Kent Records is celebrating a quarter-century of its famous compilations with the first old-fashioned soul revue in the capital for 20 years.

Winfield Parker kicks things off. Wearing a sparkly, cherry-red suit, he looks ready to party, but his first ever UK show is murdered by a house band that has as much soul as a cruise-ship combo. Only the stirring SOS and sweet 70s sound of I Wanna Be With You survive.

The "first lady of Kent" turned evangelist minister Mary Love is the band's next victim, her music never as passionate as her sermonising. "I didn't come to convert, but to share the goodness of Jesus Christ," she says. But it is the stinging Northern soul of Come Out of the Sandbox that reminds everyone else why they're here. Girl group The Flirtations are much more fun, throwing themselves into Nothing But a Heartache and Marvin Gaye's Little Darling (I Need You), shimmying in black-fringed dresses and rolling back the years in sassy, synchronised style.

Crooner Tommy Hunt revels in his advancing years. "Stop worrying about how old you are, it's just a number," the 78-year-old advises, proving his wisdom by enthusiastically wiggling to the soft disco of Loving on the Losing Side. And the emotion he pours into I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself reveals what made Dusty Springfield fall in love with the song back in 1962.

Northern Soul heroine Maxine Brown is a showstopper in a long, canary- yellow, strapless dress. Her big, ageless voice glides through the soulful pop of It's All in My Mind and the stomping dance of Little Girl Lost. But Brown is frustrated by the rudimentary backing, which erases all the subtlety of her biggest hit, Oh No Not My Baby. Joining Hunt for the endearingly ramshackle duet It Takes Two, they and Kent Records deserved better.