It’s conventional wisdom that the best sights at a concert belongs to the people who buy the tickets. The closer you are, the better the perspective. It’s just an accepted, seldom argued point. Then there’s the case of Future Islands’ vocalist Samuel T. Herring, and spending a moment in his shoes would shoot holes all through that belief.

When keyboardist and long-time O’Jays musical director Dennis “Doc” Williams introduced the Philly Soul titans to the sold-out Durham Performing Arts Center crowd last Sunday by claiming, “Can’t nobody sing a ballad like these brothers,” he forgot to mention that they’re pretty solid in the dance category as well.

“Big Daddy Kane in the house,” soul diva Sharon Jones called out from the stage at a Dap-Kings performance at the Cat’s Cradle back on May 11, 2010.

“I think it fits the mood,” Lucero frontman Ben Nichols said as he announced the band was just about to play “Wasted” for the first time in six months.

Twenty years from now, when classic-rock radio is still on an endless rotation of Steppenwolf and Deep Purple and My Morning Jacket is a nostalgia-fueled arena headliner without a nationwide FM presence, the cold reality of obsolescence might finally dawn upon the rockists of yore.

In a more reasonable world, no one would ever have to closet their love of Hall & Oates. There was a period in the ’90s through the early 2000s when the Philly hit machine went from critical infallibility to purveyors of what Larry David might have called “vanilla bullsh*t” once time’s oppressive grip began to take hold.

They’re all still around to some extent — except maybe that last one — and during a visit to the Lawrence Joel Memorial Coliseum by the British heavy metal gods, one still has to wonder: “Where the hell are these people in the daylight hours?” Moreso in music than in just about anywhere else, trends appear and trends evolve.

“We swore we’d never do this again,” proclaimed Numero Group cofounder Ken Shipley, introducing the label’s Eccentric Soul Revue before a crowd of a few hundred retro soul fanatics at Durham’s Carolina Theatre on Saturday night. One look at the mammoth production onstage and it’s easy to see why a small archivist label might shy away from the touring business.

Following an opening set by Pixies’ indie-rock descendents Surfer Blood, the headliners greeted the 1,551 at the War Memorial with clips of Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel’s “Un Chien Andalou,” paired with an ominous soundtrack, but lacking in spilled vitreous humour (thankfully).

It’s a scenario deserving of its own afterschool PSA. What starts with V0 rips of the Black Angels’ Phosphene Dream soon turns into your kid digging through dusty crates at a record show for anything they can get their hands on by the 13th Floor Elevators.

It wasn’t until 20 past that the house lights dropped and the restless lull that hung over the room for two hours transformed into screams and flashing cameras as the booming bass of “HAM” blasted throughout the coliseum. Anyone looking for Jay-Z or Kanye to be given the “edge” over the other in positioning found their efforts futile.

Area MC and producer Ed E. Ruger sent out a mass text Sunday afternoon as a reminder for that night’s installment of Beasts of the Boro, a regular local hip-hop revue that he has a hand in organizing.

“86,” the ever-enduring BB King reminded the War Memorial crowd only two days after his calendar ticked over one more year. The reminder came as he concluded the sauntering D scale outro to Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” just before easing into Charlie Seger’s “Key to the Highway.

You could walk into a meat locker after doing a P90X circuit and have less steam billowing from your head than Dave Guy did from his clean-shaven dome Thursday night at the Shakori Hills Festival. Temperatures in Silk Hope barely dipped below 60 degrees, but the Dap-Kings trumpeter was a victim of his bands own designs:.

Meanwhile, the Blind Tiger turned into a dance club as Langhorne Slim & the Laws innovative style of rock and roll whipped the audience into a state of bliss. Then Scolnick and the band slowed things down a bit with their ballad Collette. Moores performance on the banjo brought a nice bluegrass feel to the song as Scolnick crooned.

One of the most widely sampled popular music acts of all time, Earth, Wind & Fire have been a munificent treasure trove for DJs and producers with the patience to mine the funk and disco-fusion animals dense repository. They have quietly influenced everyone from Basement Jaxx to Bone Thugs-N-.

Just over three weeks into the Ziggys Revival of 2011, a single element of the venues axiomatic Roots Rock Reggae trinity remained unfulfilled. When Psyche and Ras David Starchild Graves once again took the stage with the seminal Piedmont reggae band Truth N Rights however, it felt as if order had been restored.

Archers of Loaf were never, ever going to be confused with a “cool” band in their heyday. They were the kind of band you sat in a beanbag chair with massive cans on your ears and blared because there were better things to do than having an afterschool job.

Few performers are worth going to blows over to enjoy, but then again, not everyone sings and plays and carries on like Malcolm Holcombe, last Friday nights performer at the Blind Tiger.

Williams Goldman once said that the easiest thing to do on earth is not write, a discipline to which Gillian Welch can no doubt sympathize. After creating one of the single greatest folk albums ever in 2001s Time (The Revelator), she tried embellishing her acoustic sound with organs and electric guitar on Soul Journey to slightly cooler reception.