Another splendid surprise was the receipt, earlier this year, of a colour poster replete with the June 1st 1974 album picture of the ACNE crowd which on closer inspection bore the date of June 6th 1994. It turned out that reader NICK SMITH was concealing a band up his sleeve and with that same unique mixture of bravado and sheer lunacy that seems to characterise the WAWS readership he had decided to mark the twentieth anniversary (unbelievable n'est-ce pas?) of the momentous Rainbow bash by playing through the same set. The chosen venue, The 13th Note in Glasgow, was already booked for the first of June so it had to be the 6th. Why Are We Sleeping Enterprises immediately and recklessly extended its overdraft and sent a small donation on behalf of us all to provide the assembled throngees with a free banana. Nick takes up the story.

Unaccustomed as I am to public writing and wanky though it is reviewing your own band, WAWs wanted a report of our tribute to 'June 1st 1974' by Kevin Ayers, John Cale, Brian Eno and Nico and no-one else seemed likely to write it. Lying here on a sun-drenched topless beach on the Greek mainland, a small bottle of Ouzo in one hand and a portion of Gouda cheese in the other, I'm sure Kevin Ayers would approve.

As a stranger from the audience commented, 'So, the Parsons Family, June 1st 1974....what's the story?' Well, basically, the story is this. We are a band who have, for the past two and a half years, staunchly failed to write a single original song. And it's been easy. Our name is a sad and pathetic pun on '70's icons The Partridge Family, and Gram Parsons, our original inspiration as a country-rock combo. Our last but one public performance took place on the twentieth anniversary of Gram Parson's death, and this gave us a taste for anniversaries. Ten years ago I had a fleeting thought about doing a June 1st 1984 gig, but no-one was interested. Ignoring the fact that with the passing of a further ten years there was still nobody interested, we decided to go ahead with it.

So, that's the story. What about the gig?. Well, 30 odd (some very odd) Glaswegians ( many not even related to members of the band!) arrived and paid a pound, receiving in turn their free banana courtesy of WAWS. For the set list we stuck to songs that were actually played at the concert in question, many of which failed to make it onto the resulting LP (or CD.....wake up, Island records and get some extra tracks on there. And while you're at it, it's not 'STANDING In A Bucket Blues!)

The music was mainly from the pen of Kevin Ayers (eight songs), with John Cale well represented (four songs including an irrelevant encore), Brian Eno sadly only got one (we attempted 'Driving Me Backwards' but had to admit defeat and Nico got a 40-second kazoo rendition of 'Deutschland Uber Alles'. This was particularly suitable as it was the 50th anniversary of D-Day Most songs got a good reception, including (surprisingly) 'Deutschland' which I suspect was more from shock than anything else. A few gremlins plagued the performance; one microphone broke; the other mike-stand descended slowly during 'May I?' until I was practically on my knees; Tom's guitar effect unit packed in before we even started and Stephen our bass player took the opening line ' Sometimes I Get Too Drunk' a bit too literally; but in spite of that and severe guitar and voice-tuning problems it was a pretty hip, garage-obscurist banana-frenzy happening evening.

Personal highlights for me included (to my knowledge) the first public performance for 20 years of Kevin's encore 'I've got a hard on for you baby' (and almost certainly the first time it's been sung by a girl), 'Why Are We Sleeping' played at furious pace that surprised the band as much as anyone else, and simply the fact that we went ahead and did it, and people came along and enjoyed themselves.

Wonders will never cease.

NICK SMITH