Wishbone Ash - From The Ashes (1978)

As I mentioned in my last Wishbone Ash post, the band were very prolific during the years 1978 and 1979, and recorded a lot of material which didn't make it onto their 'Just Testing' and 'No Smoke Without Fire' albums, and this post is made up of tracks from the 'No Smoke...' sessions in 1979, together with a couple of 'Locked In' leftovers ('Bad Weather Blues' is the studio take of 'Fully Tested's live recording) and a contemporary recording from the 'Lost Pearls' collection. Once again, it stands up very well as an album in it's own right, showing the high quality of the songs that they rejected as not good enough for their albums.    

Track listing

01 Hard On You
02 Time And Space
03 John Sherry Jam
04 Firesign
05 Night Hawker
06 Sheriff Of Sherwood
07 Chicago Tease
08 Bad Weather Blues

Wishbone Ash - Fully Tested (1979)

Fans of Wishbone Ash must have felt that all their Christmasses had come at once last year, with the appearance of a 30 CD box set of just about everything the band had ever recorded. Among the remastered albums were rare b-sides, out-takes and live rarities, and while all this was a surfeit of riches for the fans, finding the rare stuff to listen to meant trawling through literally hours of music that you were already familiar with. Looking through the track-listing I found that most of the good quality studio out-takes were from between 1977 and 1979, more specifically during sessions for the 'No Smoke Without Fire' and 'Just Testing' albums, so I've extracted those songs and put together a couple of great companion albums to those two official releases. This one comprises the out-takes from the 'Just Testing' album, plus a contemporary one-off single of 'Come On'/Fast Johnny', and a couple of live takes from the same period, which makes up an album that holds together surprisingly well for songs that weren't considered good enough to be released at the time.  

Track listing

01 Is Justice Done  
02 The Bells Chime  
03 Out On A Limb 
04 Where You Been  
05 Helpless (single 1980)
06 Halfway House  
07 Football and Boxing 
08 Fast Johnny (b-side of 'Come On')
09 Come On (single 1979)
10 Bad Weather Blues (b-side of 'You See Red' 12" single 1978)