Grandmaster Flash

“I don’t care who does it later, who does it better, who does it what-ever,” Grandmaster Flash once memorably announced. “Because first, is forever.” And he was, too: first to bring the sleek, uninterrupted, never-drop-the-beat mixing style of disco DJs to the free outdoor block parties of the inner cities; first to use the wicci-wicci-wack punctuation of record scratching as a mixable sound in itself; first to customise a turntable for freestyling purposes; first to make DJing a creative form, making new tunes out of preexisting records, and thus the inventor, you could argue, of sample-based music. So first-is-forever is record-box-heavy; it’s a lot to carry around with you for 25 years.

But tonight, if he’s sweating, we’re not seeing it: he’s too busy masterminding the party of the year. Along with the ten crates of vinyl that sit tantalisingly on card tables behind him, and the two assistants who wordlessly hand him records like surgical nurses, Flash (old-skool and bling-free tonight in t-shirt, white joggers and basketball shoes, grinning ear to ear) has brought along a laid-back anti-cool with him that’s all too rare these days. “I WANNA SEE THOSE ASSES MOVIN,” he periodically yells, charmingly. And needlessly: everybody is already completely losing it.

His turntablism it must be said, is not flawless - a crucial problem when we’re grooving this hard, akin to a small bump feeling like turbulence when you’re going 500 miles per hour – but when he’s good he’s world-class. Most modern DJs would consider this kind of unashamed rampage through the canon of pop-music behemoths too obvious – but as we can see tonight, the judicious use of the ‘obvious’ is genius. And anyway, he deconstructs them, customises them, ups their grooviness ante: dropping loads of extra breaks, dragging out the verses, making us wait and wait for the choruses – and when they come, it’s explosive: you fully expect confetti to drop from the ceiling.

Brilliant.