Sometimes it's hard to stop being a fan. To stop your head jerking left and right, not wanting to miss anyone's moves; to stop being excited at being there. On this mild Auckland night, that held true for audience and band.

Stage right on guitar there was Johnny Marr of the Smiths, the best British rock band of the '80s and the man from whom Noel Gallagher stole everything. Stage left on guitar was Ed O'Brien of Radiohead, now one of the most talked about bands in the world.

Behind them were Lisa Germano, she of the other-worldly songs and insurgent violins, Soul Coughing's Sebastian Steinberg on bass and Radiohead's Phil Selway on drums. Making occasional visits to the stage were Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam and Tim Finn who could be said to have started all this 30 years ago with Split Enz.

And dead centre was a beaming Neil Finn. You can tell when Finn is having a good night - he does a little twirl on one heel as he goes across stage. Tonight the twirl came out. As did the leap from the drum riser, the raised arms exhorting a mass choir and the mid-stage jump à la Pete Townsend, a move he copied from his son Liam.

He should bloody well be happy too, surrounded by a band that offered proof, if it was ever needed, that Finn's songs are rich with possibilities; that you can mosh at a Finn gig; and that superior players given rein to be themselves both enhance the song and themselves.

Hearing Marr's sheets of guitars during Taking The Rest Of The Day Off or his addition of Neil Young jangle to Distant Sun was illuminating for songs you thought you knew well. At other times it was O'Brien's one-note drones, occasional bursts of feedback or exploratory lines that, for example, gave Private Universe a surprising but effective quasi Radiohead climax, And through it all Germano's voice and violin weeved in and around Finn's voice in a captivating mixture.

Allowing the guests to perform some of their own songs was generous and smart. It gave Germano an audience she deserved for the haunting, open-casket song Cry Wolf and thrilled a small core of vaguely pathetic thirtysomething boys in the mezzanine by giving us Marr playing There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

And then there was Liam Finn's band, Betchadupa backing Vedder in thrilling, energy-filled takes on I Got You and I See Red that imagined what it would have sounded like if Nirvana had swapped jerseys with Split Enz. It so energised Tim Finn that he joined them in a whirling dervish climax to I See Red that sent the second set and the night beyond merely fabulous.