Shine a Light (2008) - Official Trailer. Courtesy of YouTube.com

I had a moment of clarity the other day watching Martin Scorcese's Shine a Light, a rock loving filmmaker's tour de force.

Filmed over two nights in the beautiful art-deco Beacon Theatre in Manhatten in autumn of 2006, Shine a Light is what happens when musical and film-making expertise collide head-on in a venue made to measure.

This is a rock movie that astonishingly, looks as good as it sounds, thanks to a cast boasting an Oscar-winning cinematographer, overseeing several Oscar-winning directors of photography, and wrapped up by a feat of editing that bought what felt like dozens of camera angles together in virtuoso style.

For sheer staying power and balls-to-the-wall rock and roll attitude, there will never be a band like the Stones. For an outfit that Fortune once dubbed 'The World's First Billion Dollar Rock Band", it is no mean feat to say that this was a film that truly did the band justice.

The only thing that you imagined, as the camera flickered from the expressions on the faces of the main actors, to the heavens of the Beacon, was that the only people have more fun than us in the cinemas, were the people sitting in those precious seats.

Bands such as these don't play small theatres anymore, and those gathered as part of Bill Clinton's charity-gathering 60th birthday celebrations looked like they understood this fact. Scorcese too, for all his hand-wringing and worrying at the beginning, seems to understand that this is the rock and roll version of a Formula One pit camera, par excellence.

As Time Literary Supplement's Alan Jenkins noted, "No one has a hope any more of getting this close to a big rock band unless they are in a big rock band."

I then imagined that one day, for the chance to see a band that I had grown up with - Pearl Jam, Radiohead or The Foo Fighters say - in a venue this intimate, I would probably be willing to pay a whole lot more than your average rock concert.

Imagining if a thousand bucks say, could deliver ring side seats to the perfect rock show - in your hometown.

I sensed that this, eventually might become the true competitor for taking a holiday.

When getting on a plane can seem too much of a hassle, or a waste of time or fuel, the chance to have the dream experience come to you - for one night only - and take you way out of your own worldview, is a potent cocktail. As they say, it's only rock and roll. But I like it.