Wishbone Ash

While it's certainly too much for the average Wishbone Ash fan, "Distillation" is an excellent four-disc, 56-track box set that features the best of the band's heavy boogie from the '70s. None of the group's essential tracks are missing, and it contains 4 previously unreleased cuts, 11 very rare tracks from the vaults and 12 live versions (CD 4) plus band biography and track by track comments by Andy Powell and Martin Turner.

While it's certainly too much for the average Wishbone Ash fan, "Distillation" is an excellent four-disc, 56-track box set that features the best of the band's heavy boogie from the '70s. None of the group's essential tracks are missing, and it contains 4 previously unreleased cuts, 11 very rare tracks from the vaults and 12 live versions (CD 4) plus band biography and track by track comments by Andy Powell and Martin Turner.

Wishbone Ash is the first studio album by Wishbone Ash. The band's debut album became a reality when they were opening for Deep Purple in early 1970. Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore was jamming during the band's soundcheck when Wishbone guitarist Andy Powell boldly plugged in and began jamming with Blackmore. After the show, Blackmore recommended that MCA Records sign the band. Deep Purple producer Derek Lawrence produced this album, which features elements of blues, progressive rock, and psychedelic improvisation. The album was a success and Wishbone Ash would soon become one of the most popular rock bands of the early 1970s.

Lost Pearls is a collection of out-takes recorded by the rock band Wishbone Ash between 1978 and 1982, released in 2004. Wishbone Ash are a British rock band who achieved success in the early and mid-1970s. Their popular albums included Wishbone Ash (1970), Pilgrimage (1971), Argus (1972), Wishbone Four (1973), There's the Rub (1974), and New England (1976). Wishbone Ash are noted for their extensive use of the harmony twin lead guitar format which had been attracting electric blues bands since Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page had played together in the Yardbirds in 1966. Their contributions helped Andy Powell and Ted Turner to be voted "Two of the Ten Most Important Guitarists in Rock History" (Traffic magazine 1989), and to appear in the "Top 20 Guitarists of All Time" (Rolling Stone).

If Wishbone Ash can be considered a group who dabbled in the main strains of early-'70s British rock without ever settling on one (were they a prog rock outfit like Yes, a space rock unit like Pink Floyd, a heavy metal ensemble like Led Zeppelin, or just a boogie band like Ten Years After?), the confusion compounded by their relative facelessness and the generic nature of their compositions, Argus, their third album, was the one on which they looked like they finally were going to forge their own unique amalgamation of all those styles into a sound of their own. The album boasted extended compositions, some of them ("Time Was," "Sometime World") actually medleys of different tunes, played with assurance and developing into imaginative explorations of new musical territory and group interaction.

The companion release to the quiet-moments compilation TENDER, Wishbone Ash collection TOUGH represents the more hard-rocking side of this stalwart British band. Wishbone Ash made their name in the 1970s with their dueling guitars and epic tunes, but TOUGH features a number of latter-day selections from the long-lived band, proving that as the decades went on, they managed to retain that hard-rock bite that had always endeared them to their legions of fans.