Steve Marriott's virtual beatification following his death 10 years ago this month obscured the sad fact that the former child actor had spent the last 20 years of his life playing clodhopping pub rock to uninterested London drinkers and fronting such barely roadworthy vehicles as Packet of Three.
Now, thanks to the ministrations of Small Faces aficionados Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher, Marriott is once more capable of selling out the Astoria - this time, from beyond the grave - to an audience of elderly mods and skinheads.
Like Marriott's career itself, his memorial event - various worthies covering songs he had written or performed - was a curate's egg. Phase one involved a house band featuring Foreigner's Rick Wills (a Small Face during their mid-1970s reunion), a flop-haired Zak Starkey and a succession of vocalists of varying quality, as if it were a pub-rock open mic night in 1972.
Simon Hickling was lively on Big Train; Debbie Bonham screechy on I Can't Stand the Rain; Nine Below Zero's Dennis Greaves feisty on Whatcha Gonna Do About It and Love Affair's Steve Ellis excellent on My Way of Giving.
Phase two meant the re-formation of Humble Pie, Marriott and Peter Frampton's early-1970s band. Their plodding boogie was ignored in Britain then and, as if to revisit the past authentically, the crowd ignored it now, although the band seemed to enjoy themselves, jamming to eternity on I Don't Need No Doctor. Midge Ure emerged to jeers, bravely strummed My Mind's Eye solo and left to cheers.
Finally, a reminder of just how vital Marriott could be: Weller, Gallagher, plus original Small Faces Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones. While hardly the most vital live performers of their respective generations, Weller and Gallagher injected star quality into Become Like You, I'm Only Dreaming, Here Come the Nice, and Tin Soldier. They resolutely refused to jam and gave more than they took before the entire cast joined in on All or Nothing, Marriott's only British chart topper.
"If Steve had been here tonight, he'd have been very proud," one of the early singers had declared. If Steve had been here tonight, he'd have been bored, appalled and, at the end, thrilled.
