FIRST THIS, THEN FIRST THAT.

It's been an interesting month out here on the great American continent, with a series of first-time-ever catastrophes, dilemmas and anomalies which individually might seem little more than trifling annoyances, but when taken collectively make one wonder if perhaps we are going through a slightly skewed scene in an otherwise well-rehearsed play.

First, we had the frustration of being stranded by one of this nation's two largest air carriers in Denver airport on our way to Reno to perform that night in Caesar's Lake Tahoe - the first time there for us since the Seventies. It certainly is the first time in our career that we have had a date cancelled due to an airline foul-up, and a more helpless feeling I cannot imagine than having to allow a promoter to go dark that night, knowing that with just a tiny miracle, you just might be able to get there in time for a later show................NOT.

His decision was a wise one, but a great disappointment for us to know that fans turned up and had to be turned away due to lackaband.

Sorry, folks; you will be heartened to know, however, that the airline in question are so concerned about our loss, and so contrite, that they have promised to pass on my letter to their customer service department and that we might expect an answer from them within SIXTY DAYS!!!!

By then, I calculate conservatively, they will have made another eighteen to twenty million dollars out of other unwitting and trusting passengers.

Then the same airline, on our return trip to the East, managed to lose our wardrobe bag containing a fair collection of hard-sought European stage clothes, and other vital sundries necessary to well-dressed public appearance, and causing us to scour the malls of northern Connecticut & southern Massachusetts for enough to get us through one show up in Enfield, and another outside Pittsburgh the following day. Let's just say it was an interesting sight - AWB in replacement garb!! Fortunately, this one was redeemed, and the missing item turned up two days later, crumpled and mangled, but with nothing more than a severe ironing session (or steaming, if our long-time readers can recall Fred's purchase a couple of years back, and his short sharp education in the use thereof) needed.

And so, back to the safety of our bus, or so we thought.

The second date of the next leg took us to what we assumed would be a nice, pleasant day by the seaside, at Ocean beach, Maryland, at a hitherto-unknown (to us, anyway) gig called Brewmaster's Pub, on the strip there. As we approached Ocean Beach the titillating thought of a house-brewed cold pint on tap was dancing in my head, and this state of euphoria lasted until we pulled into the carpark of what seemed a very small - but potentially pleasant - gig.

That's when the balloon burst.

We walked in to find an infinitessimal stage in a corner with ONE guitar amp, and ONE bass cabinet sitting there, all lonely-like......no drums in sight, nor anything else that was promised us, as per every gig we do. To cut a long and harrowing story short, the neglectful Promoter had left procurement of same until the last minute, that had come and gone, and not until eight o'clock at night did some local heroism and much threatening provide a drum kit that would have been more at home in a scout hall than a professional gig.

After electing to try our best to do the gig so as not to disappoint fans who were making the trek to Ocean Beach (and mindful of the Tahoe fiasco a week earlier) we then learned that the promoter was trying to charge $25 entrance, after contracting with our agency to only take $15., and telling callers that it was $10. We protested that this was scandalous and wrong, but he refused to budge, and, as a result, many who came with families etc. were not able to afford this amount, and, after all, why should they when the circumstances that were provided to us prevented any chance of a grade A performance.

But it gets better.

Having played the show (full length plus encore, to a small but noisy crowd), Paul, our tour manager went to settle up with said promoter, who proceeded to storm out of his kitchen/office/den, swearing and knocking drinks out of Onnie & my hands, soaking us in beer and wasting some decent scotch (a capital crime where we come from), and then to have us bodily thrown out of his club! Un-frigging-believable, and yet another first in our recent history. I definitely got the impression that it's certainly not the first time he has done this, as his tantrum was carefully rehearsed and choreographed for maximum surprise element. So a word to the wise: Never, never be tempted to go there to see any band, no matter how attractive the prospect might seem. Let him rot in his little seashore swindlery, and may his toilet run forever.........it had no soap in it anyway. So much for employees washing THEIR hands!

Never mind, it has been smooth sailing since then, and we have had great concerts in Omaha, St.Louis, Boulder and Silverthorne, Colorado, and Portland, Oregon since then, and we are about to finish up our Vegas dates and head for California.

