SPRING (AND A NEW CD) AT LAST . . .

..and not a moment too soon. The sun has reappeared from its gray cocoon, the temperature has risen above chilling, the war in Iraq is over, the despotic rule dispelled and disbanded, and now the looting, rioting and arson can begin in earnest. How wonderful to know that the Iraqis are just the same as the denizens of South Central LA, the only difference being the Iraqis don’t appear to have any weapons of mass destruction. It was all a ruse – I can see the headlines revisited in twenty years by the History Channel...”Saddam was a ‘Sweety’- Was only planning grand firework parade for Iraqi children”, along with the classics from yesteryear “Archduke Ferdinand still alive – World War One a mistake”; shipping news: “Marie Celeste arrives at Liverpool” and “Ghenghis Khan named Turkish ambassador to U.N.” If truth is the first victim of war, then read on – I’ve got some great lies for you this month.

Average White Band Gives Up On Album – Can’t Be Bothered !

Well, let me dispel that ugly falsehood at once...I was there when they finished it, and I saw it being hauled away in the big truck to the manufacturers – and I have a piece of paper that says “deW no pish” ..no, I’m sorry it’s upside down, it’s “Ship on Wed.” which means THIS WEEK. The brand new, never before seen or heard, first studio record in seven years from those darlings of the Twilight Home and pension fund, the Overage white Band, have a new release

“Living In Colour” (that’s color in English) ready for YOU at their first concerts of the spring beginning next week.

A platinum moment in a plutonium-seeking year, folks, and all coming to a theatre near you – if you live in the nippy Northeast that is, for now anyway.

We are going to subject you to an initial ‘private’ release on our own label for this upcoming tour where you will only be able to get your copy at the gigs, or online via our website sales department; it won’t be available in stores right away – that will come nearer summer time when people can brave the trip to Tower, Borders or Sam Goody in shorts and t-shirt (AWB, of course) without fear of frostbite or the need for kapok clothing and foot-warmers en route.

Hopefully, it’ll turn out to be one of those great summer records that we measure our lives by – or used to before we had things like mortgages, tuition fees and tax-days to serve that purpose.

AWB’s Album “Living In Colour” A Ripoff Of D’Angelo, Maxwell And The Whole Neo-Soul Patrol”

Another filthy lie, I tell you. Not once did the pair of them cross my mind while writing these songs, let alone either of them call me up to see how it was coming along. I was actually listening to old Mamas & Papas tapes and the odd Cowsills record, deliberately to avoid such malignant critique at this delicate stage so soon after birth. (it weighs 8lbs.6oz by the way, and it’s a girl) The only things we ripped off were bits of old Average White Band – who doesn’t? – some Temptations, Stylistics, Spinners, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Memphis Horns, Les McCann, Eddie Harris, The Crusaders, and all the usual suspects that have sat on our shoulders through every album we’ve ever made. So eat that one, you swine!

Alan Gorrie walks out on AWB Project

Well, yeah,.. but I’d left my wallet at home – and I came back an hour later, but they’d finished without me, so it’s not strictly true. Look, I was only given a year or two to come up with tunes for this record, and when all but eight of them were thrown out for riotous behaviour, I got a bit ticked off; wouldn’t you? Anyway, we worked it out in the end, thanks to immeasurable contributions from Klyde and Fred and Matt Noble, our co-producer with whom I used to write many years ago (Sticky Situation, and I’ll Get Over You, from the Aftershock album), and when they found I had rolls of quarters for the parking meters, they more or less begged me to come back. How could I refuse those sad, pleading faces?

Average White Band guilty of murdering classic songs

Not Guilty!! First of all, the evidence is purely circumstantial – no-one has heard anything yet, your honor, and even then the headline betrays a callously subjective viewpoint from those who might consider any rendering of original hits to be sacrilegious and blasphemous, unless slavishly copied and unmodified.

True, we have delved into two songs that have long been favorites – in the case of “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” one that has been around AWB since the very first days of the band with Robbie McIntosh at the helm, and with “Love Won’t Let Me Wait” a tune we had fantastic reaction to when we performed it in Europe a couple of years back, as an encore, and which Onnie & I did last year on a BBC unplugged session for a Scottish morning talk show. It’s also the only damn song I can sing just as easily at eight in the morning as I can late at night, so if any of you radio & TV casting directors need early am. promo slots featuring somewhat live music…..here’s your chance.

