Average White Band: Festival Hall, London

AVERAGE WHITE BAND always were an anomaly. A group of funksters from Dundee inspired by James Brown, Bobby Womack and BB King, they sounded so much like black American musicians that even their idols adored them. By the mid 1970s they were big in Britain and stars in the States, where their million-selling instrumental Pick up the Pieces topped the charts. After they split in the early 1980s, hip-hop gave them a new lease of life, with the Beastie Boys, De La Soul and Public Enemy sampling their sax breaks and bass lines.