Just for their gravity-defying headgear, implacably communal, anti-corporate lifestyle, and the claimed capacity for interplanetary travel of its late founder, the Sun Ra Archestra would have been a jazz legend even if it had hardly played a note. Add a bizarrely cross-fertilised repertoire, from 30s big band swing to free improvisation, and you have a unique jazz phenomenon. When the Arkestra flew in to the the Jazz Cafe from whatever galaxy it inhabits, it exhibited its familiar tendency to spend a good while searching for the plot, and then build an increasingly compelling mixture of drama and vaudeville out of it.

Arkestra's detractors often complain that the band can't stay in tune. That point of view wouldn't have been disproved by some of the engagingly sagging, approximately harmonised slow material early in the show, but it only served to confirm the group's street-band strengths.

Lurching episodes of 30s big band swing (Sun Ra was associated with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra early on), full of squashy, bucolic saxophone voicings, oompah rhythms and ferocious percussion, were followed by Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady, boldly delivered as a bowed double base solo, accelerated into jaunty swing for its finale, with Stormy Weather finding its way into the alto sax break. A whooping trombone intro gave way to a tumult of snorting free improvisation, turning abruptly into the kind of surreally cheesy Arkestra vocal performance in which they all sound like Georgie Fame with a sock in his mouth.

Space is the Place, the band's theme song, brought the house down. Fastidious listeners would probably have been happy to discover that by this time they were even more or less in tune.