And so, if that’s all the innuendo and prevarication you can muster as a measure of misplaced pique in the face of our admittedly-oft-postponed album offering, let me assure you that it should be well worth the wait; those of you who have heard snippets live, such as “Down To The River”, “Think Small”, “Check Your Groove”, and “I Can’t Help It”

(these last two premiered at the Birchmere this year) will have an idea of the overall picture. I won’t bore you with meaningless previews of the other new songs on the record, suffice to say that the title track, “Living In Colour” is one of those rare cases where you absolutely KNOW you can bet on your own horse to finish well – and it

showcases Klyde’s vocal to great and sensitive effect.

The rest you will hear any day now, if you can tear yourself away from the endless, wall-to-wall coverage of the remains of the war in Iraq and hot foot it to one of the upcoming concerts at the end of this month into the beginning of May where we’ll be treating each concert as a virtual album-release party. Just bring your best friends, a valid credit card or wad of cash for the bar, and a fresh pair of ears for the evening. We’ll do the rest – supply the music, break out the new CDs, dress up in outrageous costumes, and perform acrobatic feats and conjuring tricks by request, until all have been thoroughly satisfied.

As for these last three, well, I did promise a few lies, didn’t I?

A.G.

JANUARY SAILS

Welcome to the wonderful world of the year 2003. This is a year of unprecedented promise, of rare prescience, and of

a likely pretty ugly war, too. Many will triumph this year and even more will prosper. Trouble is many will triumph and prosper at the expense of others’ demise; but luckily these irksome victims and statistics are but a necessary hiccup in the grand scheme to rid the world of anyone we don’t like a lot at any given moment. For the rest of us, this will be a year of avoidance, a year of shrugging, of wavering, of tutting and toeing the line complacently and docilely. Speech is no longer free of course and will come to be taxed at an even higher rate as things develop, I’m sure, but for the moment I await my hoped-for rebate and continue typing unabashed and unashamed of my vulnerable position in the debate. Do we smell burning martyr?

It occurs to me on a daily basis that we’re without John Lennon when we most need him. It’s hard to find a strong voice for peace and reason anymore, although it was mildly reassuring to see a few thousand Americans join the world march-for-peace day a couple of weeks ago, and to introduce the notion to their youth that this demonstration, hitherto unneeded in their life so far, is now a vital presence to show the Jolly Rancher and his gang that they will not all toady to warmongering. All you are saying, I believe, is give peace a chance. (such a simple but timeless message, John)

As you know, it always falls to artists and musicians to be activists and protesters, or at least to illustrate the idiosyncrasies of the world we live in and to point out to our deaf and blind leaders that there is another point of view and another way to proceed. We’re living in a time of “hardball” where aggression is to be admired, and in-your-face is the place! Anything else is regarded as wimpy, liberal, lily-livered, socially inept and politically naïve. I dunno where it all went horribly wrong, but I can reliably tell you that a great many of those who espouse this manic push for intolerance and warlike zeal are driven by an incredible amount of self-interest and determination to wipe out free speech unless it trumpets their own agenda and makes their pals rich as hell. Think about that the next time you are tempted to shout “Bomb the Motherpluckers ...whoever they are”

All we are saying...

And now for something completely different:

I’d like to pass on a wonderful joke from Scotland that will appeal to all who like their humour on the scatological side, and who appreciate the great fun to be found in all matters relating to the human condition of breaking wind.

A married couple are lying in bed when the husband lets rip the most staggering thunderous fart. “What in the world was that all about?” asks the incredulous wife. “Fart Football” replies the husband, “and I just scored the first goal. One-nil to me” The wife considers for a minute, then she, too rolls over and lets fly with her own effort. “One-all” she says smugly. Well it wasn’t long before the inevitable second goal came from the husband, and another stunning equalizer from the wife, but I doubt any of us expected her to pull out number three with such gusto and élan. “Three-two to ME,” she cries. Now the husband is really pissed off and in an attempt to redeem himself tries as hard as he can for an answer, but only succeeds in shitting the bed, at which point he gets up and stomps round to his wife’s side.

