The Who Willie Nile (Hampton Coliseum)

Consider the ’60s rock bands still extant and working — the Rolling Stones, hot as ever on disc—but tending toward self-parody when they hit the road; Jefferson Starship (née Airplane), with a change of cast and a consequent lowering (plummeting?) of musical expectations; the Kinks, still rocking but artsier by the moment; the Beach Boys, frankly retrospective, the tide’s out forever.

Of all the dwindling number of ’60s rockers, only The Who may be said to function completely in the present tense, with no dilution of the qualities of music making and showmanship that originally vaulted the group into the pop stratosphere.

The creative juices still flow undammed — although recently flowing almost entirely from leader Pete Townshend — and the gloriously excessive physical energy and sonic power still explode from both sides of the stage lip when The Who appears in concert.

The quartet was in Hampton last night, drawing the usual assortment of spectators — from well-groomed suburbanites to funky thugs, from aging hipsters to ultratrendies — making the customary shambles of eardrums and inhibitions, erasing the years as only an elder rock band still in its prime can do.

What keeps The Who in its prime almost two decades later? Classic, timeless rock ’n’ roll, certainly — “My Generation,” “I Can’t Explain,” “Baba O’Reilly,” “Drown,” all the tunes, old or not so old, are built of such basic stuff that they are, by definition, fresh with each successive hearing.

And the way they are played, with Townshend windmilling those massive, affirmative chords from his guitar (getting tangled in his coat sleeves on the first sweep of his right arm), and with Roger Daltrey roaring the lyric — in tune, incredibly, in the midst of a calisthenic routine that would floor just about any other rock singer.

To see and hear that, illuminated by a massive light system sending rainbow patterns undulating around the stage and blinding searchlight effects out into the crowd, projected by a sound system that leaves the ears ringing hours later, turns an audience into something not unlike an electrical conductor. The band emits energy; the crowd receives it and sends its own right back; back and forth, without a break, until the houselights rise for the last time.

Such a quality, the essence of great rock ’n’ roll, is immune from time and trends. Add to that the universality of Townshend’s better lyrics, and you have the staying power of The Who.

Assuming Townshend doesn’t develop bursitis of the right shoulder and Daltrey’s legs don’t give out on him, they could be at it 20 years from now. And I’ll see you at that show.

The unenviable task of warming up for this perpetual energy machine fell to Willie Nile, a young singer-songwriter from New York whose music might be described as high-intensity folk-rock.

Nile’s nocturnal cityscapes (“Vagabond Moon,” “Old Men Sleeping on the Bowery”) and existential shaggy-dog stories (“Oh Lord,” “Champs Elysee,” the latter dedicated to Chubby Checker and Jean-Paul Sartre) dominated his set, performed with more onstage energy, perhaps, than such music really calls for.

The stylized athletics of Nile and his supporting quartet made a bit more sense in his one genuine hard rocker, “She’s So Cold,” which should have capped the set (he closed, superfluously, with “Sing Me a Song,” one of those songs about singing songs).

In his element, which is not a coliseum concert as prelude to The Who, Nile is no doubt a persuasive exponent of his songs, among the most attractive examples of folk-rock to come along in recent years.