Yes
“Steve Howe is the Michael Jordan of prog-rock!” – Jack Black
“When I start listening to ‘Hold On,’ I can’t stop listening to it for like forty-five minutes. It is ALL ABOUT ‘Hold On!’” – Al
“Yes…Yes!!! Oh, god…YES!!!!!!!!!” – Your mom
“Yes represent everything wrong with progressive rock, and deserve every bit of ridicule that I give them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go masturbate while listening to this White Stripes record.” – A modern music critic
Albums Reviewed:
First, let me just say this. Yes are NOT just “that ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’ band.” “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” is no doubt a fine and catchy song, but the road from Yes’s beginnings to mid-‘80’s pop stardom is a long, twisting, and pretty damn fun one. Though they aren’t mentioned along with Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd today (because modern music critics have made a concerted effort to permanently erase the word “prog-rock” from popular music’s vocabulary by 2010), they SHOULD be, because they pretty much symbolized the decade along with those two super-famous behemoths. They also symbolized “progressive rock” more than any other band, or at the very least took the genre to its reasonable limits. They were fantastically talented musicians, they wrote INCREDIBLY long suites (at one point releasing three consecutive albums, one of which was a double, with a combined TEN songs on them), and their lyrics, at their peak of “progressiveness,” were complete and total gibberish, understandable to only one man, lead singer Jon Anderson.
Ah, Jon Anderson. Most people that have a problem with Yes (at least those who don’t hate them simply for their weight and pretentiousness) focus their bile directly at poor Jon. These people say something along the lines of this: “His lyrics don’t mean ANYTHING, and, when he sings, his voice (which is too fucking high, by the way) has NO emotion whatsoever. He’s a singing robot!” Well, yes, his lyrics don’t make any goddamn sense, but that doesn’t really make a difference to me. Do prog lyrics EVER make sense? And concerning the sound of his voice, well, I LOVE Jon Anderson’s squawkbox, so EAT me. It is pretty high (though still about 6 billion octaves lower than Geddy Lee’s, the fucking elf), but he’s not doing a falsetto. You see, if you listen to Yessongs, you’ll hear him talk a number of times (“Chris Squire on bass guitar,” “this is a song called ‘Heart Of The Sunrise’”), and, when he speaks, his voice isn’t really any lower than when he sings, because it’s just NATURALLY HIGH. But it’s not really THAT high. Come on, people! And concerning both the lack of emotion and the dumb lyrics, it helps to NOT think of Jon Anderson as a “singer” in the traditional sense of the word, i.e. “the charismatic frontman who defines the band’s image,” like a Jim Morrison or Robert Plant. Instead, treat him and his voice like another instrument, the same as the bass or guitar or keyboards. The lines he sings aren’t SUPPOSED to mean anything (except to him, I guess), but the melodies and the harmonies ARE. He’s just another instrument, except that you don’t plug him into an amplifier and you can’t get any feedback from him. Though I bet you could smack him around like a drum kit! Hey, that’d be FUN!
So how did I get into the band? Well, that’s a neat story. Around spring last (sophomore) year, I noticed that, although I considered myself a “huge music nut,” my music collection had NO representation of “progressive rock” whatsoever, and so I set out to rectify this by sampling from the supposed “cream of the crop” of the genre. The album I downloaded first was Genesis’s Selling England By The Pound (based on the splurge-worthy recommendations of George Starostin and John McFerrin), and so I listened to it hoping to be utterly captivated…and I was BORED. Ugh, Genesis was BORING! Next, I downloaded King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson King, and definitely liked it more than that Genesis album (except for that fucking stupid “avant-garde” jam “Moonchild”), but I still hadn’t been GRABBED by either of these bands. Next, I thought I might try that “Yes” band Prindle loved so much, so I downloaded Fragile, and…WOW. As I first heard “Roundabout” emanating from my computer’s speakers, I just sat completely motionless. THIS was prog-rock? This ROCKED! I KNEW, only maybe three or four minutes into the song, that I was a Yeshead. There was no turning back. I listened to Fragile in its entirety four more times in the next two days (including directly after it finished the first time), and, scrapping my immediate plans to “sample” prog-rock, proceeded to become a HUUUUUGE Yes fan. I love ‘em!
Anyway, I
haven’t even gotten to the lineup yet!
