Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. It Came On A Sunday
2. Mrs Cooper's Pie
3. Ladybird
4. Aries
5. Bogeyman
6. Shadow Of Man
7. Tasker's Successor
8. Hill Of Dreams
9. Virginia Waters
10. Child On A Crossing
11. Lucifer Corpus

Disc 2:

1. Felicity Jane
2. Nobody Knows
3. Buffalo
4. Henry Dawson
5. Diane's Big Daddy
6. Live And Learn
7. Dream Yourself A Hero
8. Fishers Of Men
9. Tripsy Lady
10. Bellyful Of Rock
11. Man Of Renown

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #123845 in Music
• Released on: 2008-11-03
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .27 pounds

Customer Reviews

For Lovers of Hammond Heavy Early 70's UK Rock
By 'eck - this is good stuff. Writing on the Wall were a late 60's UK underground band on a par with their contemporaries of that period such as the Edgar Broughton Band or the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Indeed if you take the fuzzed tones of the Broughton guitars and merge them with some seriously good hammond organ, and then add a vocalist who has dashes of said Arthur Brown and a bit of Roger Chapman, then you're not far from their sound.

They only released one official album, which is represented on the first CD of this package. Not all the tracks stand out from the crowd, but numbers such as the infectious opener "Came on a Sunday", their excellent reworking of the Zodiac's "Aries" complete with way way over the top vocals, and the very sinister Boogyman are all serious must haves if like me you're a big fan of hammond heavy early 70's rock.

The second CD is made up of tracks recorded at various locations over the next few years, many of which were never released. As a consequence the material can be a bit hit or miss to these ears. However easily the best track of side 2, and perhaps the Wall's most famous song is "Buffalo". Here restored to it's 6 minute plus original version. If you're familiar with this track from it's truncated form on the Gather in the Mushrooms compilation, then you will absolutely love this version. Full of eery melloton and keys, this is a mini prog rock masterpiece.

This CD would happily pick a fight with your Broughton Band / May Blitz / early Deep Purple collection, and probably do it some serious damage. Turn it up loud and stand well back.

The Mighty Writing on the Wall
As a callow long-haired youth I'd often spend Friday nights at the Nags Head, Wollaston, Northants with Big Bob on the door and the late John Peel looking after the turntables. It was the place to see un-recorded yet up and coming "underground" bands such as Stray, Wishbone Ash, Skid Row and even Supertramp before they became big. Unlike Supertramp but similar to the former bands, The Writing on the Wall never really made it big either. But that's where the similarities end. The other bands were great live, but WOTW where something else...exciting, riveting, sweaty, pulsating organ/guitar driven rock wit ha singer who sounded like Family's Roger Chapman on steroids at times!
Ah those were the days! If you saw the band this CD collection will bring back all those memories of how great the band were live, if you remember the band but couldn't get hold of their album at the time here's your chance. If you missed out first time around this CD is a massive piece of UK prog rock history and an insight into a band that deserved to have made it big but alas did n't.

classic organ rock
this 2 cd set has a lot to offer the first cd is excellent classic organ rock well played and well written some songs can slip a bit towards prog but soon end up rocking out.The second cd is a complete different thing all together not as rock as the first its a much more mature approach than the first but still has one ore 2 good songs that rock all in all a very good early 70s rock album this band should have been bigger but its the same old story great band bad management pity