My first gig was Queen at Wembley Stadium. In equal measure majestic and ethereal, the image of Freddie Mercury is forever imprinted on my brain. He seemed to be hyperreal, burning off the stage in a flurry of kinetic energy. There was something magical about the way he held eighty-odd thousand people in the palm of his hand. I was transfixed and forever smitten.

Thirty-six years later I get to, by proxy, view tonight’s show through those same wide innocent eyes, as this evening I am accompanied by my eleven-year-old daughter. This is her first proper indoor rock show (she's been going to festivals since she was two weeks old but there is something different. There is something more intense about seeing a band in their natural environment). The Struts have been chosen for her inauguration on the basis that she likes one of their tracks that turns up in Sing 2 (Could Have Been Me). Given that it doesn't turn up until the encore (spoiler) and given she doesn't know any of the other songs, it could be a long fidgety night.

Cardinal Black are certainly not pitching themselves at the preteen market. They start with a triad of lounging blues numbers (think of the slow tracks on a Thunder album but with added lethargy). They are certainly talented, but there is little here to pique the interest of the younger generation. Emmy instead amuses herself by critiquing how Adam Roberts has set up his drums wrong (“It is missing a right snare” quotes the drumaphille eleven-year-old) and by commenting on Tom Hollister’s lack of diction. I try and explain that the blues is meant to be delivered with a slur, but she is having none of it. She mutters something about Ed Sheridan pronouncing every word and goes back to counting components of the drum kit.

Whilst my offspring is not impressed, I find that the laid-back vibe that Cardinal Black exudes rather fits the humidity of the evening. There is nothing new or revolutionary to be found here. They aren't even pilfering from the best period, as they mine from a stream of slick commercial eighties’ blues (think Robert Palmer and late period Joe Cocker) as opposed to the much more primal and raw late sixties variety. There is also an air of Joe Bonamassa about it, which is extenuated by the instrumental dexterity of Chris Buck (already earning himself a huge amount of admiration with his simultaneous solo career). It is not in itself unpleasant and there is a genuine likeability about Tom Hollister's down-to-earth mannerisms. But in the end, the audience reception never rises beyond mild politeness, and I severely doubt anyone on the way home will be passionately extolling their virtues.

The Struts are a hidden gem. A jewel in the crown of British rock that few know about. In the States, they have elevated themselves to arena-level stardom, but over here they are still very much anchored in the club and small hall circuit. In some ways, this is a blessing as it allows us to see their powerhouse of a performance in close confines. They are slick, they are polished, and they are immaculately rehearsed. But rather than be embarrassed about that, they revel in their blatant commerciality. They may share DNA with other members of the new wave of classic rock movement, but the primal difference is that whilst bands like Those Damn Crows and Massive Wagons tap into the back-room bar boogie of classic pub rock, The Struts are much more aligned with the slick stadium rock of heyday Queen or Roxy music. They are unashamed in their ambitions and blatant in their motivation to be the biggest band on the planet. That drive and that honesty are both refreshing and intoxicating.

The beating heart of The Struts is Luke Spiller, probably the finest frontperson this country has produced in decades. He is both a human dynamo and a larger-than-life personality, with his very own gravitational field that pulls everyone in towards him. You just can't take your eyes off Luke and his persona is both alluring and all-consuming. The bastard child of Bowie and Mercury, he combines the former's androgyny with the latter's sense of camp Theatre. Emmy is transfixed and three tracks in with doe-eyes and a delirious grin she turns to me and states that he looked at her. To put it into context not 20 minutes before she did know him from Adam and now, she is firmly under his spell. 

The Struts are here to do one thing and one thing only and that is to entertain. There is no pretension, there is no edge and there are no hidden agendas. This is just an hour and a half of pure and utter escapism. Four tracks in you can no longer tell apart the diehards from the newly arrived, as everybody in the oven that the Ritz has become, has become mesmerised by the band. Singing along as if their lives depended upon it. This is stadium rock at its nadir (even if it is happening in a decaying dance hall), with every track precision engineered to be an earworm. As I keep saying they wear their commerciality on their sleeves, they don't want to be cult heroes and have scribed songs specifically to be sung along with on their first airing.

However, the greatest joy of tonight is standing and watching my daughter clap and grin along with a band she hitherto knew only one track of. She is caught up in the moment and it is wonderful to feel that baton being handed on (not that I'm going to stop gigging any time soon, my dying wish will be to be deposited into a Carcass mosh pit). There are more clichés than you can stay shake a stick at ("everyone sit down and whoo everyone jump up”, “my side can sing louder than your side”, “sing this after me”) but the point is to her they are all new and therefore both engaging and immersive. That is the core of The Struts, they have taken every great bit out of every great rock gig over the last 50 years and distilled it into 90 minutes of utter bliss. Of course, they are recycling, but they are recycling the prime cuts from the greatest bands that ever walked the earth.

I revel further in her naïveté and wonder as she enquires at the end of the main set whether that is it. For the first time in decades, I see the pantomime of the encore through youthful and starstruck eyes. Suddenly it is no longer a pointless ritual, as I watch Emmy bellow with utter enthusiasm to extend the ecstasy of her enjoyment for two more songs. We all know they are coming back, but what I realise is she didn't and the joy she shows when they return is indescribable. 

For a band this radio-friendly it is bizarre that ‘Strange Days’ is their only hit, and even then, it only charted because they managed to drag a certain Mr R. Williams along for the ride. Without the Stoke ego machine in tow, it feels like a lost T-Rex number building from lament to lunacy. And then we get the reason why I managed to persuade my daughter to go in the first place, ‘Could Have Been Me’ is a colossus of a track and instigates a tsunami of communal caterwauling. It is one of those moments of collective harmony where everyone wallows in the same level of joy.

And then it's over. And what I realise is that, even though I didn't know that I needed it, my love of music has been reinvigorated by watching my daughter find hers. Sometimes I take this all for granted, sometimes I see this all as a grind as opposed to a privilege. Tonight, the magic of The Struts and more importantly the way that they enchanted my daughter has made me realise the utter beauty and majesty of live music. The Struts are what we need right now, pure life-affirming wonder. This is what I fell in love with when I saw Queen all those years ago and this is what I believe my daughter fell in love with this evening.