But I'd like to leave you with one more 'first' in our experience, that being the thrust of this diary entry in the first place. As we came down the escalator in an airport the other day, we were all astounded to be confronted by a security person wearing a blond wig, tons of makeup, but with a voice like a cross between Jack Hawkins and Barry White, if you get my drift. Fortunately, the surprise was not all ours, for Fred and Brian had their 'teeth' in......a truly frightening and hilarious sight in and of itself.

Then, as if that were not strange enough, one of the 'stewardesses' on our plane was also a 'man-man', as Brian calls the great undecided.

I can now finally reveal the airline;

it is "Man-Man United"

See you down the trail, podnahs.

A.G.

OKAY IN THE UK

Since the last bulletin to this organ of gossip, opinion, and insight into the ever-changing travel world of AWB, many miles and many hours of music have been tucked under our belts in, first, a 'northeast' tour of the United States, and now the second week of our UK run is almost over here in Ronnie Scott's, Birmingham.

The first stop over here, though, was in the glorious homeland of Scotland, where I reckon we had the best four concerts there since the old heyday, an opinion seemingly shared, for once, by press and media alike, not to mention the reaction of the fans and our good friends - who are at times also our fiercest critics, such is their determination to see us as good as they think we can be. It's always nice to be able to live up to those high expectations.........it makes all the hours of preparation, travel, meditation (yeah, right!) and concentration seem worthwhile when the music comes out of the machine exactly as you planned it.

I should begin by commending all the guys for their unbelievable stamina and determination to perform better than ever. They had the unenviable task of flying overnight to London, then, after a 3-hour wait in London airport, another flight to the very north of Scotland - Aberdeen - for the first gig that same night. Onnie and I, who had been in Scotland for a few days prior, to take care of newspaper interviews and radio stuff for our home press & broadcasters, had a leisurely drive through the bucolic Scottish countryside to meet this dishevelled bunch lurching through arrivals at Aberdeen airport, while we sat sipping cups of tea with our pinkies raised in traditional 'proper' manner - just to remind them that they were in Scotland now, and they play by our rules!

Anyway after a couple of hours of communal power nap, a fine gig to a packed house ensued, and of course it was the first time Aberdeen had seen this particular line-up in action. The last time we played there was, I am reliably informed, 1994. How time flies when you're doing the same. Edinburgh (The Capital) was next, for two absolutely hammering nights with our home crowd baying for blood, and we obliged them by opening every vein we had. I think I'm right in saying that it's the first time in our careers that we have actually been given a five-star review in Scotland. There was always something missing for every critic who ever covered us in the past...sometimes they just wanted to have a go at us for daring to leave Scotland.......but this time they had to say it was all as right as rain - and in Scotland they know a thing or two about rain, let me tell you.

A pleasant Sunday night in Ayr, on the south west coast saw the end of the Scottish gigs, the end of the brilliant heatwave that had miraculously engulfed Britain for the previous ten days, and the end of our collective battery power, as jetlag and anticlimax finally kicked in as soon as the show was over. Sitting at the hotel bar afterwards, it was all we could do to sink a pint, never mind hold a conversation. Someone would start by saying, "I was just thinking............." and then tail off into silence, which in turn would be broken by a sigh or a belch from another, quickly followed by a 'useful' question such as, "What time tomorrow do we..................zzzzzz" A thoroughly depleted bunch and a funny end to what had been a marathon of sorts. It reminded me of the old joke about the two guys that stagger into a Scottish pub, carrying their sozzled pal between them. They deposit the drunk at a small table, whereupon he proceeds to put his head down and go to sleep. Undeterred, the two mates who are in no great shape themselves go to the bar and one orders three pints. The other one looks at him, they both look over at the sleeping figure at the table, and the barman says, "Nah, he'll never manage a pint." "Aye you're right," says our drinks orderer, "Make that two pints an' a large whisky instead."

Forgive me if I have said nothing so far about the US gigs we did in the three weeks before all this stuff, but somehow it all seems like months ago in the scheme of things. That, too, was some stretch of work, and in the middle period there we actually did thirteen shows in ten consecutive nights - an all-time record for this band, and not something

to try too often as the tolerances for Murphy's law to kick in are pretty tight with that kind of schedule. Nevertheless, we had some great shows with Tower Of Power, in theatres and casinos around Michigan, New York Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Hampshire, and a bunch of our own headliner shows in Ohio, Indianapolis, and quite spectacularly in Louisville Kentucky, home of Muhammed Ali, and the subject of one of my last WhitePage entries, as I recall. What a great gig that turned out to be.