“What’s going on, John” she says, noting the sudden change in his demeanour.

“Half time” says the husband – “Change sides”

For those of you who might find such stuff a tad on the ‘rich’ side, I would suggest you are probably reading the wrong web page, and certainly following the wrong band for starters. All of the prose I have dished up in the past on this page has been but a thin cultural veneer hiding a steaming vein of filth running below. Though with what’s available on the web nowadays and with the variety of so-called respectable people who are nabbed for nefarious internet ‘fouls’, I should think you’re all pretty much unshockable by now. It’s getting difficult to open up e-mail these days without first having to sift through innumerable offers for something rhyming with “Niagara” and its immediate availability by the truckload, or to download “Filthy Farm Sluts frolicking with fulsome foals & frothing Friars” – not to mention Naughty nuns and their Hot habits - part two.

I actually feel a bit sorry for old Pete Townshend, however, and am willing to believe (until proven otherwise) that he is a wee bit unlucky in that a) none of the supposedly high-ranking police or members of parliament who were arrested were named, b) he was researching a book for some time and had probable justification for investigating a facet of his abused past that is today flagrantly flaunted at all of us, and c) he had tried to tell the authorities about this ahead of the ‘roundup’ where he became the poster boy for the whole sting. I have absolutely no sympathy for any of these cretins who were repeat users of this website – I was solicited once by an e-mail that said “this can be OUR little secret” and when clicked on, there was a drawing of a child, and a banner that said “Father-Daughter Love” I tell you that my blood ran cold, and I couldn’t shut the thing down fast enough – I was trembling and felt assaulted and violated and, though I knew it was deleted, trashed - GONE, somehow I kept expecting it to reappear as if it had polluted my computer and was lurking in there waiting to shock and degrade me at some unexpected moment. Now I realize that all it would have taken for my identity to have joined the FBI’s list of scoundrels would have been to go one more step into the abyss - to log on - as Brother Pete seems to have done. I hope to Hell he’s innocent.

These days, it’s BBC world Service news, football results (fart and otherwise), new cars to drool over and the odd Daily Telegraph crossword that keeps me amused for the little time that I ever get to spend online and onscreen.

I can see how many become addicted to the box, however, and I’m sure that most of you who read this claptrap are already spending waaaay too much time on the internet when there are cathedrals to be demolished, rivers to be drained, mountains to be levelled and trees to be felled for more newspapers to provide advertising space for the multi-national corporate megaliths who need to pry us free from what little is left of our money now that the tide has turned in favour of bare-faced theft and licensed larceny at the highest level. Benevolent capitalism my arse!

Christmas and New Year holidays were good, though, and I hope many of you had as relaxed and refreshing a time as I did this year; I escaped the blitz of commercialism and conscience-twisting that goes along with the Northern

Hemisphere holiday psyche, and ran away to a desert island where I checked the news about once a week just to make sure civilization was still intact and that nobody had yet started firing shots at Iraq / North Korea / Zimbabwe / and/or enter the name of your favored foe here. It was blissful to be able to ignore the hurly-burly of the Messiah’s birthday celebrations, and instead concentrate on the construction of the perfect rum punch, learning how to correctly open a coconut, and knowing how to discern the difference between a barracuda and a needle-fish, so that at the sight of the latter I’m no longer shooting out of the water like a popped champagne cork and landing all over the surface like a madwoman’s shit. I was able to develop a bit of serenity (if not sobriety - these tropical types are not shrinking violets, after all) and for someone who logs more miles in a year than some flight crews and many truck-drivers, it is very cool to be constrained to a bit of land a few miles long and only a couple wide. Well, two and a half if the tide’s out. I saw a wonderful T-shirt down there that I think summed up their attitude to the season: it said “My Liver has been BAD – it must be PUNISHED”, and another, a replica of the shirt worn by agents of the D.E.A. In tiny letters underneath the initials it had

drunk every afternoon

But back to reality I had to come, and to withering cold and things called driving-conditions and wind-chill and

minus degrees of the kind to try the will of the most intrepid arctic explorer. There is work to be done here in the cradle of AWB, and an album to finish now that we have our vocal first mate Klyde Jones on the ship’s bridge; some pretty handy tunes are coming together as I write, and we finally seem to have the time, the space, the will, the songs, and if someone will just give us loads of money ...