The picture above is of the original Yes lineup (they changed lineups a
LOT, and usually functioned more like a frickin’ sports franchise than an
actual band), and from left to right are keyboardist Tony Kaye, drummer Bill
Bruford (one of the best drummers of all time, by the way), Anderson, bassist
Chris Squire (nicknamed “The Fish” and my personal favorite bassist EVER), and
guitarist Peter Banks. The “classic”
lineup consists of the original lineup, minus Kaye and Banks, and plus
guitarist Steve Howe and keyboardist Rick Wakeman, but I’ll get to all the
changes in the reviews. They’re often
funny as fuck. Anderson and Squire are
the two most important members of band.
They’re the band’s co-founders, and the only members of the original
lineup to last more than five albums.
Ah, whatever, onto the reviews!
Yes (1969)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Every Little Thing”
Before Yes were a mid-‘80’s pop band, they were a completely and bombastically pretentious ‘70’s progressive rock GIANT. And before they were that, they were a late-‘60’s pop band. It’s funny how things come back around like that, isn’t it? Now, although they were just a pop band (more or less) at this point, you’re not gonna find any ’60’s production equivalent to “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” here, nope. See, even though they weren’t doing huge, dense progressive suites just YET, they were still DIFFERENT. This isn’t just ANY late-‘60’s pop band here. They were pretty damn heavily jazz-influenced. Instrumentally, they were EXTREMELY talented, even at this early stage (well, except for one guy). Oh, and their singer sounded like a fucking fruit. We can’t forget that.
But, as I’ve already explained in my introductory paragraph, I feel a deep affection for Jon Anderson’s high-pitched wailings. He was a helluva singer! And he gets to show this on two nice dippy hippy-ish love ballads, which you MUST treasure while you can because they are THE ONLY TWO YES EVER WROTE. Anyway, first we’ve got the sappy “Yesterday And Today,” and then the even sappier “Sweetness.” “She brings the sunshine to a rainy afternoon. She puts the sweetness in and stirs it with a spoon.” Now, that is quite possibly the fruitiest thing I have ever heard, but it’s delivered with such a sweet, naïve, hippy tone that I can’t help but think “damn he’s a fucking wuss…but I guess he’s cool, too.” Oh, and another thing you won’t find on any other GOOD Yes records is the presence of COVERS. Yes, Yes include TWO neat covers on this baby. First, we’ve got a Byrds song called “I See You,” which the Yesmen reconstruct as a six minute-plus free jazz workout. I’m willing to bet (though I haven’t heard the original) that this is a little different from the Roger McGuinn/David Crosby version. They weren’t into the jazz, those Byrds. And neither were THE BEATLES, from whom the second cover is taken. Yes, those composers of “Close To The Edge” cover a BEATLES song, not that “Every Little Thing” resembles the original AT ALL. There’s an opening two minute instrumental freakout that Yes just added BECAUSE THEY COULD before we even get to the main part of the song. While I’ll always prefer the way those Liverpudlians sing “every little thing she does…she does for me! Yeah!” Jon does a damn good job himself. Plus, everything else in this version is cooler, because Yes fucking rules. This is what the Beatles might have sounded like if they were better instrumentally and had a fruit for a singer. Neat!
Hey! There’s four more songs on this record! Let’s talk about them. “Beyond And Before” opens Yes’s recording career with a Chris Squire bass note played so damn high up the fretboard it sounds like a guitar (because he’s Chris freaking Squire) and Jon Anderson “doo doo doo”’s that are, um, a LOT different from the “chants” that open Tales From Topographic Oceans. I also LOVE “Harold Land,” which is probably the closest precursor to classic progressive Yes we get here, as it’s got a whole bunch of different sections and tempo shifts. Ofcourse, the lyrics actually make some fucking sense, so there is a difference. It’s about war! “Now he’s marching soldiers in the rain as on to war they rode.” It’s a damn near great song, though VERY far off from that “other” song they would later write about war. You know, THAT one. The two remaining songs here, “Looking Around” and the ending track “Survival,” don’t quite do so much for me, but they’re pleasant. There’s not a weak track here! Unless ofcourse you don’t like dippy ballads. In that case, there’s two fucking horrendous tracks on here. “Sweetness” is cool, though!
