The Beat, Royal Festival Hall, London<br></br>Gary Numan, Shepherds Bush Empire, London

"You know what," he says, the energy reserves nearly exhausted, the evening nearly done, "we should reform on the eve of every world war."

When I was 13, there was no one I wanted to be so much as Dave Wakeling, the Beat singer with the Wilkinson Sword cheekbones. The Beat are the band that time forgot. The rest of the class of 1980 – The Jam, The Specials and Dexys – are still spoken about in respectfully reverential tones by men of a certain age, and respectfully referential tones by the younger generation.

On the last eve of a world war – the nuclear Armageddon which we were all convinced would follow the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan – The Beat were absolutely central. More than any of their 2-Tone peers, The Beat fused the energy of punk with the lopsided rhythms of reggae to devastating effect. Tight as piano wire, sharp as broken glass and fast as an over-wound clockwork toy, the bass/guitar combo of David Steele and Andy Cox (who departed to form Fine Young Cannibals) created a fidgety, jittery sound which had less in common with ska and more in common with mod, bristling with amphetamine psychosis and adolescent sexual tension.

Two decades later, it's like a Friends Reunited disco in here. The Festival Hall is filled with thirtysomethings nervously checking out the bingo wings and Zidane hairlines on all the other thirtysomethings. And trying to remember how to dance.

When The Beat launch into "Ranking Full Stop", we remember how to dance pretty damn quick. MC/toaster Ranking Roger has changed his look, his trademark fedora replaced by long black/blond dreads, but doesn't look any older than the day the single was released, frequently flashing a washboard stomach to the delight of the former Rude Girl contingent. Wakeling, still toting his super-cool plectrum-shaped guitar, is showing the years a little more – those Wilkinson Sword cheekbones have turned to marshmallow (but no one stays that handsome forever).

The Steele/Cox axis are absent from this reunion (replaced by Andy Pearson and Neil Deathridge, who do a decent job), and Ian Dury cohort Blockhead has been drafted in on keyboards. The incredible tightness of the performance makes you realise just how important drummer Everett Moreton was/is to the equation.

The star of the show, though, is veteran saxophonist Saxa. When The Beat began, he was already fiftysomething. He can't be far off 90 now. He chats barely comprehensible patois between songs, and gives a solo rendition of "Stranger On The Shore" as a finale.

I Just Can't Stop It is thoroughly mined for what is mainly a hits set: "Mirror In The Bathroom" proves that, as well as hitting all the right political notes – anti-Nazi, anti-nuclear, anti-Thatcher – Wakeling had an underrated ability to express the existential paranoia of modern life. Only two tracks, though, from their farewell masterpiece, Special Beat Service. You know those lists you see of Great Lost Albums? Well, this one is so lost that it doesn't even make it onto those. Maybe next time. They'll be back, they promise. Because, as Wakeling puts it, "Armageddon isn't the end of the world."

Gary Numan – idiot or genius? It's a perennial poser, and I've always tended to hedge my bets and settle for the cop-out of "savant".

Numan's latest musical change of direction hints at poor timing, if not outright stupidity. At a time when his synthetic sound is hipper than it's been in 20 years – from the Sugababes' glorious hijacking of "Are 'Friends' Electric?" to countless Tubeway Army-inspired Electro clashers – Numan himself has moved on to guitar-based industrial rock.

Tonight's show features Numan, clad in a Cyberdog top covered in fake musculature (or is it bullet-proof cladding?), hunched over a guitar like a labourer over a shovel. It's a connoisseur's set, containing such obscurities as "M.E." (sampled by Basement Jaxx on "Where's Your Head At"), "That's Too Bad" (the first ever Tubeway Army single) and "It Must Have Been Years" (apparently a favourite of Kurt Cobain).

Numanoids are a fascinating tribe – misfits even among the misfits – and to be among them is akin to wandering into a fundamentalist mosque by mistake. They chant every word with immaculate Numan pronunciation ("you" becomes "yoh", etc). Somewhere up on that stage is a one-man Triumph Of The Will, still resolutely going his own way. And if you look closely, there's still a spark of genius.

s.price@independent.co.uk