Hal Willner's compilation concert of early Disney songs for Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown festival was a brave venture, even without artists such as Grace Jones and Pete Doherty promising a certain car-crash appeal. It could have been terrible - and indeed, some of it was. Yet after a late start and technical glitches, the rest was a triumph - an exhilarating mix of rock, jazz, and showbiz schmaltz, laced with several flavours of avant garde.
The fun came from guessing how each tune would be transformed. Where Kate St John's arrangement of Little April Showers (from Bambi) for Skye Edwards and Ed Harcourt was ingeniously respectful, Snow White's Heigh Ho, as performed by David Thomas and Nick Cave (rock's least likely dwarves), stomped all over the original, while Shane MacGowan managed to get lost in Song of the South's Zip-a-Dee Doo Dah.
The best performances extracted new meaning from the originals: Gavin Friday camped up Lady and the Tramp's Siamese Cat Song over an oblique arrangement by Jun Miyake, while Home Sweet Home had Cave, MacGowan, Doherty and Cocker all howling like dogs, a cheerfully shambolic Rat Pack for our time.
Doherty's Chim Chim Cheree from Mary Poppins charmed everyone - he was more in tune than Dick Van Dyke. Richard Strange was on great form for Headless Horseman (pulling out a Damien Hirst-style jewelled skull in a coup de theatre), and Grace Jones ended the first set with an outrageously camp version of The Jungle Book's Trust in Me, garbed in billowing cape and purple headdress. In terms of glamour, only Roisin Murphy's frills and feathers for He's a Tramp came close.
In all its diversity, perversity and originality, Forest of No Return was full of the original spirit of Meltdown.