Old bands never split up, they just take career breaks, like overaged teenagers having ‘gap decades’. Tours – and bands like the Neds used to do 250 dates a year – now become 2 days long. Hair get short, bellies get wide, and memories grow long teeth. Like any relationship, people leave, and new people join.

Six years ago, half of this band played the Camden Falcon to 30 people, when they were called Groundswell. Now Groundswell, with Ned’s Atomic Dustbin’s bassist, drummer, and singer, play to 1,500.

But the song remains the same, as the cliché goes. And what Ned’s Atomic Dustbin songs (and shows) lacked in length, they compensated for with passion and energy : tonight sees a 75 minute burst of frenetic activity that is as exhausting to watch as it is to play. Songs machine gun over the audience, living and breathing for no more than three and a half minutes, executed at breakneck speed like the SAS negotiating with terrorists, flicker, blossom, die, and are replaced by another song seconds later. There’s no room to breathe.

Joe Strummer described playing live as a mission : “You were there, people were looking at you, do something! BAM! Here’s a song! BAM! Here’s another!”. And it feels like a punk gig.

And at the time, they sound like the best song in the world. Two – the sublime, overlooked “Traffic” (from their smash hit, top one hundred and ten album "BrainBloodVolume"), and “Intact” – are the songs that, if they were sung by Kurt Cobain, would be hailed as classics and infecting iPod playlists even now. The rest of the set - predominantly from their debut, the musically-limited, million-selling “God Fodder” – escapes so fast it’s almost as if it has been vomited by guitars.

And Ned’s were always better live than on record : on record, their sound was always a caterwaul of buzzsaw guitars, frantic drumming, and an idiosyncratic, gurning vocalist. On stage, the Ned’s leapt from a black & white, two dimensional sound into a technicolour explosion. Really, the Ned’s are the Indie Ramones, and as brilliant. And they should be as legendary. They’re the sound of a tin full of bored suburban teenagers being opened. The sound of teenage kicks all through the night. The sound of the permanent teenager for those who need to find their inner child. (As proof, Steve Lamacq and his Big Black Coat are also in attendance).

The guardians of cool may not be as kind as they once were, but old school is the new cool. Or something. But if you want to know where today’s rabble of suit-and-tie indie-rockers stole their ideas from, try here. Too fast to live, too young to die. Too fat to mosh, too old to pogo. But we try anyway.

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