"TOO old to rock and roll," they sang. "Too young to die."

All around us, greying heads and balding ones bobbed back and forth.

Hands punched the air. Feet tapped vigorously.

People in tour T-shirts dating back decades were grooving in their seats.

A couple of people stood up, but they soon realised that they were blocking the view of those behind, and they sat down again.

One chap did make his way down from the seats at the back to lean on the front of the stage, but he did so politely, way off to the left, so he wouldn't get in anyone's way.

The flute-wielding front man of one of the nation's best-loved rock bands acknowledged him with a roll of the eyes, and the polite man nodded back.

Welcome to the world of the middle-aged rock and roller.

Now, don't get me wrong. Jethro Tull's gig at the Princess Theatre in Torquay last week was great.

The band were great, the music was great, the atmosphere was great.

The support act, an elfin French songstress called Saori Jo, was more than great. In fact, I think I'm in love.

But I worry that gentlemen of our age are going through a rite of passage in terms of rock music.

We are sitting down instead of leaping around.

We are applauding the end of songs politely instead of roaring like angry bison.

We are listening to the nuances of minor sevenths and fluttering flute techniques instead of having the little hairs in our ears battered flat by decibels.

It's better for us in the long run, but I can't help feeling that we're losing something.

There are exceptions, of course. This column will almost certainly prompt emails from at least two of my old friends whose idea of a night out is still to lean their greying, thinning heads close to the big speakers beside the stage at very noisy rock concerts, elbowing and kicking their way to a good vantage point.

And good luck to them.

One of my old quizzing mates proudly wears the T-shirts of all those bands who still summon up dark forces and damage his hearing on a regular basis.

Only last year I employed shoulder and knee moves not seen since my brief career in the front row of the Churston 1st XV to get to the front of the stage to watch the Hold Steady in Falmouth.

But I do like to be able to hear what is going on, and to see what the band is doing without having someone barging me around and knocking my beer over.

Back in the day, when the big bands played at Torquay Town Hall or the 400, or at the Metro in Plymouth, or at Routes in Exeter, everyone had a strategy for getting to the front.

The long-winded way to do it was to make your way down to the front during the course of the evening as the support bands played.

As people nearer the stage got bored and went to the bar, or made the schoolboy error of having drunk too much and needing to visit the little boys' room, we would fill the spaces left behind, spreading our elbows and widening our stances to make sure the weak bladder brigade didn't get back past us.

Smoking was another way to get through.

When we all smoked like chimneys, we found that all lighting up in unison and blowing great clouds of smoke forwards at the people in front would work like a charm.

They would turn, coughing and red-eyed, to see where the sudden bonfire had come from.

They would then give up any hope of remaining in the Woodbine line of fire.

And we would shuffle forwards into the spaces left open.

Looking back, we could hardly have been any more anti-social, and I can only apologise if we did it to you.

Actually, we could have been more anti-social, and there were those who found imaginative ways of protecting the spaces around them.

I forget which band was due on stage at the time, but the venue was Torquay Town Hall, complete with its beautiful wooden sprung floor.

It might have been the Clash, or the Undertones, or even the Damned. They all merge into one after all this time.

The gentleman in question was certainly dressed for the occasion, with chains and spikes and his jeans pulled up over the top of his high-top Dr Martens.

And the way he guaranteed his space in the crowd was this.

He put his cigarette into his mouth, held his lager in his left hand and with his right, undid his trousers.

He then relieved himself on the lovely wooden floor, spinning slowly around as he did so to create a roughly circular exclusion zone around him.

Without saying a word, he adjusted his dress, took his cigarette out of his mouth and went back to his expectant wait for the band to come on.

It was crowded that night, but strangely there was no great clamour for the space on the dance floor next to him.

I finally realised I was getting a bit too old for all this crush-at-the-front lark when my mate Paul and I went to see a band called The Angelic Upstarts at a club in Exeter.

Having made our way to the front by the usual methods before the band came on, we found ourselves heavily outnumbered by young men with little or no hair on their heads, and hefty boots on their feet.

We slipped out from the side of the scrum and went to the bar instead.

The moment the band started playing, it all kicked off, and our bail-out decision was proved right. Fists and boots flew, noses were bloodied and one skinhead was lifted head high over the crowd, passed to the back and dumped on his head on the floor at the back.

We thought for a moment he might be badly injured, but he got up, rubbed his cranial stubble for a moment, and then launched himself back into the melee of fists and boots with a broad smile on his face.

We shook our heads, finished our pints and headed for the door.

We're a little more sedate these days, but we're not enjoying our music any less. It's just that it's hard to appreciate the nuances of the harmonic scale with a size nine Dr Marten boot in your ear.

We won't be playing the Angelic Upstarts, but we'll find something you'll like.

You can get a bit of Guidelines on the wireless by clicking on www.riviera.fm on Fridays from 7pm to 9pm when JP Hedge and I are let loose with a pile of CDs and a load of caffeine.