Hyde Park Calling, Hyde Park, London <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Now firmly established as the stay-in-the-capital alternative to Glastonbury, Hyde Park Calling didn't escape the vagaries of the British weather over the weekend. On Saturday, a torrential downpour brought out a steely determination in Crowded House frontman Neil Finn, who bravely battled the elements on the main stage. Reunited after 11 years, his group had already played "Weather With You", their 1992 signature song, during a set heavy on crowd-pleasing hits, but also performed "Don't Stop Now", the excellent single from their imminent album Time on Earth.

On the second stage, the British band Captain premiered three new songs and demonstrated that This is Hazelville, their Trevor Horn-produced debut, was no fluke. Coincidentally, The Feeling, despite being the most playlisted act on British radio over the last year, only really got the crowd going with a cover of "Video Killed the Radio Star" by Horn's old group The Buggles. A misnomer of a group, The Feeling are the dead end of the Guilty Pleasures phenomenon.

Peter Gabriel, touring Europe without a new album to promote, had asked fans on his website to choose songs he hadn't recently performed. This resulted in a set frontloaded with brooding, percussive tracks such as "Intruder", "On the Air" and "DIY", although it was the Eighties and early-Nineties biggies, "Steam", "Sledgehammer" and "In Your Eyes" that got the biggest cheers.

Sunday turned out to be a much rockier proposition: guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani and Aussie band Jet, who still seem intent on aping Oasis's worst Beatles-pastiche tendencies when not recycling the cowbell-driven riffs of Free and Bad Company.

At 6ft 2in, with his pencil-thin moustache and goatee, pale blue eyes and the sleek air of a man who owns an up-and-coming restaurant in Paris, Chris Cornell looked every inch the rock star, even as it bucketed down. The singer started with "Spoonman", one of the defining songs of Soundgarden, the Seattle band he used to lead. But Cornell peaked early when he brought on composer David Arnold for "You Know My Name", the Casino Royale theme they wrote together.

Cornell has mellowed since the early days of grunge and proudly carried his two kids centre stage. He made the most of the lyrics of "Black Hole Sun" ("Wash away the rain"), turned the microphone stand into a cross for "Jesus Christ Pose" and even ventured onto the wet walkway, all the better to empathise with the crowd.

Mind you, when it comes to getting long-suffering - and rather drenched - fans on side, Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler is hard to beat. Within 10 minutes he'd thrown his white Stetson, white jacket and harmonica into the mob. Wielding his scarf-covered microphone stand, the sinewy, snake-like singer rallied the curious and the committed and led them into the mighty "Love in an Elevator", "Cryin'" and "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", the power ballad written for the 1998 film Armageddon.

Aerosmith have been US rock aristocracy for more than 30 years, but only broke into the British mainstream in the mid-Eighties when they updated their own "Walk This Way" with rappers Run DMC - performed here as the encore in reunion with Run DMC themselves. Lead guitarist Joe Perry played some blistering slide guitar during a version of Them's "Baby Please Don't Go", reminding the younger fans that, despite being founded in Boston in 1972, Aerosmith's music is deeply rooted in the style of British groups like The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds.

However, it was the likes of "Livin' On The Edge", and the hypnotic Seventies classics "Dream On" and "Sweet Emotion" that cut through the mud and cold. In 1999, Aerosmith rather short-changed their fans with an arena production at Wembley. This grandstanding concert in adverse conditions made up for that showing, and the eight-year wait since. Given the group's ties with event sponsors Hard Rock Café - and the amount of memorabilia they have given the chain's Boston branch - this was the least you could expect.