Iggy Pop at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin

While  there's little doubt that 50-plus James Jewel Osterberg has set a virtually unassailable benchmark for aspiring rock 'n' rollers, there's also little doubt that as a performer he has nowhere else to go, no new shapes to construct. Yet what goes around comes around, and if the recent renaissance of guitar-based rock is anything to go by it looks as if Iggy Pop will be around for at least another few years, parading his skinny, ugly body, striking crucifixion poses and jumping around like a three year-old high  on E numbers.

The bane of any rock performer's life is that, try as they might, they cannot reach that sacred level of epiphany each time they play - irrespective of what the audience might think. Tonight was a prime example of a superb player at the rock 'n' roll game making a valiant attempt at overcoming various difficulties - some self-imposed, so let there be little sympathy - and honourably failing.

The first hurdle was a woeful, take-it-to-the-max sound mix thoroughly undermined by a sloppy, bludgeoning young-gun lead guitarist. The second hurdle was the selection of songs Pop wilfully chose to play (or not). No Lust For Life and No Fun, their place taken by cod-metal tunes such as Home and Cold Metal. Run-throughs of I Wanna Be Your Dog, The Passenger, TV Eye, Sixteen and Real Wild Child (his sole UK Top 10 hit, a vastly unrepresentative choice from the Iggy canon and a song he didn't even write) were delivered with all the throbbing, veined neck we have come to expect.

And yet, amid all the bluster, the iconic postures, the shadow of past glories, there were occasional glimpses of how exciting, how close to danger he could get (which does not include spitting at Andrea Corr). Close to the edge but not close enough, this was not - in the words of Iggy's former, truly great band, The Stooges - a Metallic KO, but just a metallic okay.