Expectations could not possibly get much higher than for Mark Ronson and the Business International’s sideshow at the Palace Theatre. Rumoured to have made a surprise DJ guest appearance behind the decks at St Kilda’s Vineyard the night before, everyone stocked up at the bar well before his set began, as support indie pop act Zowie tied up her commendably pocket-rocket fuelled set. Things got brutal as six foot six brick shit-houses argued with five-foot-nothing girlies about whose dance space was whose, with no one prepared to concede any ground in case they missed whatever surprises Mark had in store.

Stark white spotlights fired up and Mark Ronson and The Business Intl appeared on-stage, with the guys all dressed in matching crisp blue and white suits, each positioned behind keyboards and hexagonal red drum attachments straight out of a Bros video.

As the operatic synth of Circuit Breaker rang out, something about the militancy with which they thumped out those jerky chords raised a moment of concern that the Business International were here more for business than pleasure. Was this brainchild of Mark’s going to play a gig more like a well-oiled machine than a performance raw, spontaneous and inspired?

That thought disappeared as soon as Spank Rock stormed onstage for Lose It (In the End), with his rooster quiff flapping and white-framed glasses flashing in the spotlight. Ordinarily, such a get-up would inspire hours of conversation about whether his glasses were real or prescription, but when the guy drops in lyrics from Race Riot on the Dancefloor like “all the white girls shake it til my dick turns racist”, you’re less inclined to get caught up in hipster-hating and just enjoy the show as it unfolds.

Emerging from behind a synth to join Spank Rock up front of stage for The Bike Song was Alex Greenwald, just as dapper in his blue suit but in a more shaggy-haired, Californian kind of way. Again, any scepticism about whether a sanguine pop tune about riding push-bikes could really get a crowd going got punched squarely in the nose.

Literally, the legs and elbows flying out from the mosh-pit that instantaneously formed at the very mention of this track felt like some kind of divine threat of retribution for ever doubting Mark Ronson’s show would go off. Luckily, Alex then sang a song he wrote as part of Phantom Planet, the O.C. anthem California, calming down an over-excited crowd.

Not to be upstaged by the fellas, one of the mod-like female components of the Business International, Rose Elinor Dougall, trotted out centre-stage on shiny black heels. With her asymmetrical haircut flailing, her delicate voice delivered tracks like The Night Last Night and Oh My God with butterfly-like grace and bee-sting precision. She may not crack much of a smile but her delicate dulcet tones and oh-so-English poise and tailoring must have come out of the same poptress finishing school as everybody’s other favourite tri-named English chanteuse, Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Declaring Melbourne to be the best crowd ever, assuring us ‘I shit you not’, Mark then got the laptop out, treating us to a sample of his DJ talents that made him a name for himself in clubs across NYC, starting with none other than Bang Bang Bang. The crowd cut progressively more sick when he mixed into tracks like Major Lazer’s Pon de Floor, Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough and Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind. Predictable crowd-pleasers, yes, but any complaints from pleased-crowd? No.

The Business International then got back into full swing, with Amanda Warner from MNDR taking the helm to sing MNDR’s own Fade to Black. Although she seems to be one of the more conspicuous personas within the Business International as the vocalist for Bang Bang Bang, wearing the most outlandish outfits and eyewear, she did not command the same attention as her co-Business Internationalists when she took centre-stage, her more stylised dance-moves only accentuating her lacklustre vocals.

Just as the spell over the crowd appeared to have been broken, some very familiar yet unexpected chords started up. “Are we dreaming?”, we wondered, “or is that the intro for Animal by Miike Snow?” Then we had to ask ourselves again, “are we dreaming, or is that Miike Snow wandering onstage to sing it to us himself?” Having pinched ourselves a few times we decided we weren’t in fact dreaming or if we were, this was one live music wet dream we had no intention of waking ourselves up from. Miike then singing Somebody to Love Me in a gorgeously executed duet with Rose was about as awesomely close as you can get to hearing it from the real thing, Boy George, himself.

Keeping the mood spiralling high, Alex Greenwald joined Rose for You Gave Me Nothing and an equally impressive cover of Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before by The Smiths. Returning for an encore and a Happy Birthday sing-along for “Randell the Roadie”, Mark and his minions treated us to much-anticipated tracks Record Collection and, of course, Bang Bang Bang, in which Amanda thankfully lifted with the help of Spank Rock, covering Q-Tip’s part.

Which left us a lot to smugly sigh about afterwards and very little to sniffle about, other than a few bruises from an over-excited crowd for which you couldn’t really blame them. Whatever the lukewarm reviews of his UK shows moaned about has either been ironed out or things just work a whole lot better for Mark and the Business Intl down these parts. They belong here. Mark’s now practically part of the Vineyard furniture.