Having taken to heart the advice about quitting while you're ahead, the Fugees guaranteed that their reunion, eight years later, would be a major hip-hop event. Their 18m-selling swansong, The Score, is a landmark of conscious rap-soul unsurpassed by erratic solo careers. If Lauryn Hill had followed up her Grammy-blitzing debut, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, who knows - but then we wouldn't have been sitting at the gig wondering how much the formerly feuding trio were being paid for it.

Enough, obviously, to have brought over their own maxiwatt PA system, which drained the national grid of a few villages' worth of power. It was unnecessary for a group whose members could have made themselves heard without any amplification at all. Hill and MCs Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel were never the most coherent live unit - too many voices attacking songs from opposing directions - but even if they'd tightened up their show, the shocking volume would have done for it.

But they hadn't, which raised the question of why they've reformed (and begun a new album) at all. If they had thought it through, they would have known that Eminem et al had raised the bar in terms of presentation, meaning that it's no longer sufficient to amble around and shout for a couple of hours. Even with songs as familiar as Fugee-La and Ready or Not, a band needs to sing for its supper. And if only Hill had sung (she was quite good at it on Killing Me Softly), rather than shown off her MCing skills in clashes with Wyclef and Pras that ripped the soulful heart out of every tune. The bickering of old may have been resolved, but the trio behaved like strangers who had been given half an hour to learn the songs.

Avuncular Wyclef made the most of his solo spot, rapping from the balcony and then dominating the rootsy new Fugees number, Take It Easy. The new material will be out next year, by which time, hopefully, they'll have re-thought the live show.