I suppose you're getting the idea here that things are going pretty well all round and that I'm simply blowing our collective trumpet a bit too much, and if that's the impression I give, then I suppose it's fair do's.

How many bands at this stage of their career get the opportunities we have had recently, and then go on to maximise them and turn them into even more ambitious undertakings. Not too many, I think. We may not be able to chase a football as fast as we once could - with the possible exception of Adam, of course - but the grit is all there, and the fire is very definitely well-lit within everyone here at the A. W.of B., a publicly-registered band of gypsies, wiseacres, and erstwhile buskers who have neither the will nor the wit to know when to quit!

Once again, the Tom Joyner Morning Show was another little milestone for us in that it was the first week of the show's being broadcast in New York, and therefore we were the first act to appear on the show there, albeit we were actually broadcasting from Cleveland Ohio, where that week aired from. So there we are onstage, in the second of our three mini-sets that we do on the show, we're in the middle of "Pieces," and I look round to see Tom (who dances & sweats his way through four hours of a 'revival meeting' of a show) advancing across the stage towards me shouting, above the band,"Dig in, man......WE'RE IN NEW YORK" What a completely happy moment, as I'd failed to grasp until then what it meant to him, after all these years, to finally get syndicated into the biggest music city of them all - and one that has steadfastly refused to air the biggest urban morning programme in American history. It made the 4.30 am departure to the gig all worth it.

Well, it's now the 8.30 pm departure to a sold-out Ronnie Scott's here in the middle of England, where you see a different slice of urban life to that of middle USA. The streets here are heaving with revellers every evening, young women tottering along on impossibly high heels, barely dressed at all, screaming and laughing their way to the next disco-bar, pub, or club, while their maurauding bands of boyfriends become more pissed as the night wears on, and are to be found, by the time we make our way home from our gig, arguing futilely with doormen and bouncers who are trying to stop them gettin in to the 'honeypot' inside. It's a hilarious mess of seething humanity, blaring mm-tsss, mm-tsss tecno-disco-retro-metro music that comes out of every establishment, and street bars & cafes where everyone sits to be seen and, hopefully, clocked by some worthwhile 'pull' or other.

Who said youth is wasted on the young? they seem to be doing just fine, thank you very much. I only wonder where they get all the money for these eight-hour nights of drink and other stimuli...cos none of it comes cheap round these parts. Ah, well, that's what larceny is for, I suppose.

On that philosophical (our Irish soundman - Phil O' Sophical) note, I will leave you to go and put on my impossibly high heels and skimpy dress another night on the town. I'll write again when I've growed up.

A.G.

APRIL FOOLS, EVERYONE

A shorter than usual entry for this month, due to an overload of artistic shenanigans here in the AWB camp; between writing, rehearsals, video production, and the vetting of arrangements for the upcoming tour, there isn't a lot of time to sit down and put my thoughts together for your edification.

Needless to say, we are all looking forward to being out on the road again beginning with a double show at BB King's in New York City, on the 18th, and then packing in another sixteen gigs inside twenty days, taking us up to the first week in May. Some new territories, too, with Louisville and Lexington in Kentucky, then Sault Ste Marie way up in the North of Michigan where Lake Superior tumbles into some other great big puddle (Lake Inferior maybe?).

The last time I was in Louisville was in the seventies, and unfortunately a death occurred at the concert, which seemed to 'unhinge' a certain member of our party to the extent that he threw all, or most, of his hotel room furniture into the swimming pool late that night. What he didn't know was that in the dining room there were two large windows in the wall which gave an underwater view of the pool. Imagine, if you will, all these people - families with small kids, etc. - wandering in for breakfast, to see lampshades, chairs, cushions and the like bobbing past the windows.

It got worse, too.

Molly, our legendary tenor player came in, sat down and placed his saxophone case beside his chair, and joined the rest of us who by now were weak with laughter at the aforementioned scene. Almost at once, a waitress with a large tray of breakfasts for a family behind us, tripped over his sax case and launched an array of eggs, bacon, mixed fruits, teas, coffees and sundry toasts into eternity. I'm sure you all know the feeling when you're trying your hardest NOT to laugh, but it's just no good; the fuse is lit, and the powder is ready to go..............