Anyway, even though they haven’t even hit CLOSE to full stride yet, the Yessers still managed to lay out a pretty darn good album on their first try. What strikes me about it is the musicianship (again, except for one guy). Even though their songs aren’t at “Yes level” yet (the best song is a cover for god sakes! Although, it is a Beatles cover), they could damn well PLAY THEIR INSTRUMENTS. Bruford is throwing out jazzy rhythms and shit like there’s no tomorrow. Squire’s bass is the focal point of the entire band (as it SHOULD BE), and even Peter Banks, though no Steve Howe, is pretty impressive in his own right. That just leaves keyboard man Kaye, who isn’t so impressive. It doesn’t really make much difference YET (since the songs are relatively simple and he’s VERY low in the mix), but it would soon. He loves that goddamn organ, doesn’t he? And Anderson is Anderson. He sounds the same in 1969 as he always will. Those overdubbed harmonies rule even at this point, though Yes would do much neater stuff with that later. And that’s pretty much sums up this record in a nutshell: “quite good, enjoyable, but a mere stepping stone for what was to come.” And oh boy, WHAT was to come!
Time And A Word (1970)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Sweet Dreams”
But before they got to that stuff, Yes had to lay this piece of crap at our feet. The songs, as whole, are a sizeable step down from the debut album, but that’s not precisely why this record presents such a drop in quality. See, Yes sensed that progressive rock was “the next big thing,” and they wanted in, goddammit! However, they didn’t yet have the songwriting chops for it, and they knew this, so what could they do to sound more “mature and serious?” How about HIRE A FUCKING ORCHESTRA!!?? And so that’s what they did, and it turned out horrendously. The orchestrations don’t add to the songs at ALL, or even just blend in. They detract from the songs. A WHOLE lot. It sounds like Yes wrote these songs, then carted in the orchestra a few days before the record’s release, and overdubbed a bunch of strings and horns without actually considering whether it made ANY FUCKING SENSE. Fockers.
And to make matters worse, Kaye is MUCH more prominent on this record than the previous one. My theory behind this is that “progressive rock,” by definition, is all about the crazy keyboard shit. I mean, Keith Emerson? Rick Wakeman? So, even if the band didn’t actually HAVE a keyboardist like that, they could still give their own crappy keyboardist a lot more to do. THREE of the songs here open with Kaye’s keyboards, and by “Kaye’s keyboards,” I mean “that fucking organ the bastard always plays.” God, I hate that thing. You know, THERE ARE OTHER KEYBOARDS BESIDES THAT STUPID ORGAN. One of these three songs is the album’s opener “No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed,” which is actually a RICHIE HAVENS cover. You know Richie Havens? He’s the guy who sang that “Freedom!” song at the original Woodstock on his acoustic guitar. I’m willing to bet his version didn’t open with a crappy organ and stupid-sounding string flourishes. Later on, the song actually turns into a nice tune, and has, to me, the best “skeleton” of a song (i.e. before the orchestration, mixing, etc.) on here. Too bad the orchestra has to go and ram it in the ASS.
There’s also another cover on here, “Everydays,” this time a Stephen Stills song. Pity they never did a Graham Nash song. Even though it actually OPENS with those goddamn orchestrations and contains plenty of crappy overdubs, this is also a pretty nice tune. There’s a great solo section in the middle where Banks’s guitar absolutely COOKS, and seems to be even BETTER than it actually is since it’s counteracted by dumb orchestrations and Kaye’s fucking organ AGAIN. Blah. The song that comes after it, “Sweet Dreams,” is a nice rockin’ number driven by Squire’s bass, which is just OVERPOWERING. Real good tune. Oh, also, IT DOESN’T HAVE ANY ORCHESTRAL OVERDUBS. That’s probably the main reason I like it best.
The second half of the album is, on the whole, not very good either. We’ve got two long, spacey, pointless songs called “The Prophet” and “Astral Traveller” on which Yes were just reaching for something (i.e. The Yes Album) that was just beyond their grasp at this point. “The Prophet” is especially bad since it features a two minute Kaye intro on which, ofcourse, he uses that SAME goddamn organ AGAIN. WHY MUST YOU USE THE SAME FUCKING ORGAN FOR EVERY SONG, YOU FUCKING SILLY ENGLISH PIG-DOG! Christ. A little more than a minute into his intro, Tony is joined by the string section of the orchestra, who basically play the same simple riff he does. You can probably guess how that sounds. Thank GOD for Squire, or the entire first half of this song would just be completely unredeemable, though the second half is OK. Too much Kaye, not enough people who are good. “Astral Traveller” isn’t really any better as a whole, but this time the intro contains some funky Peter Banks guitar riffing (yes!), which rules until he’s joined by, guess who, TONY KAYE AND HIS ORGAN. Ass. “Clear Days” is a dippy Jon ballad along the same lines of “Sweetness,” which would be good except for that fact that the instrumentation is handled ENTIRELY by the orchestra. No Bruford. No Squire. No Banks. I guess no Kaye either, though, so that’s a plus. Another plus is it’s over quickly (just two minutes), so I can hear that cool guitar intro to “Astral Traveller,” the rest of which I will then skip to hear the title track, which is probably the second best original on here. It opens with some pretty acoustic guitar, and the orchestra holds off until the very end to slaughter it, which is nice of them. It’s got an EXTREMELY stupid chorus (“There’s a time and the time is now and it’s right for me!”), but if I were to penalize Yes for stupid lyrics while not penalizing them for meaningless tantric gibberish lyrics, I’d feel like a hypocrite, so I’ll say I enjoy the song, at least until the orchestra makes it its bitch.
