes and a concertina.
Yet, as they demonstrated on Sunday night at the Ulster Hall in Belfast, they are a potent fusion, each member the master of his instrument, two of them multi-instrumentalists.
Their heyday was in the 1970s but they stopped touring in 1980, playing their final gig at the same venue where they played on Sunday night.
According to bassist Barry Devlin they were simply 'knackered' after 10 years of almost constant touring and 10 albums. At the final gig in 1980 fiddler Charles O'Connor threw his instrument into the crowd. On Sunday night he asked if whoever had it would mind giving it back.
Horslips were actually the first rock band I ever saw, although I was only 12 at the time. They were playing at huge scout camp in the fields surrounding a monastery in Co Waterford. Woggles, orienteering and rock n roll.
I don't think they made that much of an impression on me at the time - it would be a couple of years before I became a proper muso and by that time Horslips were winding up.
They were a musical generation before me and on Sunday I was one of the younger members of the audience, and I ain't a kick on the backside off my first half century.
A few weeks ago an email for the concert promoters advised: "After much communication with fans via social media and due to popular demand the promoter has agreed to facilitate a fully seated concert." The inner rocker in me was outraged but my lower lumbar region sighed with relief.
There were dissenters among Sunday night's audience, spontaneously jumping to their feet and running up to dance in front of the stage. The security staff looked confused. Probably used to dealing with lippy teenagers getting over-excited, they seemed unsure how to deal with people of, shall we say, a certain age.
Of course there was Trouble ahead, not to mention Dearg Doom, and there was no way the audience was going to remain seated for those two iconic songs.
One of Horslips's support acts on Sunday was The Ex-Producers, with U105 DJ Johnny Hero on drums.
The band were one of the north's many nearly-made-its from the late 1970s and early eighties and it was their style of music that was truly transformative for me.
The first 'proper' concert that I attended was also in the Ulster Hall, just before Christmas in 1980, when The Undertones, supported by fellow Derry band the Moondogs, played.
I had become a punk and a few months later also saw Stiff Little Fingers.
The Undertones and SLF brought in their wake hundreds of others hoping - and for the most part failing - to emulate their success. Punk, at least in its earlier days, was raw energy - thrashing guitars, snarled lyrics and manic jumping about the place.
Bands like Horslips were sidelined as their fan base settled down, got jobs, married, had kids and stopped going to gigs and buying records. They never officially broke up and all went on to have successful careers, Devlin as producer and filmmaker, drummer and lyricist Eamon Carr became a journalist (God help him), keyboard player and flautist Jim Lockhart an RTE radio producer, while O'Connor returned to his native England to become an antiques dealer.
All continued with solo musical projects - Lockhart wrote the theme music to Glenroe - but only guitarist Johnny Fean continued to work full-time in music.
Even the old punks among us have for the most part stopped going to gigs and buying records, popping out for the odd reunion tour by The Sex Pistols, the Outcasts or the Buzzcocks.
Both The Undertones and Stiff Little Fingers broke up and reformed, in the case of the Undertones with a new singer and for SLF acrimony between singer Jake Burns and original member Henry Cluney.
I have seen both bands in their current formats and am conscious that these days my concert-going is as much about nostalgia as it is about seeing cutting-edge new music.
But I am part of a social demographic, the ageing rocker, who will re-buy the albums he first bought 30 or 40, and in some cases 50 years ago.
However, the prospect of an Undertones gig ever becoming an all-seated affair fills me with dread. t.bailie@irishnews.com n Anita Robinson is away.