True confession: The only Pink Floyd song I know is “Another Brick in the Wall.” Yes, yes, the 1970s is my generation. And I’m sure that when The Pink Floyd Experience plays its 20 tons’ worth of quadrophonic sound under 270,000 watts of light at 7 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Maine Center for the Arts, I’ll recognize something – if only the boy-power drive of it all. But philosophizing psychedelic jam-out music – even if it seems tame compared to today’s post-punk scene – wasn’t my thing in the ’70s.

Those days, I was into soul and dance music. See the problem?

But tribute bands from that era have found a niche among both the nostalgic and the novice. I know a guy in Los Angeles who is so stuck on the Grateful Dead, he takes his 7-year-old son to see Dark Star Orchestra, which he and his Dead-head buddies call the uber-Dead cover band. The group basically plays Dead songs that whisk these guys back to another era and teach the son a few things about Dad.

“I love it, primarily ’cause of the music,” my friend e-mailed recently. “I love that freestyle, jamming approach to music. And I just love the Dead songs. It’s also very cool to close your eyes and feel like you’re back at a show, which, yes, does take you back to a headier, more carefree time in your life. But mainly it’s about the music. Always was for me, much more than the scenes that surrounded the show.”

You should check out the Web site, he told me.

Right.

While it’s unlikely that I’ll be driving that train anytime soon, the tribute band phenoms blaze across the landscape. PFX is a good example. Tom Quinn, a guitarist, formed the band in San Diego in 1994, and played locally until a few years ago when the British-progressive-rock-style band went on the road with a multimillion-dollar show. Think marching hammers, plane crashes, “Light Bulb Man” and the signature flying pig. Like my L.A. friend says – and Quinn, too, by the way: Close your eyes, and it all comes flooding back.

You should check out the Web site.

By April, PFX will have played 21 gigs throughout North America this year – mostly in very large halls. It’s likely that many in the audience will be seeking total recall of the “headier” days. It’s also likely their children are old enough now to be dragged along. But a wide age range is normal at these surrogate-music concerts, and it helps that band members range from Quinn – whose mentor is Floyd’s David Gilmore, although the two have never met – to 24-year-old sax player Jesse Molloy.

“If you go to a Pink Floyd concert, it’s because you love Pink Floyd,” another music person told me.

Exactly. Me, I’m sticking to the Web site.

For information about The Pink Floyd Experience, 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 15, at the Maine Center for the Arts, call 581-1755, or visit www.MaineCenterfortheArts.org.