But I won’t say I enjoy this record. Honestly, I see no reason why anyone would ever want to listen to it. The band really haven’t progressed much at all since their debut song-wise, and so basically you get a set of songs similar to the debut (though of lower quality) hampered by overbearing orchestral overdubs and too much Tony Kaye. Feel VERY free to skip over this one.
The Yes Album (1971)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “I’ve Seen All Good People”
After two albums, and with increasing artistic ambitions, GM Chris Squire realized that his current roster just couldn’t cut it, so the Yessers made their first (of many) free-agent signings. Ofcourse, being idiots, THEY REPLACED THE WRONG FUCKING GUY. Apparently, Tony Kaye’s contract was too big to fit under most bands’ salary cap, and so they instead settled for an upgrade at guitar, inking Steve Howe to a long-term contract and placing Peter Banks on unconditional release waivers. Now, I like Peter Banks’ guitar and all, but he simply CANNOT hold a candle to Steve Howe, who, in addition to just being a more talented and satisfying guitarist, is probably the best acoustic player I have EVER heard. He’s just fucking ridiculous. You have not LIVED until you’ve heard some vintage Steve Howe acoustic shit.
So, with Mr. Howe on board, the “classic” period of Yes begins with this record here. Four seven-to-ten minute spacey rockers (which are all about a bazillion times better than “Astral Traveller”) and two short linking-thingys. One reason that this is the start of the classic period, besides the fact that the songs are long and RULE, is that Jon Anderson’s lyrics have reached their “what the FUCK is he talking about” stage. Like, for instance, a line he utters in “Yours Is No Disgrace:” “Shining flying purple wolfhound, show me where you are!” Bwahhhh? But while that’s just the tip of the iceberg, no one in their right mind would EVER become a Yes fan for the lyrics, so let’s leave Poor Jon alone and focus on the music, which is easily the best they’ve come up with thus far (even if this album is just a LITTLE overrated). “Yours Is No Disgrace” is the first of the four “long, spacey rockers that don’t make any fucking sense,” and is quite good. Ofcourse, that dickwad Kaye is still in the band, so his stupid freaking organ has to make an appearance in the intro, though he actually breaks out a SYNTHESIZER (shocking!) a few times in this song. Ofcourse, I think I could play the riff he plays, and I don’t even play the piano. How did this guy last for THREE albums? It boggles the mind. The line “yours is no disgrace!” that gets repeated a bunch of times throughout the tune sounds like a mantra of sorts, which is actually how a lot of these lyrics sound. Jon doesn’t make any goddamn sense, but his lyrics haven’t reached their full DENSITY yet, with mantras as opposed to rambling (yet neat-sounding, I guess) bullshit.
Now, when I say “mantra,” I mean something, like, oh, I don’t know, the line “I’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I’m on my way!” repeated approximately 300 times in the course of one song like it actually means something. This is exactly what constitutes the lyrics to, yup, you guessed it, “I’ve Seen All Good People.” You’re so frickin’ SMAHT! The song is awesome, though, except for two Kaye-ruined parts. God, I HATE TONY KAYE. It’s evenly split up into two halves, the first of which is a super-pretty acoustic part that gets messed up for its last thirty seconds by Kaye’s organ, and the second of which is a fun, foot-stompin’ boogie that gets messed up for its last thirty seconds by Kaye’s organ. But, except for the endings, this song fucking RULES. It’s also one of only THREE Yes tunes I’ve ever heard on classic rock radio (the others being “Roundabout” and, ofcourse, “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”), so maybe you’ve heard it, but I doubt it. Yes is SERIOUSLY underrepresented on classic rock radio. Perhaps if they played a little less fucking Tom Petty I could hear “Going For The One.” Or not.
