"Tonight Jeremy, I'm going to be...."

The rock moment of my weekend break staying with relatives near Amsterdam, comes when we visit a roadhouse-style bar in the town called 'The Bull'. We have been taken here 'cos the friend of a relative is performing with his band that night.

Rather oddly for a rock night, a solo flamenco guitarist opens proceedings. His songs have no words and no structure. My only flamenco guitar reference point is the intro to The Doors song Spanish Caravan, which I am tempted to request, and when he receives applause you sense it is more for 'a good effort' than for his virtuosity.

The second band are a drummer-less 3-piece (two electro-acoustic guitarists and a singer/flute player who looks like Neptune if he had moved on to the land, swapped his trident for a flute, got hooked on hashish and got onto Stars In Your Eyes as Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull). They play a set of covers in a very amateurish way, which along with all the usual pub-rock standards, includes a version of David Bowie's Heroes complete with an Anderson-style flute solo.

I'm enjoying myself but Laura, my wife, can't bare any of it, can't see the funny side, or even appreciate the musicians' 'good efforts', and wants to leave almost immediately that we arrive. Somehow though, I persuade her to stay the course. More Heineken helps. And we watch the entire set of the headline band - a 3-piece with a drummer - who play originals that might as well be covers, before we are driven home by a sober relative on the wrong side of the road (as we see it, anyway)