When on July 28, 1973, The Band played the Summer Jam festival at Watkins Glen, New York, on a bill that also included The Grateful Dead and The Allman Brothers, Garth Hudson, if he’d been so inclined, could have looked out from the stage onto a crowed of more than 600,000 – at the time, I think, the largest-ever audience for a rock show. Last night, in London, at the 100 Club, in the company of Goldrush - the Oxfordshire band who have put on tonight’s show with Loose Records and are also among the organisers of the Truck Festival, at which the keyboard legend recently appeared – Garth, here celebrating his 70th birthday, would have looked out from the stage at a somewhat smaller, but perhaps no less enthusiastic crowd. The Magic Numbers’ Romeo Stoddart’s onstage when I arrive, playing to a noticeably sparse congregation, and I wince utterly as he closes his set with an unfortunately clunky version of Guy Clark’s “Anyhow, I Love You”. There’s a bit of a stir not long after Romeo’s departed, when Hudson, white-whiskered and resplendent in a snappy Stetson and Los Lobos tour jacket, makes his way through a by-now healthy turn-out, with his wife, Maud, whose wheelchair he guides through the crowd and onto the stage, Maud looking no less natty in a hat as cool as the one Dylan sported on the cover of Desire. They’re joined by Goldrush, whose playing over the next couple of hours makes you wonder if they have done anything else in what appears to be their relatively young lives apart from listening to The Band, and groups like them. They certainly make all the right noises on an opening quartet of songs that features surprisingly authentic versions of “It Makes No Difference” and “The Shape I’m In” from The Band’s illustrious back catalogue. Later, there are great takes on other Band classics, among them “King Harvest”, “Ophelia” and, inevitably, “The Weight” and “Chest Fever”, and it’s a testament to the sturdy brilliance of these songs that they sound even in this odd setting so enduringly potent and wholly stirring. More unexpected, and wholly spellbinding, is a version, sung quite brilliantly by Maud, of one of Bob Dylan’s greatest songs, “Blind Willie McTell”, which reduces the house to a dazzled hush. There’s quickly an outing for “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”, which lifts the evening’s mood to boisterous new levels, almost as many people now onstage, including a horn section who’ve breezed in from somewhere, as there were watching Romeo earlier on, and even more people for the gig’s climax, a roaring version of “I Shall Be Released”. Garth and Maud are by the end visibly moved by the whole event and the uncomplicated affection of the people here whose lives his music has lit up down the years. Happy birthday, man.

And considering the competition -- Spider-Man 3, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End -- that takes some beating. Admittedly, last week saw something of a bumper crop of UNCUT friendly movies (The Assassination Of Jesse James, American Gangster, The Darjeeling Limited), but all the same -- Across The Universe is a truly dreadful film. The story takes place in the late Sixties, where a young Scouse lad called Jude (that's Jude) heads off to America in search of his father. He winds up in Greenwich Village with a girl called Lucy (that's Lucy) and her boho hipster chums Sadie, JoJo, Prudence and Maxwell, who does indeed brandish a silver hammer at one point during the proceedings. These hoopy froods run up against just the kind of pesky life problems you'd expect to encounter in the Age of Aquarius. There's a war in Vietnam, man, and the students are becoming radicalised. There's drug-soaked hippie gurus to tune in with, rock bands to form, and the Lennon-McCartney songbook to demolish with ham-fisted ineptitude. In one of the film's many jaw-droppingly bad moments, Bono appears as Dr Robert, a Ken Kesey-esque figure in loopy, tinted Lennon shades, a handlebar moustache and a cowboy hat, singing an excruciating version of "I Am The Walrus". And this is even after Eddie Izzard's Mr Kite has done some appalling, sub-Python turn in a tent. It goes from worse to dreadful, culminating in a rooftop gig where the entire cast boom out "All You Need Is Love". I'm not particularly precious about The Beatles, so please don't think I'm getting in a lather about their back catalogue being subjected to the kind of grim torture that, by rights, should have been outlawed long ago under the Geneva Convention. My problem here is the crushing witlessness with which the filmmakers have bolted Beatles' songs onto the narrative. In one scene, Prudence (that's Prudence) locks herself in a closet and refuses to come out. So, one by one, the cast members gather round the door and exhort her in song to come out and "greet the brand new day". Yes, it's genuinely that bad. It's just shockingly inept filmmaking. Quite what possessed The Beatles' estate to allow their songs to be used in this film is a mystery. And what compounds the grinding misery here is that the film was written by Dick Clement and Ian LeFresnais, the gentlemen who in a previous life wrote Porridge and The Likely Lads and clearly should know a lot better that this. It opens this Friday in the UK, should you be brave enough to go and see it.