EVEN I'm not that the old to have shaken my tush at the Olympia in its previous incarnation as the Locarno ballroom.
In more recent years, however, the journey to West Derby Road has been shaped by a venue which, in its current guise, has earned a reputation for left field versatility that is up for staging just about anything. 
 
With an exterior that bears more than a passing resemblance to the much-missed Liverpool Stadium, its 2,000-capacity interior is a multi- balcony mutant cross between the quaint  Shepherd's Bush Empire in London and our own Royal Court in the "shabby shit" years before its chic makeover.
 
The primal hypnotic draw of Carpenter was melding something between the tinkerings of early Human League and Kraftwerk and combining it with a little bit of Sabbath
With no designated seating you have to get in early to park a butt in the balcony, or otherwise take your spec standing on the vast floor of the ballroom itself.
 
The impression is of organised chaos but there is a hedonistic buzz about the place no doubt psychically inherited from its jitterbug dancehall nights of yore.
 
The feelgood factor is  helped by numerous bars scattered all around - similar to that of the Liverpool 02's main sector - ensuring there's no handbags-at-dawn face-offs over who gets served first.
 
So, in keeping with this eccentric reputation, it's appropriate that legendary horror film director John Carpenter should play here, especially in the shade of the Hallloween celebration, one of only a handful of European dates to showcase  live his self-composed, synthesized, anthemic backdrops.
 
Horror, as a genre, is sniffed at by some. Yet Carpenter is one of the few who have stepped across the divide into general acceptance, helped not least by his acclaimed musical sidebar.
 
Born in 1948, this son of a New York music teacher decided, from his Dark Star in 1974, that the use of the synthesizer - then still in its relative infancy - was  "the means to sound big with just a keyboard".
 
His 1980s heyday may be behind him but not in the opinion of  expectant fans who believe he himself is still BIG and who turned out in force, queuing up outside in a heady, cold, ozone fug of bonfire smoke and the subtle waft of weed on this desolated boulevard on the edge of town.
 
A curious bunch of old and new (the more senior audience members bearing a niggling resemblance to the goateed geek Comic Book Guy who runs The Android's Dungeon shop in The Simpsons), they have stay tuned to his career and, perhaps surprisingly, his recent, purely musical based Lost Themes albums 1 and 2, which have no celluloid connections whatsoever.
 
These instrumentals were intermittently pumped out at the gig by a tight, four piece band - including additional  keyboards - while  Carpenter crouched over his mini synth, picking out doom-laden chords,  a 68-year-old hipster in shades dressed in jet black threads, contrasting his pure white ponytail. 
 
All this newer material was enthusiastically received by the faithful, though the cynical may have labelled it as being caught in net of 80s noodley-guitar-electro-timewarp.
 
The triumph, though, was in the familiar.
 
The primal hypnotic draw of Carpenter was melding something between the tinkerings of early Human League and Kraftwerk and combining it with a little bit of Sabbath. 
 
Somehow, he's made them seem timeless especially when coordinated on a large Olympian stage screen behind the band showing extracts from his all-round masterpieces of the 70s and 80s - the ski-masked slasher Michael Myers of Halloween and cigar-chewing, shoot-'em-up Snake Plissken, Kurt Russell in Escape From New York.
 
We ultmately left with no tricks, only treats.