Broad Casting featuring Joe Bataan and James Pants

Throughout the night, recorded for posterity by the Red Bull Music Radio Academy, healthy risks were taken - none more so than with Bataan. One of the first men to try rapping on record, his sense of spontaneity extended to introducing himself to the majority of his backing band on the afternoon of a gig. Twelve people crammed on to the small stage, almost as if they were trying to get a closer look at the vocalist, while his regular drummer, flown over with him from New York, sat in front of the allocated rhythm section and shooed the brass section toward the corners of the stage if they threatened to even breathe out of place - which quite naturally they did now and then, having only rehearsed for a couple of hours.

Bataan himself was pumped up and full of vigour, jumping around on 67-year old legs. His entrance, and general presence, owed more than a little to James Brown, but once he was on the band cracked on with things, barely letting up as they powered through an opening instrumental, the Latin soul of Gypsy Woman and the hook-laden Rap-O Clap-O, whose bass line stayed in the head for hours afterwards. Behind the band were projected images of the gig in black and white, which proved surprisingly effective - the feeling being that we were all present at a gig in the mid-1960s.

You'll notice little mention of James Pants - or James Trousers, as he suggested he be known over here. Despite being billed alongside Bataan he enjoyed the role of brief compere and cowbell basher, fully in character in sunglasses and woolly hat but reduced to a role of chief cheerleader.

This was something of a shame, as the musical duel could have been even more fascinating, the more relaxed gait of the younger's beats against the elder's hi-energy Latin soul. Still, when there was music making of this calibre to lap up, however scrappy it was in places, it seemed churlish to complain.

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