Thirty years since the heady days of Smooth Operator and Sade still pulls a sizeable crowd, and a much cherished one at that: the kind that still pays full-price for music. Although Sade is an understated performer and her between-song patter is mostly rehearsed, the theatrical elements of her show — video projections, choreography, costume changes, stage effects — combined with an overlong absence from these antipodean shores make for an entertaining evening.

The night begins with Soldier of Love. The song incorporates a mechanised, industrial feel that is a slight departure from her usual fare, and the whole production plays on it: the performers emerge from the depths of the stage on the beat; the band synchronise their movements in lock step; Sade coolly hams it up; the lights accent the snare drum pounding on the two and four.

These theatrical elements are generally a clever touch the whole night through; a nonsensical video providing the back story to Smooth Operator while affording time for an obligatory costume change, however, is not. Regrettably, neither is the song’s rendition a great success — Smooth Operator feels limp and rushed. But no matter: soon after, an atmospheric rendition of Is It A Crime elicits the greatest response of the night, the slow burn of the verses that build to the chorus that goes somewhere close to emotional a welcome change from the general restraint of Sade’s material.

The relaxed funk of Paradise has a handful of the audience on their feet, and when the song breaks down into a sanitised, adult-oriented hip hop section, everyone gets on up. Sade wisely leaves the stage to her two back-up singers who have the crowd responding to their cliched calls. It’s lightweight and ridiculous; nonetheless, it’s fun.

We’ve been told we’re loved, we’ve heard the hits; while she never commands the stage, Sade is a gracious performer, and, smartly, she doesn’t rely on her intimate, understated music alone to entertain in a venue as vast as Rod Laver Arena. Her urbane exotica and the show’s production are all well done and — dare I say it — a smooth operation indeed.

Gomez are a blues band who don’t have much to be blue about. Like many bands who aren’t much chop at evoking emotion with their music, Gomez are at their best when they’re inventive, playful, quirky. Whatever’s On Your Mind continues in that inventive vein, but they’ve overreached: instead of quirky and fun, they’ve tried for quirky and emotional — and come off as vapid and maudlin.

The joys of Love Is Better Than A Warm Trombone and Get Myself Arrested are over ten years old now, and they still stand as deft, light-hearted reinterpretations of the blues for this more comfortable modern age. Options, the first track from Whatever’s On Your Mind, begins with those same hallmarks, but deft soon turns to daft with a deathly detour into Coldplay strings and twee electronics that is sadly indicative of the entire album.

Lines as execrable as “I’m just as lost as you are”, “please hold on to your heart of gold” and “you’re the song in my heart” are but three exemplars of Gomez’s primary mistake: sentimentality substituting for fun. There’s not a jot of emotional weight to any of their songs, not a scintilla of old-school soul to their sound, and the canned strings over cliched lyrics that is alarmingly common throughout will render sickly the sweetest of musical tooths.

Gomez should have known better. Misplaced sentimentality is the young man’s goof, not the old hand’s. What’s most disappointing is that Whatever’s On Your Mind features many moments of musical canniness, but moments they remain overwhelmed as they are by missteps into the maudlin mundane.

Souvlaki, laksa and tempura are but three examples of the welcome impact multiculturalism has made on the Australian palette; musically, though, it’s still the same meat and three veg of rock and roll that keeps the masses satisfied. Tonight, however, is different. Tonight Dereb Desalegn showcases the band he has put together over the course of the last decade since his arrival in Australia from his native Ethiopia, a band that serves up the slinky sounds from his homeland’s musical golden period.

Mulatu Astatke is the one-man Motown of Ethiopia, a veritable genius who created the classic Latin jazz, funk and traditional Ethiopian infusion that came to be known as ethio-jazz and which had Addis Ababa swinging in the 60s and 70s. Dereb the Ambassador mine that sound, and they fittingly begin with a driving cover of the instrumental Astatqe standard, Yelage Tizeta. The original is sexier, more lounge, the aural equivalent of a martini sipped among belly dancers in a Saharan oasis bar; but Dereb the Ambassador are bringing the funk tonight, and they conjure up a sweaty dancefloor in an overheated, overpopulated North African city, a single fan blowing ineffectually from the ceiling.

Dereb sings in his native Amharic, which, without words recognisable to this Australian’s ears, makes his voice sound like a bellowing clarinet of deep, evocative hues, both resonant and rich. And it’s that voice along with the two saxophones on stage that trace the thrillingly exotic Ethiopian melodies. Their lines slink, slither and slide, the saxophones at times sounding like two hissing snakes intertwining in desert sands. All this is on top of a crack rhythm section, the congas and the drums polyrhythmically combining to produce an outstanding underlay of intermeshed percussion for the rest of the instruments to sit on.

