‘The Band’ weren’t always ‘The Band’. They started out as ‘The Hawks’ and were the backing group for Ronnie Hawkins—a charismatic singer with more charm than ability who constantly toured the clubs and bars of the US South and the Canadian North during the mid-60’s.

Then ‘The Band’ got a big break. A very big break… they graduated to being the backing band for Bob Dylan, who at the time, was up there with The Beatles.

The Band’s learning curve went vertical and to cut a long story short they b

A whole generation of young men and women— born into an uncertain post 9/11 world, pounded by the ‘Great Financial Crisis’, haunted by precarity, betrayed by politicians and atomized by social media -— are looking for something to believe in.

So why not believe in something that promises so much? That is a mirror for all our hopes, ambitions and dreams? A slow-motion lottery that will make us all rich as Croesus and, at the same time, save the world?

If it is a religion it already has soothsay

We were the iron boys. Tough, invulnerable.

Fighting when we should’ve played. Dirty little gladiators in flares and platforms.

Later there were Friday nights in pubs where people threw empty pint glasses into ceiling fans.

At any moment you could get a kicking for looking at someone the wrong way.

You were hyper-aware— bristling, sweating, and fidgeting inside your invisible suit of iron.

Someone hands you a pill in a club and love fills you from your finger tips to the ends of your toes a

Singer-songwriter Paul Williams’s back catalog sits at the very outer edge of mawkish sentimentality—where pop comes dangerously close to ‘easy listening’.

Nevertheless, his writing skills have produced a seemingly endless list of hits recorded by everyone from Sinatra to Streisand. Of course, his most famous interpreter is Kermit the Frog who articulated his classic: ‘Rainbow Connection’ better than Willy Nelson ever could.

But Mr Williams’s career took a precipitous nose-dive after his great