Yes we are a long way from anywhere. Closest city is Adelaide over 2,000 kms away & thats not really a place anyone wants to go to anyway. 2,000 km is roughly London to Glasgow & back twice. Bands often tour Australia & miss Perth (& sometimes Adelaide) The bigger bands doing world tours that include Asia/Japan usually get here. Last year I saw Deep Purple (with Journey) Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden & Neil Young. Sprinsteen is due next week but ticket prices are an absolute joke especially seeing that I am not a huge fan. I could buy a dozen CD's for the price of a half decent ticket.
Speaking of touring bands with 2 really great guitarists I saw Television a while ago in a small club (holds around 500) here in Perth (Fremantle actually) I got to see Tom Verlaine & Jimmy Rip from about 2 metres away.
Here are my ratings Wishbone ash 9 Pilgrimage 7 Argus 9 Four 9 Rub 8 Locked in (up) 1 Should have been for releasing this crap New england 7 Front page 5 No smoke 8
Ha! Television. Back to our discussion on Punk and New Wave! I said in an earlier posting that 'May aim is true' by Elvis Costello was, for me, arguably the album of 1977. Well, 'Marquee Moon' by Television wasn't far behind. That album was huge in 1977. Me and my mates bought that album plus their 'Special limited edition' 12" singles ('Prove it' and 'Marquee moon') and spent ages rummaging around record shops looking for Television rarities ('Little Johnny jewel' on 7"). Never saw them live, though. Pretty sure they never came to Liverpool back in the day or we would have been there like a shot! One thing that connects Television and Wishbone Ash: 'Argus' was Sounds album of the year in 1972, 'Marquee moon' was Sounds album of the year in 1977. How odd that an album with twin guitars and stuffed full of guitar solos should win 'album on the year' from the cheerleader publication of Punk in the year of Punk!
Wishbone Ash is one of those mysterious bands that for whatever reason I never even made an effort to listen to them over all these years. I'm not sure why and I probably still won't. Just reflecting on how some bands get passed by.
Going to have to up my score for FPN from 7 to 8. Been on heavy rotation in the car recently. It's a grower!
Hurrah! for 'Front page news'! If it hadn't been for that slightly soggy couple of tracks towards the end of side two ('Heartbeat' and 'The day...') I think I might have been tempted to up my score to a 7 or an 8.
Are you driving the streets of Norfolk wearing Aviator sunglasses, hair slicked back and the window wide open?
It's a bit cold so I guess you must have had your tank top on And open windows with 70's collars causes havoc !!
Apart from from front page,goodbye baby,come in from the rain,front page news could be "son of locked in"Soft rock indeed Wishbone 4 is a great hard rock album and deserves more votes on this thread.
I'm afraid I only know Argus, though I like it enough to have briefly owned a cream Thunderbird bass. In fact, I went into a local guitar shop and tried out a white Epiphone Thunderbird bass. As I was playing it the assistant came over to me and told me that they had had Martin Turner in earlier in the week, and he had picked the other white Epiphone Thunderbird bass, leaving this one behind. Not much of a sale pitch! I'm not entirely sure where to stand with Wishbone Ash. To my ear they are stuck somewhere between less complex prog rock and less heavy hard rock. Andy Powell seems to be a gifted guitarist with a brilliant touch and sense of tone production. However I just can't really get behind the live version of Jail Bait tacked onto my copy of Argus. It seems a bit ungainly and a tad bloodless really.
In the poll 2 people rated WA 4 really low dragging the average way down. I'll add your scores to the spreadsheet later today. I think it will boost the average up a notch.
Wow, a vintage Mustang. My first car was a '65 'Stang that I bought from a friend for $100 (in the '80's). Man that thing was a rocket ship. Check out the sliders to the far right of the keys on the dash. That was the heat controls/etc IIRC. Looked a lot like the original Star Trek transporter controls. We used to make Star Trek noises and move it around while tooling around....anyways I digress.....am listening to Live in Japan now preparing for a quick review....
I've adjusted the spread sheet to include silverhead's figures & for Mike burgess's change of mind brought about by freezing his upper body driving around with his window down. As suspected the only change is that Wishbone Ash Four now has an average rating of 6. We now have 8 contributors to the stats. 4 rated WA4 above the average, 1 at the average & 3 rated it lower than the average. We could possibly debate silverhead's rating as he has failed to rate Argus with a 10/10. Slipkid will need to issue him some stern words !
