Quite by coincidence INXS mount their London summer spectacular on the sixth anniversary of the Live Aid concert at this same venue, In so far as the Australian six-piece was presiding over a rock package show - a long bill of acts with no stylistic links, appearing in brisk succession and playing their best songs - the parallel was apt. Jellyfish, Roachford, Jesus Jones, Deborah Harry and Hothouse Flowers bulked out the musical content and without doubt playing their part in attracting this 72,000 capacity crowd. But that is where any similarity with Live Aid ended. On a drab day, with the rain never far away, there was little sense of occasion, whatever the professional enthusiasts at Radio 1 may have suggested on their live broadcast of the event. Hothouse Flowers struggled to telegraph their dreamy emotions to the vast expanse of faces. Their delicate but persistent charm was rewarded with a warm response from an unstintingly generous audience. Yet for all its merits their performance, coming directly before INXS, only served to emphasise how all the cards at these events are in the hands of the headliners. The stage, formally an empty well, was now dressed with elaborate podiums and grand sweeping steps. The vast lighting rig surging into life; video screens at the side of the stage, dormant all day flickered on; and a walloping, trouser-flapping drum beat reverberated like call to arms. After six and a half hours of preamble, the gig had suddenly sprung to life. There is a certain sort of rock music which works best in stadiums, and INXS were the only group in this lineup who played it. The songs were built on big simple blocks of sound: terse chunks of rhythm guitar with gaps filled by telegraphic bursts of lyrics, working up to choruses that usually spelt: "Suicide Blonde", "Bitter Tears", and "Disappear" from the last year's X album, "What You Need", "Mystify", and others from 1987's Kick, still by far the group's most successful release. Despite such gestures it was a precisely calculated and efficiently executed display of grandstand rock from which any flicker of soul or spontaneity had been ruthlessly expunged. One or two ballad-type numbers - "By My Side", and "Never Tear Us Apart" - gave the crowd a chance to wave their arms in that curious approximation of a sea anemone drifting in a current, while a consistently magnicent lighting display kept the visual senses engaged. Loud, bright, insistent and charaterless, six years on from corporate rock's great outburst of charitable emotions, this was very much business as usual.