Dereb the Ambassador, however, are not mere revivalists: they also introduce Jamaican elements into their Ethiopian melange to good effect. The ska-like bounce to many of their numbers add a unifying element to the funky bodies on the dancefloor that are otherwise dancing to any one of the various interlocking parts of the funky, elegant whole.

Dereb the Ambassador are the real deal, a band of tight professionals that, thousands of miles away from Ethiopia, nonetheless manage to evoke the steaming clubs of Addis Ababa with their sexy flights of jazzy, North-African funk. Twiddly, trebly, whiney rock need not be the sole musical diet of a Melbournite looking for something live, and happily Australia’s multiculturalism now has something musical to hang its hat on.

It must be a political statement against nepotism: the show begins with Toots’ daughter singing an execrable reggae-muzak version of John Waite’s middle-of-the-road Missing You. After the song is done, she quietly takes up her spot behind a backing singer’s mic, a spot that should really be for a Maytal, and Toots, her legendary father, enters stage right.

Toots is looking ridiculously fine. Toots’ bright red outfit, a stunning throwback to Eddie Murphy’s finer days, sits snugly over his bulbous, middle-aged paunch, while his swagger and black-as-night sunglasses make for a kitschy-cool combination perhaps no other 65 year old could pull off. From the outset, it’s clear that Toots’ voice and its soulful, gospel inflections have only improved with age and his very own funky dance steps remain timeless. But right from the outset, it’s also clear that even though tonight has been billed as Toots and the Maytals, it’s not the Maytals that the world has grown up with that are on stage and the backing band is not a patch on the Skatalites.

The backing band is practically invisible. They’re hardly better than a covers band and there is little cohesion or energy Toots can work with. Although the classic Pressure Drop is the first song Toots sings, the band’s inability to nail the rhythm has the audience raising its collective eyebrow. No member of the band will end up being introduced to the audience and the show might have been better off if they weren’t there at all.

A night of Toots singing Funky Kingston, Sweet and Dandy, Louie Louie and Monkey Man should be a delight, but everything meanders. The only saving grace is Toots’ rambunctious stage presence and booming voice, especially on the songs whose gospel influences are more apparent. But even these vocal moments of joy are hamstrung by microphones dropping in and out, all of which left Toots bemoaning to his sound crew at one point, “I have a big voice — why you try and make it small?”

The punchy 54-46 Was My Number is the last song, the kind of upbeat classic that is capable of turning the memory of an ordinary night of barely middling rocksteady and reggae into a happy one. Midway through a bizarre four-on-the-floor disco interlude, no one can say for sure whether the first or last song of the night is the most bemusing.

The Bamboos are Melbourne’s own funk institution, and it’s a testament to the band that in a music scene more attuned to the rumble of power chords, the humble, scratchy slinkiness of a funky guitar’s ninth-chord rhythms can still garner an audience.

Tonight The Bamboos are celebrating ten years of funky good times by packing out the Prince Bandroom. As tradition demands, the show begins instrumentally. Resplendent in dapper suits, The Bamboos evoke the laid-back party groove of a New Orleans night spot and sound as if The Meters had dropped by Melbourne town.

The instrumental Bamboos are a subdued lot who prefer to lock into the groove meditatively, without commotion. Although Lance Ferguson is the band’s leader on guitar, he seems almost awkward being the foremost member of the band. So when Kylie Auldist, the band’s singer, enters the stage, eyes naturally shift to her effervescent exuberance.

It’s not, however, Auldist’s finest night. She’s a little too exuberant, perhaps even drunk, and at times she garbles words and misses notes. When she alludes to some tensions within the band after having mocked The Bamboos’ early days without her, Auldist rivals Parliament’s Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk in her ability to sap away the sweetness of the groove.

A second instrumental section brings out the band’s original drummer, Scott Lambie. He emerges on stage and installs his own snare drum as part of the kit. It’s an audacious statement, supremely self-confident, the kind of thing only seasoned professionals do who consider their instruments extensions of their own selves. And when Lambie begins with an elaborate drum pattern on snare and hi-hat that barely seems possible, we each bear witness to the funk in its purest form. The song is a vehicle for those drums, those exquisitely funky drums, and when the break comes, Lambie deftly, tastefully, expertly varies the original pattern before the crowd gives the funky drummer some.