Seriously, though, this is our current mission, and apart from a few select dates in February we will keep our shoulders to the pump until this is complete. I was checking racks of CDs the other day in Barnes N’ Borders or some such, and I couldn’t help but notice how irrelevant cover-art seems to be nowadays – not that there’s much space on one of these four-inch squares to begin with. However it does appear that it has little to do with the selling point of records in the modern domain, when you consider the agonizing, double-guessing, debating and redesigning that used to be part of the LP cover process, and without which you couldn’t hope to attract anyone into buying your newest offering. Now, it might as well be a silhouette of the group, some surreal symbol or ‘swoosh’ or, if a solo artist, then a photo that would give Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon or David Bailey indigestion, and would certainly have Herb Ritts turning in his grave. There certainly seems to be a vogue for what I term ‘amateur-chic’ as a design ethic, or maybe it’s just cheaper and easier not to give a shit since all the standards have slipped anyway, and let’s face it, you’re dead lucky if there’s more than one or two good tracks on a CD in the first place. So we will buck the trend, be our anachronistic selves, and we will TRY to come up with the old-fashioned goods inside and out for your delight and

delicacy.

We might fail, but we will TRY!

I will leave you temporarily with the above brief news and views update, and will go and secure my fifth layer of clothing before venturing into the arctic wastes near New York. My people are hungry and I must try to hunt a wooly mammoth or sabre-toothed attorney for dinner, or there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. There always is anyway – it’s what Fred does best!

Apologies to all who clamored for and were disappointed by lack of a Season’s Greeting on this page before Christmas, but I literally just had time to finish our last gig, fly back to base, quickly dig out a pair of sandals and a loin-cloth, and head back to the airport in the middle of the night for the ‘Desert-Island Special’ at dawn the next morning. I was however pained by my negligence; but my conscience cleared around the time they had brought me my second Bloody Mary, you’ll be relieved to know.

As for the perfect rum punch – one generous slice of lime, fresh from the tree if possible, some crushed ice, a jigger of Pusser’s rum (Mount Gay if unavailable), the juice of a fresh orange, and a good dash of sweet cranberry juice to top off. Shake or stir minimally, find a nearby sunset, and enjoy. Can be taken more than once a day without too much trouble, and should be! Happy New Year.

A.G.

IZZY DOES IT

This week finds us perambulating across the Southern states, heading for a potential confrontation with tropical storm/soon-to-be-Hurricane Isadore, still in the Gulf at time of writing but due to land onshore tomorrow night or early next morning. Well, our bus is filthy from two days & nights of desert dust, Boeing-sized bugs and the odd fuel spill, so perhaps we’ll be all shiny and new by the time it’s had its whirly way with us and there’ll be no need to pay for a truckwash if the expected rainfall from Izzy meets its due potential.

Right now I’m attempting to control a bouncing keyboard as we pass through Oklahoma on a road that bears more resemblance to an army proving ground than a US highway, and I can only assume that the state has a) had its funding withdrawn, b) the promised “road works” we see signs for didn’t show up on the right year (they simply put up the barrels & cones to slow us all down), or c) the American Dental Association has entered a pact with the Governor to assure a constant quota of loose fillings and perpetuate their subsequent ministrations………….

“smile for the camera? - piss off, I’ve just crossed Oklahoma!

All rattling aside, I have to report a fine first week of our fall tour, featuring new singer and multi-instrumentalist Klyde Jones, whom many of you will recall from the Soul Tattoo album, and, in particular, his fine lead vocals with me on “Every Beat Of My Heart”. Klyde has filled Eliot’s vacant spot onstage in AWB as the talented Mr. Lewis has taken some time off from roadlife to find a bit of home life and creature comforts that maybe one or two of us lucky bastards take for granted, having cemented some of those things before we became famous/busy/permanently-absentee-from-realitees. We all wish him well, and I’m sure that he will benefit from some time to step back from the rigors of touring life and refocus his keen musical sights; when’s the album coming out, El? (and where should I send all this vodka that’s now piling up night after night?)