The other RRRRRRRRRREALLY good long song here is “Starship Trooper,” which distinguishes itself (besides being named after a Casper Van Dien movie) by being pretty much uncompromised by Kaye’s organ. I actually hear a cool synth tone in there once. Oh, and the middle is FUCKING AWESOME. There’s a completely superb little acoustic jig (Steve Howe baby!) followed by, essentially, backing music over which Anderson and Squire overdub their voices about a hundred times, and it sounds HEAVENLY. Anderson may have a high voice, but he was a fucking FANTASTICALLY talented singer, whether you like how his voice actually sounds or not. You cannot deny that. While the middle part of this song most definitely kicks ass, the REAL Howe showcase would be “The Clap” (originally titled “Genital Herpes,” I think), one of the linking thingys, and on which Steve plays a REALLY fast, REALLY fun, and REALLY complicated acoustic melody, and does it LIVE. HOLY MOTHER OF POTATOES! He rules. The other linking thingy would be the nice, underrated “A Venture,” on which Kaye plays some very nice, tasteful and appropriate PIANO (I’m speechless! Tony Kaye did THAT?), and which then leads into the closing and final “long spacey rocker that doesn’t make any fucking sense,” “Perpetual Change.” Now, this is undoubtedly a worthy song, but one part in it REALLY irks me. See, there’s a point where the ENTIRE instrumental track decides to migrate away from the center of my head and camp itself SO FAR in my right headphone I can barely hear it, and it gives me a damn headache before Kaye mercifully (and on top of that with a different keyboard) comes in on the left. This wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t wearing headphones, but alas I MUST, because my third roommate (not Li, Li’s cool) is a FUCKING JACKASS who can’t stand the sound of ANY music EVER, not even Friday afternoon at 1:30pm (which I’ve learned from experience). Now, how is it that the ONLY student at Harvard with his own personal web review site has a roommate who can’t stand music (oh, and he’s a classical music snob, to boot)? Can you sense the irony of the situation? CAN YOU SENSE THE FUCKING IRONY??
Oh, and I once caught him reading my email. Fucking worthless piece of shit. He’s moving out eventually (i.e. at the semester break) I think though (note: He moved out a while ago, I just neglected to let you know for a bit. He still sucks shit.), so I got that going for me, which is nice. And this record is also pretty damn nice, even though Kaye is still in the band.
Fragile (1972)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Roundabout”
GM Squire FINALLY listened to what all of the band’s fans had been saying, that is, “you need a new goddamn keyboard player.” So, when Kaye’s contract finally expired, Squire went out and signed the best free agent keyboardist on the market, (tall, silver-caped, fruitily-classically-leaning Rick Wakeman) and Yes, with a mind-blowingly talented musician at every position, was ready to take a run at the title. They ran into some problems, though. Notably, all the keyboards Wakeman brought with him to training camp (a dozen or so, as opposed to Kaye, who had, what, TWO?) cost a LOT of money, so the band had to rush to stick a record out (by giving each of the five members a “solo spot” to fill up space) to stake a claim to that title. And guess what? THEY WON THE FUCKING TITLE!
“Roundabout,” one of the greatest songs of all time ever by ANYONE, starts the record with a stately fade-in before *PING* goes Howe’s acoustic guitar for a brief solo, another *PING*, another little solo, a third *PING*, a third solo, this time longer, that jumps to life and BOOM! The song starts. ALL SQUIRE ALL THE TIME! His bass is SO GODDAMN LOUD. Then Anderson sings the first line, “I’ll be the roooooouuuundabout!” and, jesus, SO MUCH COOL SHIT happens. Wakeman plays fast little keyboard fills Kaye wouldn’t be able to play if he practiced them for TEN YEARS. The “mountains come out of the sky…and they STAND THERE!” line. Bruford absolutely OWNS the drum kit. Then there’s the fast metallic part, which RULES, and the middle spacey section, with Wakeman playing a repeated keyboard trill under some more Howe acoustic godliness, before Anderson comes back in, sings the “stand there” line a little softer, and then BOOM! The song comes BACK, with Wakeman delivering a groovy, kick-BUTT keyboard solo, followed by a mind-blowing Howe solo, followed by another Wakeman solo, then Howe again, then they both play some trills and BOOM! Anderson comes back. My ass is kicked for another minute or so before the overdubbed Anderson “da da da!”’s that are just so goddamn beautiful. Then they get abrubtly cut off by Howe’s acoustic guitar, and the song ends. Phew.
