I used to frequent a great underground venue in Kings Cross called, well, The Underground. What better name for a venue pushing underground sounds could a person assign? It seems Candy chose her name as a more appropriate moniker for the venue. I kind of wondered what happened to the old Underground and it made me feel like such a dance scene reptile (shit, I’m only 25!) when I turned up to Kings Cross as an infrequent visitor to find that ‘Candy’s was the place to be and I no longer really fit into the young clubber mould of which I was surrounded.

It didn’t take long for more reptiles to come out of their caves and contribute to a diminutive but agile crowd of boppers. We came to hear the original beak-beats from the funk drummers of the 60s and 70s. However when we made our first visit to the dance floor after the obligatory first round we found that the first DJ off the rank, DJ Code, was playing 90s and 00s hip-hop. Not that this deeply offended us, the funk was ensuing, but the tin said this was supposed to be a can of old school funk

Appreciatively the next DJ, DJ Regal, stepped back in time and dropped the funky drum beats. What ensued was a tag-team of lads on decks, DJs Phibes, Blaze and Pitchfork, picking at 45s and 12 inches dropping break-beat after choppy break-beat of the finest in funk.

The dance floor was flowing but it wasn’t steam droplets from the ceiling rammed. At 2am I wondered if this was the peak of numbers through the door. It seemed so. I couldn’t believe that more Sydney-siders weren’t in the building to pay respect to the original beats that are used in so many of the hip-hop tracks they are dancing to at other crowded joints. Anyhow, my mates and I quite enjoyed the open space to chisel the parquet and the sound system was booming with air to breath.

Biggest props go to DJ Blaze for his cutting wizardry, but this was a night for the unsung heroes of hip-hop. All those drummers who scraped together a living banging skins on tracks in the early funk era. Such legends of skins to be given the audio recognition included Jabo Starks, Melvin Parker and Clyde Stubblefield from the James Brown band, Al Jackson Jr for Otis Redding, Greg Errico in Sly & the Family Stone, Maurice White for Earth Wind & Fire and “Funky George” Brown from Kool & the Gang.

So many original beats were played that you now here in modern hip-hop cuts it was difficult to trace and remember them all. My personal favourites were the rare James Brown cuts that you don’t hear on any of his best of albums. These DJs showed their true form as crate diggers in this endeavour.

At four am the feet were seriously beginning to ache and all my dollars had mysteriously found there way into the bar’s cash register so we rounded up the troops and got on the good foot. My mate summed the night up with officious respect to JB by simply grunting ‘Ehhh’, ‘Heeeeeey’, ‘I wanna kiss myself’. Thanks to James Brown, the first musician to ‘give the drummer some’ and all the musicians he influenced. And thanks to the crew of DJs for putting together a great night grounded on a superb concept.