Ian Fortnam

It's 30 years since Canvey Island's pub-rocking elite formed an essential bridgehead between the incendiary R&B tumult of the nascent Rolling Stones and the no-nonsense précised aggression of punk rock. Wilko’s Feelgoods were true pioneers; battle-scarred Thames delta veterans who terrified cynical audiences into submission ; Oil City geezers from the badlands of South Essex on a suited-and-booted mission to deponcify Rock'n'Roll.

Pub rock's one-time young pretenders Eddie And The Hot Rods watched a succession of support acts (Joe Strummer's l01ers, Sex Pistols) walk off with their short-lived summer of '76 notoriety, and, consequently, prop up tonight's bill. Cheeky-chopped vocalist and former boys' club boxing champ Barry Masters (somehow managing to retain a trim featherweight's frame) delivers convincing takes on such evergreen- anthems of acne and angst as Teenage Depression and Do Anything You Wanna Do.

Today’s Dr Feelgood feature a bass player called Phil Mitchell, but in East Enders terms appear to have replaced their Dirty Den equivalent secret weapon (the genuinely hard-boiled and menacing Lee Brilleaux) with a relatively unconvincing substitute Dennis Watts-alike (slim-line harp-throb and unmistakable Geordie Robert Kane). They start well, but swiftly lapse into the kind of dawdling, slow-blues doldrums that the genuine article set out to obliterate, before leaving us with the second-best Back In The Night of the evening.

Wilko Johnson is a national treasure. The 59-year old may resemble a sun-bleached skull with eyebrows, and jerk spasmodically like an amphetamine-addled bantam cock, but until you've seen him play She Does It Right your rock guitar education remains incomplete. Perfecting a style originally adopted by fellow Essex axe-man, The Pirates' Mick Green, Wilko plays choppy rhythm and fluid lead parts simultaneously, a genius trick made magic by a lightning execution that's quick enough to out-manoeuvre the keenest human eye. In former Blockheads bassist Norman Watt-Roy, Wilko has hit upon the perfect sparring partner while casually retaining an infectious Feelgood factor that this year's model simply cannot match.