<strong>Bob</strong> <strong>Cobbing</strong> at <strong>The</strong> Voice Box <strong>Cobbing</strong> opened with good humour... leaning <strong>on</strong> the lectern, growling sequences of syn<strong>on</strong>yms that would have warmed [Stefan] <strong>The</strong>mers<strong>on</strong>’s heart in his semantic poetry mode... Another time he was off round the room. I’m sure it’s a nice dais and I’m sure it cost a lot of m<strong>on</strong>ey, but it throws sound back up and into the microph<strong>on</strong>e. <strong>Cobbing</strong> approaching the dais, looks frail; at the lectern, he’s in c<strong>on</strong>trol; later he turns the frailty <strong>on</strong> and off. He went off round the room, performing, getting to the end of his text, from memory, at the riverside/west end corner of the room, whereup<strong>on</strong> he crept up <strong>on</strong> the picture <strong>on</strong> the wall and began to perform it—wide gestures tracing out its markings—a rather fine impromptu sound compositi<strong>on</strong>. As musicians often return to the same piece from different angles, Ellingt<strong>on</strong> say, <strong>Cobbing</strong> here did a most extraordinary soma haoma. I used really not to like it, though I remember backing up Clive Fencott 20 years ago when he said <strong>Cobbing</strong> could have a No 1 with it. “Tha’’s righ’”, I said and had another drink. But maybe he could have. I didn’t like it because at that stage I had a very odd feeling that <strong>Cobbing</strong> might just offer to give every<strong>on</strong>e Holy Communi<strong>on</strong> in the middle, deep s<strong>on</strong>orous chanting, repetiti<strong>on</strong>, and the whole thing being Hymn to the Sacred Mushroom and at <strong>on</strong>e time subtitled ‘which promotes health and well-being’, or something like that. Since then, it has returned, by being performed without the Hammer film DIY religi<strong>on</strong> trappings (What would Top of the Pops have d<strong>on</strong>e with it?), to being <strong>on</strong>e of his many permutati<strong>on</strong>al poems. Today’s was an ast<strong>on</strong>ishing performance: breathy, breathy as if he were gasping for breath, though he wasn’t, sometimes quite loud, loud enough to be heard, loud enough to make <strong>on</strong>e turn round if it had been a social gathering, sometimes fading out like some<strong>on</strong>e falling asleep or fading away, and both within the same phrases; and there was also a quality of forgetfulness, like some<strong>on</strong>e saying their prayers by rote; yet all the time <strong>on</strong>e could hear the permutati<strong>on</strong>al patterns rolling through like an undercurrent, an under rhythm he seemed to ignore, determining the basis of his utterance, the written text he was recalling. A freeze frame of the encounter at the picture. <strong>Cobbing</strong>, lurching his right arm rightwards al<strong>on</strong>g a bold line uttering it loudly; the Voice Box warder, uniformed, staring straight ahead, no emoti<strong>on</strong>; and then, unfreeze, <strong>Cobbing</strong> shuffling past her, daiswards, Pris<strong>on</strong>er Group H, without her acknowledging anything. People looking in at the room through the closed door. Art in progress. Do not disturb. Sort of sub-vocal recitative from <strong>Cobbing</strong> till he gets to the dais and then he leans forward, and then arm reach lengthening over his whisky and then over his beer, towards his drum, lengthening, cantilevering himself, slower and slower and nearer, but it’s going to be a close run thing—will he make it? Will he give up? Will he give up and go round? Will he fall? And if he falls is it appropriate to help a pers<strong>on</strong> in performance—stand back please; is there a theoretician here,
a nice little Beckett moment as a rather small thing—man wants drum—became enlarged by progressive failure to succeed into a major event, (I am quite sure he knew exactly what he was about) and then he got it, gripped it, raised it and with <strong>on</strong>e dead beat began. Soma haoma. Drumming irregularly where <strong>on</strong>ce he would have drummed all the time. Half beating the drum. Using it mostly to mark out the variati<strong>on</strong>s from the basic rhythm... Arriving back at his seat, he c<strong>on</strong>tinued sounding until he sat down, making quite a groan as he did so—which prompted solicitous c<strong>on</strong>cern from the Master of Cerem<strong>on</strong>ies. Are you exhausted? He shook his head. No, not at all.
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