Sunday, November 15, 2015

Average White Band: Pick Up the Pieces



In Against the Grain Norman Baker remembers an unsuccessful gig by his band The Reform Club:
As well as members of the band, we had roped in Archy Kirkwood, the Lib Dem MP for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, on guitar, and Chris Berry, our Eastbourne candidate, on keyboards. 
Archy was a competent rhythm guitarist and had been in a Scottish band in the 1960s, half of which went on to be the Average White Band, though not Archy's half.
In 1974 the Average White Band reached no. 1 in America with this single.

That was a rare feat for a British band in that era, perhaps because our charts were dominated by trashy glam rock.

The funky Pick Up the Pieces is a class above all that. Here is the AWB playing it a few years later at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

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