Live In Tokyo (1979) Band lineup as per the original LP: Martin Turner - Bass Guitar & Vocals Laurie Wisefield - Guitar & Vocals Andy Powell - Guitar & Vocals Steve Apton - Drums Yes you read that right - they misspelled Steve Upton's name as "Apton"! Sheesh. LP Tracklist with timings from Rainer Frilund's Wishbone Ash discography website: Side One F*U*B*B - 10:48 The Way Of The World - 10:27 Side Two You See Red - 6:12 Jail Bait - 5:17 Blowin' Free - 7:04 Recorded in Tokyo on 10th and 15th November 1978. Produced by Martin Turner. What we have here is the second official live album from Wishbone Ash (Live From Memphis was technically not a "release" but rather a promo so I won't count that), and it is the first live album from the mark II lineup. Unfortunately (for most of us) this album was only released in Japan. I myself had never even heard of it until many many years later. My first exposure to it - without even knowing that it had ever come out as an official album - was when I bought this bootleg CD called In America and Over Japan at a music expo back around 1990 . The bootleg CD opens with the three songs from Live From Memphis (Jailbait, The Pilgrim, and Phoenix) then closes with the Live In Tokyo album (note that this has a rather amusing misprint of F.U.B.B. as "T.U.B.B." on the back cover and in the booklet). Despite having a pretty large Ash collection, I not only never owned the LP but have never even seen it in the flesh! I never owned an official release of it until it came out on CD, in 2013 I believe, on a Japanese mini-LP SHM-CD, Universal catalog #UICY-76007. The bootleg sounds so great I can't actually say if the official SHM-CD even sounds any better. I gave both a spin while writing this and the main difference that jumps out at me (besides the official CD sounding louder) is that the boot has the beginning and between song chatter cut out. Regardless of which one I am listening to, this is a wonderful live representation of this lineup but man I want more! Since this is only a five song compilation of two different concerts the mind boggles as to how great it would be to hear both shows in their entirety. If God is an Ash fan maybe there are four discs here that we can get in the upcoming box set (IE: both Japanese 1978 shows complete). As we've said a couple times already, live is where Ash really excels, and this set is a good example of that. All of the songs are great and if all you've heard of live Ash is mark I's Live From Memphis (or Live Dates) then this is all the more interesting for hearing how the band have evolved with Laurie. We start with three songs from the mark II era and end with two old roasting chestnuts from Ted's days. It's cool hearing this version of the band tackle the older stuff. More than the fact that this is just too short, I think it does take away a bit from the listening experience that we only get a few snippets of the shows, losing the real ebb & flow of a live concert if it were the full set. But beggars can't be choosers & I'm glad to hear any of this I guess. My favorite track on this is probably Way of the World (which although I usually think of it as only one song, is really two songs if it were properly credited as parts I & II like on the studio album). If I ever did have the LP I would probably have worn out the grooves on side one. Something weird I just noticed while listening to this is that it sounds to me like (at least on some songs - Blowin' Free for instance) Andy's guitar is mixed to the right, when he should be on the left (yes?). Nevertheless I consider this an essential album for any fan of the mark II lineup. My updated Ash scorecard: Wishbone Ash - 8 (out of 10) First Light - 8 Pilgrimage - 5 Argus - 10 Wishbone Four - 1 Live Dates - 3 There's the Rub - 9 Locked In - 0 The King Will Come Live - 2 New England - 10 Front Page News - 3 No Smoke Without Fire - 8 Live In Japan - 9
Nah, everybody's entitled to their honest opinion. I thought it was amazing that everybody ranked it a 10!
As I have previously mentioned I am having issues with my dodgy copy the Live In Tokyo album which makes it a bit hard to fully judge it. The copy I have appears to be a rip from the LP. From my impaired position I will make a few comments. The sound quality does seem to be very good. Wishbone Ash live are a very exciting. The MK II songs in particular shine once unshackled from the studio production. Wishbone Ash being such great musician have no problems recreating these tunes away from the studio. Side one really is superb. The MK II band is distinctly different to the original band - not better, not worse. The album is way too short to be anything better than a tease. I would settle on 1 double disc compiled from both shows. Because I can't listen to my copy properly it's very hard to give it a rating but it will be less than slipkid. Not because it's not great but because it's not enough.