While I mention potential confrontations with weather phenomena I guess I should state my reservations against confrontations with middle-eastern firebrands at a time when our economies are going through some of the biggest turmoil in decades, and when we collectively have failed to satisfactorily finish the job set out in the last campaign (unless someone’s found his ass today while I’m bouncing through OK., or we rebuilt Kabul late last night with the aid of Donald Trump’s spare worksquad). Personally, I remember the last Gulf war too clearly; it began on the first night of our tour, and we played the next two or three weeks to tiny handfuls of diehard punters who were the exception to the masses huddled wide-eyed and glued to CNN as Stormin’ Norman and his swashbuckling band blazed their way into the patriotic psyche - and left us audience-free and broke as the cost of fuelling our bus went through the roof, and ticket sales through the floor. If that sounds entirely selfish just think of the ramifications of another more protracted and politically more complicated engagement with, again, no remote guarantee of getting the bastard, and if we do, of being able to replace him with anyone less vicious or murderous in the long run. And we cuddle up tighter to the Saudi princes in the process, while blithely ignoring that it was fifteen of their insurgents who perpetrated Sept.11 and consigned that date to Hell forever in the American and British memory. Oy McVey!

So back to the music (coffee break’s over) and a refresher for Onnie and myself especially, who have seen Klyde go back to the original vocals and versions of some of the AWB material for his template, and in doing so we are revisiting some of the ‘lost chords’ of the soaring seventies.. and his soulful voice has been causing noticeable squealing & squirming among many of the female number in the audience this past week, so I have to believe that he has stirred some of these memories in them too. Whatever the cause of this frisson of excitement in the ladies’ gallery, I can assure you it’s entirely spontaneous and unabashed and certainly nothing to do with our roadies releasing white mice among them at strategic musical moments. Once we get this leg of the tour under our belts, we intend to review some of the other gems in the old repertoire that have lain undisturbed collecting fairy dust for years, to see what might please you for a change, and further explore some of our new brother’s silk degrees (and maybe also my gritticisms, too). Then it’s on to new stuff, entirely.

All I can say in winding up is that I’m as happy as a clam in soft Caribbean sand, and please Messrs. Bush and Blair let not some misguided machismo and military madness spoil my fun right now when there is too much of beauty and soulful serenity around to be worried about warmongering, and the spoils and troils of buried oils on foreign soils, and nations coming to the boil – we all will lose in the short run, and multitudess will lose their all in the long run.

Me, I’ve got to run – I’ve a hurricane to catch.

A.G.

Reality, Fantasy And Frivolity

I’m continuously being told by politicians, pundits, TV presenters, financial advisers, and sundry commentators that we all have to face up to today’s reality. That usually means I’m going to get some more bad news of the kind that will encompass a collusion of CEOs, mega-accountants or brokers who have just made off with the life savings of another few thousand (or million) wretches whose fault is nothing more than to have trusted the hitherto-respected captains of industry and commerce, and the rock upon which this modern reality is founded.

I hear from no less a figure than the head honcho at the Wall Street Journal that, well, there’s no real crime here…..this is just capitalism at work, and this is how the system shakes itself down, and we have to not get all

worked up, and face reality. The President and VeePee are all up to their chins in the same quadruple dealing

and have been for years, and the day last week when C.in C.himself stood up at the New York stock exchange and began waffling inanities about some toothless endeavour to form a “swat team” for corporate wrongdoing, while behind him the graph at the foot of America’s bed began to plummet and continued to do so all through his speech was as much reality as anyone should be asked to stomach.

Talking of reality, it is becoming scary just how much ‘reality’ television we are bombarded with. This, as you must know is nothing to do with reality at all; what is happening is that production companies in Hollywood are finding ever-cheaper ways to make programs devoid of script writers, directors, and all the other artistic personnel that go along with bona fide film and television making. Instead we are supposed to gawp at marginally psychotic specimens who are (in the guise of ‘real’ people) in turn instructed to act or overact in the most base, crass and venal of ways toward each other to satisfy the cravings, at prime time, of the moronic hordes who glue themselves to daytime television and the putrid lather of soap operas and/or MTV’s soft-porniglot. Isn’t it ironic that the only mention I have heard this president make toward his televisual preferences is that he likes “The Osbournes,” thus, in essence, showing his endorsement of – you got it – reality TV. Mind you, I shudder to think what passes for artistic taste in that philistine persona; I have a vision of JR Ewing without the script, and a gnawing suspicion that I am perilously close to being dead-on with my estimate of that cultural reality.

