Today, we're taking a look at three recent releases from Demon Music Group! On their 1974 Atlantic debut and breakthrough LP AWB, Average White Band proclaimed that they had "Work to Do." The group's confident stab at The Isley Brothers' 1972 funk classic closed the first side of AWB; now, it's one of ten tracks comprising the enjoyable new vinyl collection Cover to Cover, Soul to Soul out on Demon Records. Cover to Cover, Soul to Soul offers a bounty of AWB's most soulful tracks - not
The opening track of Average White Band's new/old release On the Strip: The Sunset Sessions couldn't have a more apropos title: "Let's Go Round Again." Following a successful run of albums with producer-arranger Arif Mardin, the funky big band outfit was re-establishing itself. 1979's Feel No Fret was a self-produced affair on which the band was joined by co-producer Gene Paul; it yielded hit singles in "Atlantic Avenue" and a revival of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "Walk on By." For a
In selecting a name, the Average White Band certainly was modest. Over a career spanning nearly 50 years, the Scottish band recorded thirteen studio albums and seven live sets; charted nine hits in the U.K. and U.S. and a further 15 songs on the U.S. R&B survey; scored a million-seller with "Pick Up the Pieces;" and had so many songs sampled that the group was ranked the fifteenth most sampled artist in history as of around a decade ago. The AWB is still active today under the auspices of