All hail the tribute bands phenomenon

Let's play musical parlour games, writes

. Choose A or B for each of the following: Lou Reed: A) Perfect Day, or, B) Night I from 2008's The Creation Of The Universe? David Bowie: A) Space Oddity, or, B) Bring Me The Disco King, from 2003's Reality.

No brainer, huh? Right then, let's make it more difficult and apply 'the album test'. The rules are the same: choose A or B. The Rolling Stones: A) Exile On Main Street, or, B) 2008's Live Licks? Bob Dylan: A) Highway 61 Revisited, or, B) 2009's Christmas In The Heart ?

Pearl Jam: A) Ten or, B) Eddie Vedder's 2011's ode to the chordophone, Ukulele Songs?

I think a pattern is starting to emerge. We're getting a triple AAA rating. While perusing this week's gig listings – and not wanting to minimise the marvellousness that will be Sunday's Wolves Civic headline gig by Jimmy Cliff + Toots And The Maytalls – one show jumped out at me.

On Tuesday, little-known Irish combo Pearl Jem will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pearl Jam's zeitgeist-capturing homage to grunge, Ten, at Birmingham's O2 Academy.

The show neatly illustrates two cultural phenomena that underpin the live scene of the present decade: tribute bands and classic album tours. It's almost as though a University Professor created the six-piece Irish tribute act to emphasis a point to undergraduates in his Musical Studies class. Tribute bands are now a key feature at venues of all sizes – from Pearl Jem's relatively humble O2 Academy 3 gig to The Australian Pink Floyd's megashows at arena-sized venues like Birmingham's NIA. It probably started on March 26 1980 at a long-forgotten students' bash in Tiverton, Devon, almost ten years to the day since Paul McCartney announced the break-up of the originals.

The West End cast of the Broadway musical Beatlemania decided to form The Bootleg Beatles, signing to the late Brian Epstein's NEMS Agency and giving themselves six months to make or break it.

Fast forward to 1982 and the BB's were creating Beatle-like hysteria at venues from London to Leningrad. Audiences as big as 18,000 paid to see the not-so-Fab Four. The world's first tribute band had come of age.

In more recent times, a new cultural phenomena has emerged: the touring of iconic albums. At this year's V Festival, for instance, second-on-the-bill on 4 Music stage were Primal Scream, playing their iconic 1991 indie-dance album, Screamadelica. They'd already played the record on a major UK tour in spring, before taking it to Wembley Arena, Glastonbury, T In The Park, Portugal's Optimus Alive!, Valencia's Benicassim Festival, Rome's MIT Festival, France's Midi Festival, Camp Bestival and numerous other venues around the world.

The recreation of favourite albums is one I know well. My own band, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, enjoyed taking our 1991 debut album God Fodder back into the live arena.

For most fans, it's about taking a trip down memory lane. They still want to remember how they felt as a 20-year-old, when an era was defined by their favourite album. Seeing those tunes played again is an evocative experience; it can be as thrilling and life-affirming as the first time. Most kids of the early nineties owned a copy of Nirvana's Nevermind, few 80's households didn't have a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

The opportunity to see or hear either no longer exists; for some, the next best thing is a tribute show.