I’m not sure these events are about the music. They raise a lot of money, you’ve heard of the acts, but when David Foster told us he’d have us back home for the 11 o’clock news, I winced. Like this crowd had never gotten the memo that news was now 24/7, at your fingertips, but it was passion that was rare. The passion of a fiery guitar solo, of music. If you hear something spectacular, you’ll even forgo sex to experience it, you’ll hope, unlike an orgasm, that it will never end. That’s how I felt about Jeff Beck’s performance at the George Martin tribute tonight at USC.

They started with some godawful Grammy band rendering a shrill version of "Goldfinger". Jimmy Webb sang not one of his hits, but an obscurity recoded with George. Burt Bacharach performed "Alfie". Now I know why his solo vocal album stiffed.

But everything stiffs these days. No one can have a hit. Something ubiquitous, that stops traffic and radiates forever, cannot exist. There are Top Forty ripples, reported by the press, but they’re easily ignored by those no longer paying attention to the smoke and mirrors, the shuck and jive.

We’ve seen enough hype, enough promotion, to not have our pulses rise an inch. But if you give us music, if you give us a performance, we’re riveted.

And Tom Jones was surprisingly good. We hated him back then, but he’s quite lovable today, especially since his voice is still intact. When he performed "Knock On Wood", I couldn’t help but get up and dance.

Michael McDonald did a stellar take on "Got To Get You In My Life".

And speaking of life, Joe Walsh ended the affair with an instrumental version of "Life’s Been Good", which segued into "Walk Away".

But I felt sorry for Joe. I felt sorry for everybody who had to follow Jeff Beck. Because when he was done, the show was truly over.

Much has been made of his look. The rooster hairdo. The pale white skin over skeleton body. But he could have been plump and old, it wouldn’t have made any difference, because when he started wringing the notes out of his Fender, he was twenty five years old. And so were we.

He began with a flourish. Then, he hit the recognizable, to be expected, "A Day In The Life".

But even though he’d played it so many times before, it had the timeless quality of "Sgt. Pepper" itself, like it was just being hatched.

Beck employs a guitar, but the sound that emanates from the speakers sounds like no other. His left hand is moving up the neck, the fingers on his right hand are plucking the notes. And unlike Edward Van Halen, Clapton or Hendrix, he doesn’t miss one fucking note. It’s like watching Nadia Comaneci, a legendary Olympic athlete, scoring all 10’s.

I stared in awe. I got that tingle that made me go to the show in the seventies. I needed more of this religion.

And I comb through the virtual stacks of the new music and I find nothing to believe in. Young ‘uns implore me to lower my expectations. But I know quality deep inside, that feeling, that hit of true greatness, that deity that cannot be reached, but can only be observed with awe.

They don’t know who Jeff Beck is. He didn’t have Top Forty hits under his own name. But the audience tonight knew who he was. He got the largest applause in anticipation, when Foster finished his introduction.

And when Jeff Beck was done, the jaded crowd leapt to its feet, believers once again. The evening news became irrelevant.

On one hand you’d think these legends are dead. The press has moved on, there’s no buzz. But then you see them and you want to tell EVERYBODY how great they are, how you MUST see them.

Maybe if Jeff Beck played at the Kennedy Center, and the result was broadcast during Christmas week for a vacationing public to see… But, television has never been able to truly capture a live performance. You’ve got to be able to feel it. The electricity in the air.

Do yourself a favor. Go see Jeff Beck. Because he’s not going to be here forever, and when he kicks it’ll be over. You’ll be kicking yourself. That you had a chance to see the greatest guitarist of all time and you blew it.