Danny Farrugia, the band’s current drummer, is no shirk, though. His breaks are manic scattershots of Keith Moon mayhem, and in combination with the tasty James Jamerson stylings of bass player Yuri Pavlinov, The Bamboos rhythm section remains a treat.

The Bamboos are, however, caught in a curious catch-22. When playing instrumentally, their funk is a delight, but the lack of any stage presence harms how the performance is received. Yet when it’s time for the bubbly Auldist to sing and there is a focal point, the funk gets scaled back for the vocals, which unfortunately don’t make up for the loss of groove. An historic night, an entertaining night, but ultimately not the night of nights.

The classic Public Enemy T-shirts are on sale at the front of the room and Chuck D enters from stage right with a boombox across his shoulder. Twenty years ago Public Enemy delivered their second groundbreaking work of sonic rage and righteousness, Fear of a Black Planet, and at the Corner tonight, Public Enemy are celebrating that achievement by turning Flavor Flav’s clock back and playing a show devoted to that era and that album.

The double punch of Contract on a World Love Jam and Brothers Gonna Work It Out kick off proceedings, just as they did on vinyl all that time ago. Chuck D and Flavor Flav are still their sprightly selves and two of the original S1Ws are patrolling the stage in military lockstep. But although the most visible elements of Public Enemy are still in full effect in 2010, aurally there’s something very wrong.

The screaming Prince sample on Brothers Gonna Work It Out is unheard. Chuck D’s deep, resonant voice is muffled. The live guitar, bass and drums — what seems like a great idea — sound like they’re competing rather than melding with the production. The mix is a wash of indistinctness, the muck clearing only when the sound is pared back considerably. For a band whose success was founded on its huge wall of interlocking sampled sound, the murky mush is criminal.

Be that as it may, Public Enemy have a back catalogue that kills. She Watch Channel Zero and Bring the Noise are but two classics they mine from It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the latter song ending with an a capella reprise of the exquisite rhymes of its first verse that has the exultant crowd roaring happily that “once again back is the incredible” Public Enemy. Flavor Flav’s hijinx are as effervescent as they’ve ever been, Cold Lampin’ With Flavor and 911 is a Joke highlights of the night. Nevertheless, while Flav’s ebullience are pitch perfect for those signature tunes of his, Chuck D’s equally high spirited if not quite as humorous approach to the show renders anaemic much of Public Enemy’s more aggressive material. Public Enemy are too friendly, too jovial, too comfortable. Chuck D once was hip hop’s finest fire-and-brimstone preacher, but the rage has dissipated, and with it too has much of Public Enemy’s righteous, furious edge.

Ronnie Wood, the perpetual sideman, has nonetheless already released six solo records to go along with his latest, I Feel Like Playing, which yet again demonstrates what seems so unlikely: Ronnie can actually sing. Sure, there aren’t any lilting melodies to trip him up, but Wood’s gnarled, rich voice feels like aged scotch whiskey, the warm, woody spirit this album of bluesy rock and roll evokes from beginning to end.

Wood wrote ten of the eleven songs on I Feel Like Playing, and no doubt his writing method differs little to how teenagers in garage bands the world over have always written songs: stick down a riff, get the rest of the band to follow and mash together some words. There’s a big difference in Wood’s case, however: he’s been churning out riffs since time immemorial, and the hamfisted lyrics on songs such as Lucky Man, Fancy Pants and 100% go by unnoticed next to the sound of rock and roll so professionally distilled.

Although I Feel Like Playing features a whole bunch of musicians who, ironically, end up as Wood’s sidemen, you’d never know that the likes of Flea, Eddie Vedder, Billy Gibbons, Kris Kristofferson and Bobby Womack are playing. Except for a bunch of stylish Slash solos on about half the tracks and the luscious Bernard Fowler vocals on the duets I Gotta See and the stand-out Forever, this is a Wood record through and through — and all the better for it.

I Feel Like Playing is a million miles from the edgy new thing; it’s stodgy, square and solid, the kind of thing you can rely on. That’s almost an insult in the world of rock and roll, but not everything needs to be revolutionary, and not everything is nearly as good as this solid Ronnie Wood release.

A brilliant Coltrane record is still a brilliant Coltrane record. The music hasn’t changed; what the kids are to listening to has. Jazz used to be the “noise” kids listened to that their parents couldn’t understand. Now jazz is the “noise” that parents listen to that their kids can’t understand.

