A little before 9pm on Wednesday night and I’m standing on the ‘VIP’ balcony of San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom, holding a can of something called ‘MySpace Buzz’ and waiting for Weezer to take to the stage. It’s a weird scene, all told, and not just because I thought Weezer was dead.

The bulk of the weirdness stems from the make-up of the crowd: a dozen feet below me in the main auditorium there are maybe a couple of thousand writhing teenagers – Weezer fans to a (wo)man, cheering and shouting and jumping and sweating and doing all the things I remember doing a little over a decade ago.

These are the invited fans; those lucky enough to have been chosen to attend this ’secret show’, organised by MySpace. You know, for kids. Every so often one of the stage lights picks out a tiny puff of smoke in the crowd. Ah, you crazy kids and your pot: I feel like I’ve been transported back in time.

By contrast, there are no kids up on the VIP balcony. Instead there are the ‘important guests of MySpace’ – or at least those who had enough sway with MySpace PR to get on the invite list. If you’d told me back in 2001 – the last time I last saw Weezer live – that when I next saw them I’d be standing next to noted-non-rock-kids Scoble and Loic LeMeur (”is zis Weezer a famous band?”), I wouldn’t have believed you. I’d also have asked you what ’scobul’ is.

And yet despite the obvious differences between the two groups -the kids down there and the grown ups up here – there is one thing we have in common. Almost everyone – young or old – has a phone in their hand.

As befits their demographic, the kids are using their Nokias as cameras – pointing them at the stage in anticipation of their heroes’ arrival. And as befits our demographic, we grown ups are using our iPhones to tweet that same anticipation, but only – of course – after we’d checked in to the venue on Foursquare. “Wow. The real-time web is awesome”, I remarked, to no one in particular.

Read on at TechCrunch…