And so to fantasy, a much-preferred state of mind where one can at least control the scenario, the enactment, and the outcome of future situations, where we are enticed to higher artistic and cultural expectations, where education budgets are not routinely slashed to provide tax breaks/refunds etc. for the corporately fattened,

where we begin to wipe out hunger and disease and reduce international third-world debt, where the front row of

the audience resembles Claudia Schiffer, Halle Berry, Jennifer Connolly etc. on a nightly basis, and where I can still play ninety minutes of soccer, without ending up a geriatric vomiting heap after ten minutes of being humiliated by someone half my age who has the ball attached to his foot as if by string. There are other more common fantasies I’m sure we all share, some admirable and some a bit more, shall we say...dubious? But the lottery is not for me, nor the pursuit of power and untold wealth for its own sake nor living to be a hundred and ten.

The best come from the dream state, I’m sure you’ll agree, that wonderful hybrid of reality and fantasy where surreal versions of our friends or enemies do the most ridiculous things in the most improbable groups but still with a grain of likelihood and probability. The bottle-rocket you set off a lifetime ago that went through your Granny’s window as she was washing her face at the sink, and which becomes a train coming out the other side of the house, but won’t stop for you on the platform as you are wearing that dreadful shirt that embarrassed your friends at last week’s party – those same friends who have turned into a team of plumbers knocking at your door to fix the stereo you dropped while moving recently to the new house with all these corridors and odd-shaped rooms, each of which has some strange ritual going on as you open the doors one-at-a-time trying to locate the cause of the trouble – trouble you

can’t identify, but which is so disturbing it causes you to attempt vainly to cry out in your sleep. All your wife or partner hears is “AamBphhtakhssssshh,Na” And the next thing you know there’s a dig in the ribs,

light coming in through the curtains, your arm’s numb from lying on it, you’re awake, and you’re back to reality!

If all of the above seems to trivialize the subject matter for your particular taste, then please allow me a moment or two of frivolity. This column has never been more than somewhat of a stream of unconsciousness as far as I’m concerned, and something that is done on a whim and a prayer as and when the mood takes me. I doubt it even reflects much of the opinions of my fellow band-members, but then they can write their own observations should the mood take them. I must say, talking of ‘mood’ that the mood round here is very nice these days. Our

big night at the New Orleans Essence Festival last weekend was just that – BIG, and really very gratifying with the reception we got from one of the largest urban congregations one could amass in this country. All the

players were there, from Isley Brothers on the ‘mature’ tip, to Alicia Keys on the new end, and everyone in between over the course of three solid-gold soul nights. Add the comedians, such as Steve Harvey & Cedric The

Entertainer, and a terrific MC team of the Tom Joyner Morning Crew, and it was sheer gluttony. Nice to have been part of it again, and an honour to represent ‘white folks’ with readily appreciated sincerity. In fact, one girl from B.E.T. at the press conference afterwards asked how it felt to be “honorary Black folks” I leave you to deduce the obvious from this, and let’s just say if you’d told me in Scotland 28 years ago that this could ever happen I’d have suggested it was sheer fantasy, but for this more-than-averagely lucky bastard, it has become ..well, reality.

A.G.

World Cup And Other Musings From The Well

As I write this, the USA is hours away from its first visit to the quarter finals of the World Cup of 2002.

Now, it may not prevail against a German team who have won the whole cheese several times before, and who are

massively experienced at this level compared to the somewhat fairy-tale US squad who owe more to grit and

unpredictability than in depth of talent, but their achievement is no less historic and heroic for that. I fervently hope that you in the States are taking note and tuning in at whatever time of day or night you must to follow their exploits and cheer them on from the homeland.