We were escorted out of town by the police, and invited never to return - well at least not any time soon! I think you could say we've kept our part of the bargain, but it's time to see the old place again, so we're looking forward to that very much. See you at Jim Porter's then.

Sculler's jazz club in Boston should be fun, too, and we plan a little 'looser' kind of gig there, where we can stretch the playing aspect a little more than in the usual concert scene. It'll be more like playing at Ronnie Scott's in England - much more intimate. No, don't worry, we'll all use deodorant.

Hope you've found copies of the new "Goldmine" magazine, featuring your trulys on the cover and a lengthy article within about the band in its various incarnations, and a potted history of our long and chequered career. I've yet to read it myself - it looks pretty daunting, I must say - but if nothing else it'll probably assure you of a good night's sleep after a few hundred paragraphs. Basically, all you really need to know is that we all got together once upon a Saturday in July 1972, wrote some stuff, liked it a lot, decided this might be a good way to avoid work for the rest of our lives, came up with a daft name, eventually made an album that did the business, toured like Billy-Oh for about ten years, got fed up of each other, broke up for a while, and then started the whole stupid game all over again with a couple of better-looking young guys to stir it up a bit, and here we are now - older, no wiser, but still able to dress ourselves and stand up to pee.

And Fred has yet to sabotage anyone's breakfast with HIS sax case.

So go and air out your dancin' shoes, and press your best zoot suit, we's a- comin' to town any day now, and Heaven knows we need to see YOU. No absences will be tolerated unless accompanied by a valid note of excuse written on hundred-dollar bills only, and hand delivered by beautiful young ladies in each case. We'll be bringing some new stuff for you as well - caps, ball gowns, new pictures of our ugly mugs, etc. - so will get your opinions and critique at the table after the show, no doubt.Until then, keep an eye out for us....we'll be the ones in the big bus with the highlander in the front. Bet you didn't know that A.W.B. stands for "A Wet Bagpipe", now, did you?

Till then, Och aye the noo' an' dinna lose yer sporran wi' the porridge in it!

(a cheap and tacky bogus Scottish saying with no meaning whatsoever)

A.G.

ANOTHER YEAR

A very happy new (well, slightly used) year to all our friends & supporters.

It seems I’m back again after a very welcome break over the holidays in which nothing much happened anywhere at all. No peace was achieved in the Middle East, no improvement was seen in British railway performances, no new wars were declared and none were won or lost.

Our agent in Britain is bemused at the suggestion that we might do interviews as a means of publicising our impending visit there in May. Apparently this is a novel (or unusual) idea. When I pointed out that promoters must be somewhat foolish to refuse such assistance, she replied that it’s British bands who are generally unwilling to participate, and thus the marriage of convenience between press, artist, and promoter is no longer a working arrangement. Oh, well....I guess it’s ‘uncool’ (the worst media offense in the UK...........we are always guilty). Anyway, I know there are some of you out there who don’t mind hearing us quizzed and grilled on-air or in your local paper about our preferences & peccadilloes. Wake up, UK, there’s a lot to be said for artist participation in the furtherance of audience attendance!

I see the new American president hasn’t wasted any time in gittin’ jiggy wid it. His promise of centrism, co-sponsorship and bipartisanship has got off to a wonderful start with his nominations for certain major stewardships in the US government. If you have Christie Todd Whitman in charge of the environment and John Ashcroft in charge of the law, then why not invite Robert Mugabe to come over and run agriculture? It’s about the same thing, don’t you think? Why do I smell a rat here? This seems - to this casual observer at least - like ‘middle finger’ politics at work and I sense that the liberally- minded of the country’s citizens are in for a ride like a twin -engined turboprop in a Texas thunderstorm...one that may last four years, unless common sense or civil disobedience prevails.

