Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

I saw them last night in Cardiff.



It was a pretty amazing gig - fantastic musicians, including T-Bone Burnett (and he is huge, I mean really tall. He looked like a cross between Doc Holliday and nowadays Pete Townshend).

The set list was good, a mixture of things from the Raising Sand album, plus stuff from their back catalogues and other odds and ends. Best of all for me were the Led Zep songs they covered - an amazing slow, echoey, banjo driven Black Dog, Hey, Hey, What Can I Do (which a lot of people possibly didn't even know was a Zep song anyway), Black Country Woman and a simply fabulous Battle Of Evermore, which for me was the absolute high spot of the night (they had previously done part of Matty Groves in a medley which was also wonderful to hear).

Ol' Percy was in fine voice and looking good too, he would have made a fantastic King Theoden in LOTR if Bernard Hill had turned it down. Even though he must be 60 now, he still has IT! For him, even now, I'd turn straight (well temporarily, OK)

Alison Krauss was wonderful, she is so tiny. It seems almost impossible that she has such a huge powerful voice and she just looked great too. Not in the least bit "country", more like an ethereal Gothic dark fairy in a black dress and long black boots. She is lovely looking, absolutely beautiful.

For the hardware geeks (including me), lots of wonderful guitars; some big hollow body electrics, Danelectros, electric mandolins and upright bass throughout.

The other musicians were guitarist and pedal steel player Buddy Miller, bassist Dennis Crouch, drummer Jay Bellerose and multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan. All so fantastic.