Now, if the rest of this record were thirty-two minutes of INDUSTRIAL NOISES I’d still give it a 7 or so, but, instead of that, there’s another thirty-two minutes of Yesmusic! Huzzah! OK, next is Wakeman’s solo spot, “Cans And Brahms.” If you ever wanted to know what “Brahms on the polymoog” sounded like, here’s your chance. It’s a little odd and silly, but a good breather after “Roundabout.” Next comes Anderson’s solo spot, “We Have Heaven,” which has about fifty-gajillion overdubbed Jons constantly getting stuck in my head. Yes, he’s singing “tell the moon-dog, tell the march-hare.” So what. Fuck the lyrics! After a minute or two, a door SLAMS, some creepy footsteps walk from one headphone to the other, and eery whooshing wind noises come in to introduce the second of the three “epics” on the record, “South Side Of The Sky.” Now, Yes is fruity, I’m not denying this, but they’re not fruity ALL THE TIME. This song is so dark, it’s about FREEZING TO DEATH (“A snow storm, a stimulating voice, of warmth of the sky, of warmth WHEN YOU DIE!!!”). While the song itself is awesome, the middle part is absolutely INCONCEIVABLY orgasmic. It amounts, for starters, to a Wakeman piano solo for a bit, before he’s joined by Bruford and Squire, and then by Anderson and Squire AGAIN doing that overdubbed nonsense language trick that WORKS EVERY GODDAMN TIME. The fact that it’s so soothing just makes the main part of the song, when it comes back, KICK THAT MUCH MORE ASS. And this time it has a new wrinkle, as Howe is playing a DIFFERENT guitar fill in between EVERY line Anderson sings, each of which is better than the previous one, and which culminate in this descending one which is just SO BRILLIANT. The song eventually fades out and gets replaced by Bruford’s solo spot, “Five Per Cent For Nothing,” which is just a thirty-second jazzy drum splurge that seems like it’s over before it starts.
Oh, and THERE’S A WHOLE OTHER SIDE to this thing! “Long Distance Runaround” defines the word “jumpy,” and has great interplay between Howe and Wakeman, before Squire’s bass comes in and drowns everything else out, ofcourse. But the REAL treat comes after the song’s fade-out, as the last echoey guitar chords fade into “The Fish,” which, obviously (if you read my intro paragraph), is Squire’s solo. First, imagine six, seven, eight, whatever basslines overdubbed on top of each other. Now, imagine that these particular basslines, when taken together, form, somehow, the third-best piece of music on this record (after the two long pieces on side one). Do you REALIZE how cool that is, how (Note: at this point in the review I was interrupted by a ten-minute fire alarm, and it’s freezing outside. Fuck Dunster.) something so catchy, clever, and tuneful, can be constructed using NOTHING BUT BASS (and drums, too). Even the high shit that sounds like a guitar! That’s bass, too! ROOTY TOOTY FRESH AND FRUITY! After this is Howe’s solo spot, a three-minute acoustic interlude called “Mood For A Day.” Obviously, it rules. It’s slow, moody, and medieval-sounding. Then, after the bass cleverness, and the acoustic guitar relaxation, we get SPEED METAL RIFFING. Now, I guess it’s not REALLY metal, but this is YES we’re talking about here, so the riffs at the start of “Heart Of The Sunrise” can be categorized as metallic for them at this point in their career. They go on for a few minutes and recur a couple times, and in between there’s some gorgeous quiet parts, especially how Jon sings out “SHARP!! DISTANCE!!” I could describe the whole song, but this review is already too damn long, so I’ll refrain from doing so. Once the song ends, though, there’s a little surprise, but I won’t tell you what it is! You’ll have to find out for yourself!
I’ve written way too damn much, but it’s still not enough to do justice to this record. It’s four incredibly, fantastically, ridiculously talented musicians (and Jon Anderson, too), at their peak, working together as one organic unit (well, except for the solo spots), and it’s just breathtaking. It’s a damn shame they only made one more album together as a five piece. I just can’t recommend this record highly enough. If you’re at ALL curious about progressive rock (or even if you’re not), Yes is the band to try, Fragile is the album to try, and (if you want to get even more specific) “Roundabout” is the song to try. I GUARANTEE, no matter your taste in music (unless you’re a fucking classical snob bitch), you’ll find SOMETHING to like on the album, whether it be the vocal harmonies, the acoustic guitar, the domination of the bass, whatever. Just go buy it, download it, burn it, borrow it, or steal it TODAY. Pure forking genius.
nikus80@hotmail.com writes:
I finally got this record on
everybody and their sister
recommendation and man, it rules. It's a fun record, only South Side Of The
Sky and Heart Of The Sunrise show any darkness, and *maybe* sections of
Roundabout. The solo pieces are hilarious, specially We Have Heaven, but
Five percent and Cans And Brahms come close. How can anyone not like this
record? That said, I'm not such a big fan of "The Fish", though is
good.
