WOMAD

We rolled into WOMAD at Reading wondering how on earth a festival that carries such a great reputation for atmosphere could possibly work set as it is in a field accessed from an edge of town retail park and municipal swimming pool complex. We parked up inside the ring of steel block and mesh fencing and headed for the huge wooden fence that formed the event horizon of the WOMAD singularity. Step over the boundary and you enter a world of sound and colour that is so powerful that the retail park soon gets left behind as your brain struggles to deal with all this new data. With so much to see and only the one day (for us) to do it, we quickly found a programme of events and set about trying to plan our campaign.

Priority was given to Robert Plant's main stage gig in the evening, and we noted that Kiki Dee was due to give an acoustic concert around dinner time.

There's been quite some time between WOMAD and my writing this, so what follows has been rather well distilled, but I can still recall quite vividly the sea of colour, people, tastes, smells and sounds that we tried to take in all at once. WOMAD is a large village of stalls, interspersed with several stages and all centered on one main green by the main stage, with a mass of silk flags flying from the clusters of flagpoles, offering not only a visual impact, but a good deal of pleasant shade too. The first thing we saw was a large traditional and steam powered fairground, but we passed this by as a distraction and set about orientating ourselves within the site. It felt like it went on forever, and my belly was wondering how on earth I was going to find the time to sample all these many and various food stalls, even allowing for just the vegetarian options it was clear that some hard choices would have to be made! The good news was that Floppy was not only going to enjoy the event, but the event took on Floppy as its own and welcomed him with open arms - he hasn't been the same since!

We'd had an early start and while Gill meandered around the various boutiques, I collapsed in a heap under a small clump of flagpoles and enjoyed some coffee. It was about now that I was passed by a large, er, lump of poo on legs, complete with flies etc. and several ballet dancers in tutu's and at least one fairy - welcome indeed to WOMAD!

One of the hard things to do at WOMAD is to get from A to B without being distracted by C,D or even E - there is so much going on and so, after a while of wondering, we both felt like we needed a cuppa and a sit down and headed for the Tiny Tea Tent, only to get sucked into the gig on the main stage - "Les Yeux Noir" - a dynamic French band with 2 young men playing fiddle, a bassist, a guitarist, a drummer and old uncle Albert on hammered dulcimer looking for all the world like he'd just got up from his armchair to play along. What a show! The crowd grew ever larger as the band turned up the ante, getting more and more frenetic as they built towards the grand finale - both fiddle players dueling, joking, and ultimately both playing the one fiddle at the same time - both bows and both fingers - absolutely incredible. We roared and clapped and, finally, made it to the Tiny Tea Tent - a haven of real tea and real cake and .... seats.

While we were busy supping and meeting some lovely people - hello Yogi if you ever read this - we overheard a steel band who went down well and went on to encounter the WOMAD toilets with a rather worrying lack of water for so early in a 3 day festival. Moving swiftly on - the best course of action really - we next encounter Leon's - a legend in his own lunchtent, Leon has been providing high quality veggie food to the masses for many many years, so we are delighted to find him and even more pleased that he can provide Gill with a large and varied plateful of food that is all safe to eat. Even better news is that leon will, as usual, be at Cropredy. We enjoy this meal sat at the back of the large crowd enjoying Kiki Dee who delivered a good acoustic set, backed by Carmelo Luggeri on guitar. By the time we had eaten, the set was drawing to a close and we snuck in to the front and joined in the cheers for the last couple of songs by this fine performer.

More stalls followed, Floppy made some new friends, bought a bandana and was given a new pair of trousers, though he later said he doesn't really like them, but didn't want to upset one of his new friends by refusing them! Then we set off to get a good spot at the front ready for Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation.
The best we could get was just in front of the speaker stack to the right of the stage, but it was close enough and so we waited for the big moment. Neither of us have ever seen Robert Plant live before and we had great expectations, and when the band came on to huge applause we were ready to enjoy a great set.

We were sadly disappointed, they started with the Led Zep classic – “No Quarter” - which is a slow mover anyway and then got into the new material from "The Mighty Re-arranger" CD and whilst it looked like the band were playing their hearts out, the sound coming over the speakers wasn't doing it for us. We waited a while but it got no better, so we moved back towards the mixing desk to see if it was a balance problem, but to no avail. The noise was coming out ok, but it just had no life to it, the was certainly no bass feeling, so maybe the volume was being kept low for political reasons, who knows? Maybe there was a little too much Led Zeppelin in the set too. The end result was that the set was not the crackerjack we had hoped for and it fell a little flat for us, and a few others we have since encountered. Now I can't say that they played badly, because it seemed to be all there, I'm as sure as I can be that the sound let the band down. We are going to Wolverhampton in December to give him a second chance!

Afterwards we wandered into the big blue tent and came across Mahmoud Ahmed in full flood and he played a great soulful set with his band which finished off the evening's musical entertainment very nicely indeed.

More tea and cakes followed as the Tiny Tea Tent crew stuck it out and kept on serving tea, loud music, dancing and fun until the dance-police arrived and made them switch the music off, even at WOMAD the fun has to end sometime it seems.

It had been a really good day and we reckon we made a good job of trying to cram as much as we could into it - next year we'll be there for the whole thing.

Postscript: We were later delighted to learn that Gill had been awarded a prize for her "notable entry" in the BBC Radio 3 Colour Quest Competition -look for the tea pot - nice one Gilly!