WOMAD - Robert Plant and Bill Cobham

This year me and my better half had backstage tickets for the WOMAD festival in Reading, and an excellent weekend it was too. Most of the bill consisted of world music, and the standard was remarkably high, but there were a couple of acts on the bill of interest to this forum.

Robert Plant topped the bill on Friday night, and having looked at 3Fates' review of his recent US shows I think I saw pretty much the same set - about 50% old Zeppelin songs and 50% off his new album Mighty Rearranger. His voice was absolutely fine, and he still looks like a Greek god (more Zeus than Apollo these days) and still sings like a viking warrior charging towards Valhalla. His new band consists of younger musicians from a variety of backgrounds, including Portishead and Reprazent, but they obviously enjoyed tearing into the old Zep classics. His new material is heavily influenced by North African music (if you're interested, pick up the excellent Festival in the Desert CD and proceed from there) and this also shows up in his reinterpretation of the old stuff. Gallows Pole and When the Levee Breaks worked best in this context, and he got a good call and response going during Black Dog. The second encore was Whole Lotta Love. Not having expected an encore (set timings are mostly pretty rigid at WOMAD) I'd gone off to get myself a hot drink, and found myself headbanging with a cup of cocoa in my hand. According to the present Mrs Syzygy, this officially makes me a sad old git. Talking to other people of about my age over the wekend, the general consensus seemed to be that he was very good, but a bit more new material and a bit less of the old Zep classics would have been preferable. The youngsters, on the other hand, were mostly delighted to have seen so many of the Zep songs performed so well.

Bill Cobham's Culture Mix were on early on Saturday evening. I got into the tent early to get a good spec, and got to see him setting up his kit. His current band consists of guitar, bass and keyboards (all from Northern Europe) and a London based Trinidadian on steel drum and assorted other percussion. The set opened with a number that sounded for all the world like Mahavishnu Orchestra with steel drum replacing the violin - breathtaking stuff. The next two pieces were in a similar mould, and the soloing got a bit relentless. Bill Cobham getting medieval on his tom toms was great the first time, but the third time in 30 minutes was pushing it somewhat. Then he came out from behind his kit, introduced his band and they launched into a reggae inflected number by percussionist Junior Gill which turned things up a notch or two, and the remainder of the set featured numbers written by different band members. These explored more unusul musical territory while still dispalying their remarkable musicianship. As with Robert Plant, there was the feeling that the set was partly a generic crowd pleaser, where something more adventurous would have gone better. This is a minor gripe, however, and at the end of the 60 minutes I was left wanting more (as were most of the crowd in the Siam tent).

Other acts which are worth checking out include the Adel Salmeh trio, a Middle Eastern combo on oud, percussion and voice playing timeless Arabic rhythms and melodies. Abdullah Chhadeh and Nara (Syrian musician with a multinational band) does something similar but fuses the music with jazz and folk. The Oki Dub Ainu band fuses traditional Ainu (North Japan) with dub reggae rhythms and works surprisingly well - at times I was reminded of 80s King Crimson (in an odd kind of way). A couple of classical Chinese musicians, Zheng Chengwai and Cheng Yu, closed proceedings on saturday night with some meditative, Taoist influenced sounds which competed with the rather louder noise of Youssou N'Dour on the main stage (a world class talent with rather too much second rate material IMO).

All in all, a good time was had, the weather wasn't too bad, the catering surprisingly good and backstage tickets meant access to reasonably civilised toilets. Basically, WOMAD is Glastonbury for grown ups and the best thing is usually something you've never heard of.