One of the nicest things about being away in the West Indies recently was the fact that you could go grocery shopping without being assailed by piped music or other acoustical placebos for the weak of mind. My kids and I wrote at least three great supermarket spoof songs while tearing up the isles, merely by drawing inspiration from daft slogans on soap packets or noodle boxes, and having no interrupted thought train to contend with. Come to think of it, now that the USA has done away with the annual (tiny) stipend that retailers & restauranteurs used to pay to the Performing Rights societies to pass on to the writers of those songs, I advocate banning the use of background music in public places. It’s bad enough that a deluded senator from Wisconsin, a state that has no songwriters anyway, should have been able to put this poisonous appendage to a copyright-extension bill and thus deny songwriters of a hard-earned portion of their income, without then having to suffer the ignominy of being forced to listen to non-stop muzak while furiously trying to write new stuff in one’s head. Just try it sometime; think of, say, an obscure track you know by T.O.P or an old E.W.F. fave, while The Carpenters are singing "We’ve Only Just Begun" out of a speaker above your head, and you’ll get an idea of our dilemma. Of course, we could volunteer for self-imposed house arrest, and insist that our better halves or significant others do all the shopping. But then that rules out going into restaurants, bars, elevators, toilets...everything.

We are under siege.

I read in the English papers that fox hunting has finally been banned by law. Not that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair was there for the vote, of course - he never is these days. Well, that will protect about twenty foxes annually, since the huntsmen rarely catch a fox anyway...they’re all half sozzled, and the dogs are dopey creatures for chrissake. What it will do, however, is put thousands of countryside workers out of jobs which have been there for centuries - and expose the sly old fox to a new and worse threat, that of being shot or trapped (a much more hideous demise than being cornered by other animals, as all creatures in the wild are on a daily basis, with or without mankind’s meddling). Come to think of it, the entire policy of the current British regime as regards the countryside is one of ignorance and convenience. Ignorance of the plight of farmers, villagers and land-stewards, and convenience to those city slickers in power. As John Mortimer, the creator of "Rumpole" points out in his book "Summer Of A Dormouse", the Labour government is standing by while agronomy collapses just as Margaret Thatcher presided over the death of British industry. As always, it is the pets, whims and peeves of the Londoners that dictate what the rest of the country must suffer. (witness the Millenium Dome).

To turn briefly to farce, I was amused but disappointed to find on my return that my local small-town football team (soccer, to you Yanks) had gained national notoriety for the first time..... not for their sporting achievements however, but for their antics off the field: two of its star players had been seen inhaling portions of the sidelines in a well-known watering hole-cum-disco in the town. A right couple of geniuses, I must say, and a credit to their Colombian sponsors! They wonder why they’re fired mid-season.

Which brings me to A.W.B.’s own season; although we don’t officially get under way until April, we are going to be appearing in the Washington DC area for a couple of nights at the beginning of next month, Fri.2nd and Sat.3rd of Feb. in Annapolis, and Alexandria respectively. The Ram’s Head in Annapolis is apparently sold out already, so I would urge you to direct yourselves to the Birchmere in Alexandria for the Saturday show there. It’s a great room to play in, and to watch from, and I hear the food ain’t bad either. They do dinner before the show. That’s the only live work we’ll be doing till we start up again in mid April with a bunch of dates, both on our own and with our buddies, Tower Of Power - all in the Northeast quadrant of the United States. Then we go directly to the UK and Europe for the rest of May and the beginning of June, to a Scottish mini-tour followed (so far) by dates in England and Holland.

All that seems a long way off right now, though, as we continue to dig ourselves out of the snow and cut fishing holes in the ice. I used to think Minnesotans were barking mad but now I’m not so sure there isn’t a wonderful logic to sitting out there dangling a line through the frozen lake, safe from politics, media and muzak. Provided you can avoid frostbite and divorce from ‘ice widowship’ this might be the only solution to winter, other than going straight back to the Caribbean on the next cargo plane.

We look forward to seeing all you stalwart and faithful, around the DC area this coming weekend.

Ha-wan, two, three, four.........changalangalangalangalangalanga

A.G.

Farewell, Century 20

The half century since the birth of Rock n' Roll has seen the unfortunate demise of almost all of its creators. A healthy lifestyle this Devil's music?...........hardly, and if it had been, then it would never have outlasted the men and women who barged their way into our collective heart and soul, not so very long ago.

