Sydney in the summertime and life really doesn’t get much better. On the first weekend in December what better way to celebrate the start of the silly season than with an open air concert in Centennial Park with the funkiest cat in a hat, Jay Kay and his funk travelling band Jamiroquai? Having sold out the first scheduled show for Saturday December 3rd rather swiftly, a second show was announced to take place the day prior. Close to the event date it was announced that the two shows would combine and move to a larger area within the Centennial Park grounds. For most I’m sure this didn’t prove to be a problem, and in hindsight when the heavens opened and torrential rain bucketed down around 8pm on Friday night I’d say that each and every ticket holder for the show originally scheduled for that day breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Kicking off at 4pm gave the early arrivers a chance to revel in the sun, with Melbourne live act Mr Jigga, local Sydney favourites Sneaky Sound System, the Avalanches DJ team and Goodwill providing the soundtrack to the afternoon. The crowd, as to be expected, was incredibly diverse. Wveryone from your club kids through to mums and dads coming out to see the band. At one point prior to Jamiroquai taking the stage the music was interrupted as a message was sent out over the PA notifying someone their lost child was waiting at the cloak room, rather bizarre, but an indication of the crowd’s varied nature. Having sold well over 20 million albums it’s not surprising that Jamiroquai would attract such a varied crowd, and as odd as I thought it would be to share a dance space with people as old as my parents, it really didn’t seem that strange in retrospect. Everyone was there to have a good time, and it showed in their rapturous response to Jay Kay’s stage antics.

The bulk of the crowd generally didn’t seem too interested in what support acts had to offer. I kick myself for arriving too late to see Mr Jigga (I seem to miss them for one reason or another every time they’re in Sydney), but I did get inside the venue with enough time to have a boogie to the Avalanches. The trio were obviously having fun onstage and the tracks they dropped reflected the disparate ages of the crowd, playing everything from Bobbie Brown through to Beck, and even a little bit of Chicks on Speed. The setup was impressive, a huge stage erected in the Parade Grounds. I’m ridiculously awful at estimate crowd numbers, but I’d put it at around 20,000, which made for a right spectacle when the sun went down and lights went on.

Taking to the stage just after 8pm the band opened with a trio of their most notable hits, starting with Canned Heat, before moving into Space Cowboy and then Cosmic Girl, the latter receiving a great response presumably thanks (in part) to it having featured in the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite. Try as I might to imitate said dance moves I just couldn’t seem to mirror the convulsive regularity of Napoleon, so I gave up and decided to concentrate on what was going on up onstage. Looking smashing in one of his signature headpieces and Adidas tracksuit Jay Kay moved with fluid ease from one end of the stage to the next, ably backed by the band who were about as tight as could be.

Tracks from the band’s 2001 album A Funk Odyssey proved to garner the greatest crowd response, with Little L, You Give Me Something and Love Foolosophy all sending the punters into a frenzy, but it was the encore of Traveling Without Moving from the 1996 album of the same name that really topped off the night. The set was surprisingly void of new material, Dynamite’s lead single Feels Just Like it Should not featuring in tonight’s show (that I’m aware of anyway… I’m sure I did well paid close attention while waiting in the beer queue!) Having not warmed to his newest material so much that didn’t really bother me, but the laidback funk of Seven Days in Sunny June proved to be another of the set’s many highlights and has me digging the latest album out for another listen.

It was great to head along to a concert like this in the outdoors. Over the summer months it really does make you appreciate good old Sydney Towne, and provided you could secure the right headliners and touring artists it would be wonderful for similar events to take place in future. I can’t count how many times Jay Kay told the crowd he loved Australia, and looking at the smiling faces as the concert finished and everyone made their way out of the park it’s plainly obvious that the love is returned in equal amounts.