It was therefore all the more galling the other night to hear from Onnie that NBC nightly news were dismissing them and their progress as a flash-in-the-pan, soon to be forgotten episode, and that soccer in general was no worthy sport for the American male, and was lacking in aggression and – yes – VIOLENCE (that most laudable and

demonstrable virtue to instill in our youth should they have trouble choosing a sporting activity). Then they

trotted out the slur to all that it was probably all right as a woman’s game...now just whom is that a worse slap to – the US women who have won TWO world cups already and who are young legends and role models in their own right, or the millions of young males who are dying to play team soccer at school, college, and maybe professional level. Honestly, the irresponsibility of these cretins in television beggars belief. I would sack them on the spot.

Well, summer seems to have arrived with a vengeance and the American highway is melting under our wheels as we embark on our annual pilgrimage to see how many road and air miles we can cover in the June/July period. We will

scale the Rockies to perform at the Winterpark Jazz Festival – it’s so high up sax players and singers need

iron lungs to perform, and you can flick a guitar pick a hundred yards in the thin atmosphere – and we will cool

our heels at sea level with gigs in Annapolis, DC, Long Island and the like, with welcome ocean breezes to soothe

our fevered brows. In between, the great plains will see us trundling in – and out – of such venues as Kansas City, Cadott Wisconsin, Chicago and other stops through the prairie companionship. All we can do is hope for decent weather on our outdoor shows, and half-decent air conditioning for our indoor performances. I’ve learned that the most important piece of road equipment during the US summer is a small but powerful fan to keep the sweat from blinding me while singing.

All the more pronounced when one has just come from a British and European tour, most of which was conducted

in full–length warm clothing as it was barely showing signs of spring there during our travels. We kept threat-

ening to break out the shorts, but I think a couple of us managed it only once, and that for a dare! The gigs were

great though, and we got a chance to perform at one of the many Jubilee (locally termed ‘The Jubbly’) festivals – Plymouth – that were held throughout England on June 3. I’m glad we got to do that...not because I’m a royalist or could give a hoot about the queen or her whole masquerade, but to be an alien in England with bugger-all to do on a bank holiday – especially THAT one-would be akin to watching the party going on around you from within a sealed glass soundproof tank. Instead, we had a beautiful afternoon on the clifftops above the English Channel, along with old pals The BLOCKHEADS (of Ian Dury fame) and a wonderful dinner laid on for all of us at the opulent Victorian “Grand (yes, really) Hotel”. I felt as if Oscar Wilde were about to walk in and deliver some ascerbic witticism, or at least we’d have a hushed silence for a crackly wireless broadcast from Winston Churchill extolling British patriotic fervour. As it was, we had far too much good wine, got rollickingly legless, and behaved like a bunch of, well, like a bunch of musicians.

As many of you are no doubt aware, our DVD, “Tonight” is on the shelves of most reputable record retailers and top

class bookshops like Borders etc, and documents a performance from the House Of Blues summer before last. I

have heard nothing but good stuff from people who have seen it, and I’ll have to take their word for it, as since the actual surround-sound sessions I have yet to see (or HEAR) it in its entirety. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to lock myself in a proper preview theatre at the end of the tour and quietly ‘wallow’ in it without anyone else to pass comment or require their presence be recognised. I recall being sat in the ‘hot’ seat by the engineers at time of construction, and being awed by the experience of total immersion in the sound and thinking to myself that this is what it must be like to be at one of our concerts..I could hear people behind me, the band right up front, and I got that skin-crawl I used to get as a kid when I heard a killer record. I kid you not!

As for other endeavours, no, the CD is not done yet as we can’t get off the road long enough to put in any worthwhile studio hours and get nearer to fruition. We are, however, previewing tunes from it on this tour so if you get off your arses and come along to the nearest AWB show this summer, you’ll get at least a taste of what we’re up to, and where we’re up to in it. My best guess is that it’ll be done at the end of the touring year and ready for consumption at the start of ’03; we could have certainly brought out some half-assed placebo for you this term, but neither you lot nor us would feel much better for that in the long-run, and ultimately it has to be something AWB can be proud of before it sees the light of day. Meanwhile, we’re setting our alarms for the next World Cup game and I hope some of you are as well. Besides, whether the team wins or loses, it means at least I won’t miss breakfast.

A.G.