The varieties and variations in the music form that we first heard from Carl Perkins, Elvis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, only served to foster the illusion that time sped up toward the last quarter of the century, as we raced through rhythm n' blues to funk, to soul, to soul r&b, to hip-hop, to rap, right up to the present melting pot where the right concoction of all and any of the above guarantees a great concert - a packed nightclub - a crazed crowd - a BIG record .........a bloodletting, if you will. And they said, in '58 and '64 that it wouldn't last! Well, they were right in a way - it didn't simply last - it changed and twisted and morphed into a vast collage of sounds and cultures that no one could have readily forseen. However, the world was never the same again.

That quarter century has been our home, too, and it is odd to think that if somebody had told me in my early teens that this is where I'd be now, I'd have taken his candies AND followed him home just to hear more. This is the dream of a lifetime being able to create that concoction and perform it afresh night after night, and then be able to conceive new music, make new records, and have them accepted by an audience as sophisticated (and spoilt) as it is in the beginning of the new Millenium. By the way, I'm sorry if you disagree that the new one begins now, especially after all that money you must have spent last year on champagne and party favours, but you see I've always remained a Millenium separatist, in that this is the actual, factual thresh- hold of the new, glittering 21st Century. Official, certified, rubber-stamped and approved by Romans, Saxons, Huns, the Mongol hordes, and whoever started the old clock running at 'Year One' (not year None).

Hence 2001. God bless you, Stanley Kubrick, 'Hal', and the tribe of apes we rode in on to the tune of "Thus Spake Zarathustra", and the feeling of gobsmacked euphoria as we left the cinema that afternoon in London. It didn't hurt either that John Lennon, Paul and George were also standing on the same pavement, equally gobsmacked and totally oblivious to the mild frisson of excitement that ran along Old Compton Street as we realised we were in the presence of royalty. Such are the rewards (small but hugely meaningful at times) of risking one's all for the vagaries of the business of show - a career that allows for the oddest hours and therefore the strangest of rendezvous and encounters that will sometimes keep your spirits up and your disappointments diminished. So it has been for Onnie and me since forging a partnership in 1967, and seeing it develop into what would eventually become AWB, in 1972, along with the other great characters that took the icy plunge with us.

And amazing, too, that the start of the new century sees the start of a brand new regime in the United States - albeit one that has a long way to go to legitimise itself in the world's eyes. Great Britain has one of the strongest voices in real international terms that it ever has in our lifetime, Scotland has her own parliament for the first time in hundreds of years, and no millenium bug in sight anywhere. Yes, there's much to be thankful for but yet much to be mindful of in light of the awful conditions that many people in our so-called civilised countries live under, never mind the third world and the strife-ridden war-torn wastes of the mid East and the Balkans.

So we are lucky and fortunate to be in our relatively safe havens at this juncture and privileged to have been this year the honourees at the Nordoff Robbins awards in Glasgow, Scotland back in September. I thought it might be fitting to include a selection of photographs from the gala evening that Onnie and I had with the local intelligentsia and high- lifers in our homeland, not just to show off......although there's nothing shy about either of us if there's a whiff of posturing to be done, and a gullible crowd of onlookers to be bedazzled......simply to share our obvious pride and gratification at being given the kind of recognition that goes way beyond anything that charts, sales, or 'industry' can give. This was a night to celebrate a long road with old and dear friends who had started alongside us, and who have similarly made it through all the puddles and pratfalls, and are still in our corner when push comes to shove.

And a reminder that charity (Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy is one of the most successful and meaningful children's charities) is the keynote at this time of renewal and festivity. Please give as much as you can to the bellringers and the tin-rattlers who brave the cold to warm someone's Christmas season or fill someone's belly who would otherwise stand outside hungry. We all spend far too much on ourselves and our inner circle anyway, so throw some extra to the collectors of conscience while there is still time for it to get to the people who are desparately relying on it for any glimpse of the Holiday cheer that we take for granted.

Finally, let us wish all of you a very healthy and happy holiday season, and I hope you will join me in making a toast to the new era, even if you did that last time - I know we did, as we were part of a rather large and salubrious gathering in Dallas for the occasion - and remember, there's never an excuse for not celebrating something or other, so it might as well be a new Century.

We'll see you in the new year......as we begin the countdown all over again!

Merry Crimble, everybun, and a Hairpiece New Ear.