Close To The Edge (1972)
Rating: 10
Best Song: “Close To The Edge”
After the unqualified success that was Fragile, the Yes personnel people were able to keep the core of the band together for one more album (regrettably, ONLY one more), and, with Fragile being a VERY rushed effort, on this album here we FINALLY get to the true “definition” of Yes as it were, and that is: “looooooooong songs, lyrics you’d need a degree in near-eastern philosophy to decipher, and playing so mind-rapingly professional and impressive there are probably only a handful of bands that could ever HOPE to cover their songs.” If you’re someone who can’t stand “pretentious” music and long, drawn-out suites, you should avoid this album and the next two studio ones at ALL cost. You should still get Fragile, though. It RULES!
So, even though this album could be defined as the “definitive” Yes record, the only one where the best Yes lineup EVER has all the time in the studio they want, as big a budget as they want, and no more need for solo spots, I have to say I think it’s a SLIGHT step down from the last one, even though it is completely MINDBLOWING, and still gets a 10. The band has gotten even TIGHTER and more focused since Fragile (if that’s even possible) and some of the instrumental interplay is simply astonishing. It’s just not quite as FUN as Fragile was. Fragile, even though it is prog-rock, ROCKS like no other progressive album I’ve ever heard. It’s a butt-shaking good time to go ALONG with the ridiculous musicianship. This one (except for the last track) doesn’t really rock much at all. It’s a cosmic, spacey, mind-expanding and beautiful piece of work, but it doesn’t get my ass all in a tither. And I like it when my ass is in a tither.
Anyway, I think I mentioned before how the songs were looooooong on this record, and I was NOT lying. There are a grand total of THREE here, the sidelong title track (which is just ORGASMIC) and the two, um, “shorter” ten-minute numbers on side two. And JESUS is Yes pretentious by this point. Not only are the songs as fucking long as my gigantic penis, but the lyrics have finally reached the “density” I was talking about two reviews ago. The opening line of the title track goes “A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace, and rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace.” Now, please tell me, WHAT THE FUCK IS JON ANDERSON TALKING ABOUT!? And we don’t even hear these lyrics until a heckuva long way into the song. See, we first have the one-minute opening fade-in (sea waves and chirping birds and whatnot), and then the two-minute crazy fucked-up fusion section after that, and so we don’t get any “pleasant” real music until THREE MINUTES into the song, but it’s OK! Because the song is INCREDIBLE. See, I don’t mind pretention at ALL if the band displaying it can back it up, and Yes can certainly back it up.
And GOD were they pretentious. If you’re a punk rocker, just stay away. Seriously. The title track is actually divided up into four “sections” (something they’d actually been doing since The Yes Album) called “The Solid Time Of Change,” “Total Mass Retain,” “I Get Up I Get Down,” and “Seasons Of Man.” Like the lyrics, who the hell knows what ANY of it means, and (except for “I Get Up I Get Down,” which is the “spacey middle slow beautiful” section) I can’t tell which is which, because this isn’t four separate songs smushed into one, as many sidelongs are. It really is one whole work, with, actually, fairly few musical themes for a nineteen-minute tune. But it’s NOT boring. HOLY ITALIAN MEATLOAF, it is NOT boring. There’s so much going on I don’t know where to begin. I do love that opening section. It gives the song a truly epic feel. In the first half of the tune, there’s a section where Squire’s bass sounds, literally, like it is SQUASHING and KILLING a small animal with every note. SO COOL. And BILL BRUFORD’S DRUMMING is so perfect. I’m an aspiring bad quasi-drummer myself, but this song just makes me want to give up and throw in the towel because, no matter how much I try, I’ll never have 1/100 of his ability. Then, ofcourse, the “I Get Up I Get Down” section, which is GORGEOUS, and has Wakeman playing the loudest church organ I have EVER heard, something which makes the song sound like a goddamn HYMN or something instead of rock and roll. And it’s really not a rock song. It’s a rock symphony. And it blows my frickin’ mind. All of it. Except what Jon is actually singing about. That shit’s weird.
