KEY POINTS:
Maybe it was a New Plymouth thing. I hope so, it's miles away. It came to me while I was trying to block out another attack of small guitars and piano accordions: What the hell is up with the kids?
Now I'm not having a crack at their
enthusiasm, they were slamming along to the Womadic sound of limp Euro trance like all the other folks. No, it's the headbands. Fluorescent headbands. Make that strips of fluorescent fabric tied around heads too young to know better to become headbands not even Mark bloody Knopfler would be caught twisting by the pool in.
And tie-dyed shirts in all manner of fluorescent nastiness, topped off with bleached mullets. Packs of them there were, teenaged to the maximum, charging about like one big, blonde laundry disaster. Maybe it was a New Plymouth thing. I hope so, it's miles away. But even if it's not, and even if no-one else is, I'm thinking of the kids when I say: Stop it. Stop it, now.
Those photos you'll now have plastered all over your bebo sites ain't going anywhere fast. If you want to hang with wannabe hippies, do what they do and grow crusty whiteman dreads or wear a skirt over your trousers.
Otherwise New Plymouth seemed a right nice place, what with Mt Doom looming and that long Len Lye wavy-davey thing on the waterfront. Very cool, even if it's also a long way to go to be pestered by small guitars and piano accordions - as Gary Larson showed us, piano accordions are the harps of hell.
No matter, Sharon Jones was on hand to save us from all things too bright and too small, even if she exhibited something of a funkified Napoleon complex. Don't mess with pint-sized soulstresses. They bite, as the onstage soundmen discovered. And her Dapkings were fine indeed even if the ever-present fluoro moshpit played merry havoc with my brain's contrast control.
Still, the memory of the band in full flight, horns a-honking, Jones a-hollahing, and the bass player's mo exuding effortless cool as as he casually shifted from one foot to the other will linger way longer than the hangover. My ears are still smiling. Speaking of which, didn't Kora win a gold star for having the best time? In between all the muscular posturing, power chording and general Faith No Moreish funkery they were grinning for Africa - a great time was had watching a band putting some real show into their biz.
Elsewhere, we had Mavis Staples doing her damnedest to throw off the years, Farafina left me struggling to remember a now ancient animal show that had the coolest African percussion for its theme tune, and while I'm assured Beirut were the business, I can neither confirm nor deny due to being elsewhere at the time.
It was a damn shame about Cesaria Evora's no-show, she left a large barefooted hole in the programme - hopefully she's all better by now. Oh, and the lights strung out along the bush trails leading from town were plain gorgeous. But I was left a little puzzled by the lack of continuity between venue and town. Thousands of people wash into New Plymouth for Womad every year, but there didn't seem to be anything special going on after the bands went to bed.
We did manage to sight a pair of wedding parties featuring a burly bloke in a lovely off-the-shoulder number and a lady with an unusual and possibly illegal protuberance on her head, but not much sign of post-Womad merrymaking. Maybe everyone had hooked up for some secret late night tie-dying workshop?
