No matter. Ideological differences between myself and the rest of the crowd aside, Mudhoney certainly delivered the goods, and they did it with a lot more casual charm than a bunch of alleged "grunge godfathers" had any right to possess. Even when the concert (and music) was at its wildest, frontman Mark Arm in particular floated above it all with indifference, a wiseass smirk never far from his lips. And thanks in part to this delicious tension between the seemingly reserved band and the increasingly frenzied crowd, by the time they tore into a climactic version of "In 'n' Out of Grace," even I was beginning to understand the slam-dancing mentality. It was just vicious.

But it took a band who had been together for longer than many of the attendees had been alive in order to take the show once again to the next level. Radio Birdman, arguably the first punk rock group to form in Australia, took the stage last, and if anyone in the audience had their doubts about the band's continuing relevance, those doubts had evaporated long before the final chords of opener "Burn My Eye." Over the past few years, I've seen a lot of reunited old rockers come through these parts: Iggy & The Stooges, Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies, the New York Dolls, Gang of Four. And the common denominator among all of those bands is that they put on excellent shows, shows that stood up both to the performances of many prime current acts and to their own monolithic past reputations. Even amongst these hallowed names, however, Radio Birdman just might have been the best reunion act I've ever witnessed.

And that's even more of an achievement than you might expect, because my first glance at the members didn't exactly send my expectations through the roof. The 2006 model of Radio Birdman is more or less evenly split between dressed-down senior accountants and "never too old to rock" Ronnie James Dio types, with guitarist and lead songwriter (and former Ann Arborite) Deniz Tek serving as a kind of happy medium with his untucked Oxford shirt, Roger Waters-esque "mature rock" look. I'm a music fan, though, not a fashion critic, and by the time the show had really gotten underway, I could have given a shit what they were wearing. Despite the fact that their collective ages couldn't have totalled any less than 200, Radio Birdman turned the Magic Stick upside down, tearing through one high-octane classic after another with the energy of men half their age. Lead singer Rog Younger in particular played a truly magnetic frontman role, one part Iggy and one part early Mick Jagger, punctuated with bizarre, twitchy dance moves that were so awkward they crossed right over into charismatic.