There is a light that never goes out Some pop concerts arch beyond a single night or list of yearly favourites. Think of The Beatles at the top of the Apple Building, with John Lennon’s wild fur coat, squalling hair and flying fingers. The Band’s Last Waltz was transposed, via Martin Scorsese’s incisive editing, camera work and direction, beyond a great final gig for Dylan’s backing group and into the eulogy of a generation. The Last Waltz danced between mockumentary and documentary, generational envy and generational angst. Two of my other landmark concerts hold a Pacific inflection. Crowded House recorded their final concert on the steps of the Sydney Opera House on November 24, 1996. It was a free gig and confirmed that when the dream is finally over, a reality can be shared. Ten years of Crowded House built new traditions for the simple pop concert. The customary sing-a-long between band and crowd was part football chant and part Antipodean hymn. The other great concert enfolds passionate and complex musical trajectories from Manchester and Melbourne, London and Auckland. In late March 2001, Neil Finn assembled musicians he respected. They rehearsed for a few days at Kare Kare above a gothic beachfront, and then performed four concerts at St James Theatre in Auckland. The band was formed to break up. It was a super group for an accelerated media age. The resultant concert survives on compact disc, video and DVD under the title 7 Worlds Collide. Finn described it as "a Pacific adventure,” with the aim of gathering great talent to sing important songs. Besides contacting his brother Tim, Neil Finn telephoned Eddie Vedder and Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Philip Selway, who all decided to appear on stage with a songwriter they admire. One more notable performer also journeyed into the Pacific to join the super group ensemble. The Smiths were an English pop phenomenon who had a scale of success always promised to Split Enz. Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr were the iconographic songwriting partnership of the 1980s, foreshadowing the explosion of sounds and visions from Manchester in the subsequent decade. The guitar riffs from ‘This Charming Man,’ ‘How Soon is Now’ and ‘Panic’ established a new standard for innovative popular music. Without Marr, Morrissey has never reached the level of The Smith’s success. Marr’s solo career has been of a distinct and selective order, leaving his mark on a suite of singles, albums and bands. From The The’s ‘The Beat(en) Generation,’ to Electronic’s ‘Getting away with it,’ Billy Bragg’s ‘Sexuality’ and the Pet Shop Boy’s ‘My October Symphony,’ Marr is a guitarist who transforms songs through a disruption and reinterpretation of rhythm. When Neil Finn gathered his postmodern super group at Kare Kare, Johnny Marr became the fulcrum of the band. Finn reported that Marr came straight off the plane and into the