It’s unlikely then that Misinterprotato, a Brisbane piano, bass and drums trio, are ever going to lock in a place on Triple J’s Hottest 100. Despite a number of their songs featuring nods to modern-day indie rock, The Gentle War is still a jazz album – and refreshingly so. It’s energetic, full of movement and rhythmically inventive, a far cry from the staid version of jazz that befouls the genre’s reputation. What impresses most is the album’s constant play — no drum beat settles without textural fills, no bass pattern remains on repeat, the piano doesn’t just vamp over a chord. Even on the slower numbers, the instruments feed off each other, guide each other.

Wrestle is perhaps the standout, a song that highlights the band’s strengths: a masterly control of dynamics, piano that is both melodically and rhythmically appealing, and Pat Marchisella’s sublime bass, which, just like Mingus’s, is sometimes aggressive, always majestic.

Generally speaking, the album is best when the band works more as an ensemble. Sync and especially Tailgater demonstrate how well Misinterprotato can create so much of interest to the ear, the instruments interweaving rambunctiously across ebbing and flowing passages. Time buttresses the same point from the opposite direction: it’s mostly a solo piano piece that fails to fire without the band’s inventive interplay.

The Gentle War is a fantastic record — a happy change from what the litany of guitar, bass and drum rock trios are offering around the traps, and far more interesting to boot.

Three major chords on a Gibson gold top still haven’t gotten old. Amped up to eleven, the pummeling sound of rollicking guitars remains a primal joy, the riff still the lynchpin of bonerattling rock-and-roll abandon.

No doubt Endless Boogie, who named themselves after a John Lee Hooker record, frequently intoxicate themselves on rock’s sonic ambrosia. Formed in New York, the foursome have kept stars well away from their eyes and devoted themselves purely to swampy-blues riff construction, completely unconcerned with whatever might be hip and only bothering to grace a stage when invited.

Such devotion, which would ordinarily hold a band in good stead, has  nonetheless come at the expense of considering the listening public and writing anything resembling a song. Full House Head is seventy-seven minutes of aimless riffage and teenage-boy-in-a-bedroom noodling broken up into eight “songs”, the music’s lacklustre repetitiveness inducing boredom rather than hypnotising. Every now and again, the monotony is interrupted by Paul Major’s inconsequential rasping; every now and again, the monotony doesn’t sound so bad in comparison. Hardly anything has changed since their first album of two years ago, and one would think that a band so lacking in ambition will never change their ways.

All in all, Endless Boogie are like the bird that wishes the air away thinking it a hindrance to flying faster and higher, only to discover, tragically, that without air there is no flight. Divorced of any kind of structure, divorced of any kind of build up or tension, Full House Head relentlessly meanders, an album lost on a limitless plain, no heights, no troughs — no nothing really.

Mike Patton’s muse leads him down musical byways long left fallen by the wayside. He’s an aural adventurer, as intrepid as Magellan, and on this occasion fateful crosswinds have blown him towards Italy.

Bologna was Patton’s home whilst married to his Italian bride, and, amongst other things, his time there had him speaking Italian fluently and falling in love with what amounts to Italy’s golden oldies from the 50s and 60s. Mondo Cane, a mildly profane Italian saying that means more or less “the world’s gone to the dogs”, is Patton’s paean to these songs. He gathers together a 40-piece orchestra to faultlessly recreate their lush musical backdrops and a 15-strong band to add a more modern and Pattonesque touch to proceedings. And although the band sometimes overdoes the modern and zany, the orchestra is a stunning thrill ride, the violins swelling the melodies of Ore D’Amore and Senza Fine to dizzy heights, and songs such as 20 Km Al Giorno and Deep Down positively swing.

These songs, however, show up Patton’s one overriding weakness: while he’s capable of singing pretty much anything, Patton is an arch-ironist, more at home singing pastiches and experimenting sonically than with any kind of sincere conveying of emotion. In this, he shares company with the likes of Frank Zappa and Ween, encyclopaedic experimenters who never seem to be taking anything at all seriously despite how much they love music. The songs on Mondo Cane, though, are overdramatic and emotional — and they’re meant to be sung that way. L’Uomo Che Non Sapeva Amare translates to “The Man Who Didn’t Know How to Love”, and the way Patton sings, you begin to wonder if it mightn’t be autobiographical.

Nevertheless, the arrangements and orchestrations are so delightful, the melodies so memorable, that Mondo Cane is a triumph. Like Loveage and Peeping Tom, the product of this Mondo Cane project is an album that people who aren’t Patton fanboys can still love, even if the radio dial on these antipodean shores has never before heard the likes of it.