'Well you ARE going to be good after 21 years dad!'

My daughter Rosie had that exclamation mark in her tone as she delivered the above comment, clearly incredulous at my ability to doubt Green Day before the gig.

By way of background which isn't available on Wiki, my younger daughter loves guitar driven punk pop and pretty much no other music is welcome in her ears. One consequence of her narrow music taste is that bands reappear on the conveyor belt at regular intervals.....'cuddly toy' style for the old folk.

And as a further consequence; in early October I'm the oldest person in the Academy 3 at Manchester University to witness 'Hey Monday' and three other bands. Rosie and her other munchkin friend wisely ditched me within seconds of entering the venue and headed of for the barrier. As this was a total of 10 yards in front of me at the back of the hall I happily propped up the bar and opened my scout style 'be prepared' copy of 'Song's that Saved Your Life'.

At £8 for 4 bands or in my case £8 for a cosy spot of drinking they would have to be really bad to get a poor value badge.

Stereo Skyline appeared ' We're from New York' and then bounced around like Busted talking to the munchkins much like Charlie Clown would at a kids party. (I think the average age must have been 15). At one point I really thought they were playing musical statues, turned out to be a dramatic pause for effect style song. Daughter, friend and a host of new found bouncy friends played in the 3 yards wide 6 people deep moshpit. I'm using this term very loosely here and for real moshpit culture please refer to earlier blogs.

Out of Site were up next 'We're from Buckinghamshire' well it got my attention, where in Buckinghamshire is so bad to mention that you'd use the county name? They had a song call 'When we were young' maybe it was about series 1 of X Factor.

'Every Avenue' were up next, now this was going to be fun. They were the punk pop equivalent of Mud. i.e. every other band has 4 brickies and a pretty boy except for Mud who were 5 brickies.

Other than being stoned, sleazy and shockingly bad at what they do, they had full parental approval.

I'd seen Hey Monday supporting some other American pop combo previously so at least I knew they can play and they make a bit of an effort to entertain. Cassadee had learned to sing too and is good enough a front woman to whip the bouncy castle kids into frenzy. They played the 'hazy shade of winter' rip off song I like and then the blow the candles out song.....it was never going to work with mobiles.

It was the last night of the tour so all 4 bands played a cover version of their dad’s favourite Blink 182 tune and risked crowd surfing. It was spontaneous fun and high risk mayhem with the lack of strength and depth to the crowd. I put my book marker in and clapped along.

Rosie and her tiny friends absolutely loved it and as an introduction to indie punk pop bands playing pubs it was perfect. Only 3 years till driving lessons phew.

And so to the other end of the scale Green Day at the O2.