And, also, there’s two more songs here! “And You And I” is the “soft” one of the two, and starts with just about the coolest acoustic guitar intro I’ve ever heard in my life. It sounds like Howe is in the studio just plucking random notes, then he finds a few chords he likes and strums them thinking “hey, this might be cool,” before the song itself is begun by six Squire bass notes and a TRIANGLE, to which Steve replies by strumming some ACTUAL opening chords, followed by a superb little Wakeman fill. This song is just gorgeous beyond words. There’s a stately, bombastic-type section that’s reprised three or four times during the tune, and it rules. But, god, I can’t get over how Jon sings the lyrics, even if they don’t make any sense. “And you and I climb over the sea to the valley!” Beautiful. The opening few minutes to it, no matter how awesome the title track is, are my favorite part of the record. The other tune, “Siberian Khatru,” would be the more “hard-rocking” of the two, and it’s not as good as the preceding tracks, but still holds its own QUITE nicely, thank you. The riff Steve plays to open the tune will smack you upside the head a few times, and in the middle Wakeman plays a completely out of place HARPSICHORD solo that rules YOUR ass. Wicked.
This record is the pinnacle of “Yes-ness.” If you don’t mind that, I’d say get it today. If you do, bite me, and then get it anyway.
Yessongs (1973)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Roundabout”
The problem with dynasties is that it’s impossible to keep them together forever. If a group does as well as Yes had for the previous two albums, it’s really only a matter of time before their top players start getting plucked away by others trying to build their own champions, and so it begins here. Soon after the release of Close To The Edge, Robert Fripp, King Crimson’s owner, president, CEO, GM, assistant GM, manager, pitching coach, head scout, first baseman, bullpen catcher and batboy, made drummer Bill Bruford a HEFTY free agent offer which he just couldn’t turn down, and so for the first time (but not the last) a member of the classic lineup leaves the band. To replace him, Squire signed veteran free agent Alan White to a long-term contract with performance bonuses tied to long, tribal-sounding drum solos. Now, White is indeed a good drummer (I like him a lot), but he is NO Bill Bruford. I’d say that as Peter Banks is to Steve Howe on guitar, White is to Bruford on the drums. Very good, but not spectactular. A solid complementary player, but hardly a star. There is simply NO ONE whose drumming sounds like Bill Bruford’s. He was the man.
But, actually, he still plays on two tracks from this record, because it’s a live album, and a TRIPLE live album at that. Essentially, it contains live renditions of every important track from the last three records (except “South Side Of The Sky,” BASTARDS), as well as “Mood For A Day” and an excerpt from Wakeman’s first solo record (a keyboard instrumental concept album entitled “The Six Wives Of Henry VIII”…Rick Wakeman is a dork) and so to fit this all together in one release they needed three LP’s. In the CD reissue it’s condensed onto two discs, but it’s still a terrifyingly ginormous amount of music to digest in one sitting, totalling about 130 minutes. Still, because of the incredible dedication I have to my craft, I’ll try to illustrate some of its features.
Yes, as a live band, were (at least from hearing this record) very, VERY good, and two things prevent this from getting a 10. First, as I’ve said numerous times in other places, I’m biased against live albums and find ones that don’t really do anything different from the studio versions (and this does NOT, believe me, “Roundabout” is the best song here because it’s also the best song they’d done on record) are just unnecessary except for big fans (like me). Second is two lengthy solo wank-a-thons that actually coincide with the tracks Bruford plays on. “Perpetual Change” is lengthened out five minutes past its original running time, and most of this is taken up by a goddamn DRUM SOLO by Bruford. Now, at least it’s not an ELEVEN MINUTE drum solo (hello, Led Zeppelin!), but it still bores me. The fact that lengthy solos by Bill Bruford and John Bonham (my two favorite drummers) do absolutely NOTHING for me leads me to think I don’t like the drum solo. I bet it’s cool if you’re THERE, but how can you listen to a guy playing the drums for more than a minute or two? I don’t know! The other wank-a-thon is a TEN-MINUTE BASS SOLO, which is how “The Fish” is reproduced in a live setting. And it’s BORING. You can’t overdub LIVE, and that’s what made “The Fish” so goddamn COOL on record, the overdubs. Blah. The wank sucks the nut if you’re not actually seeing it. WHY do bands persist in sticking the wank on the record? It confuses the mind.
There are some very interesting things going on here besides the aforementioned wank, though. First of all, the band RAWKS on here much more than on record. I mean, frickin’ “AND YOU AND I” rawks! If “And You And I” can rawk, anything can rawk. They’re obviously more confident players now (even with a weaker drummer) than on The Yes Album, and that shows in how the numbers from that record are tighter and more solid (and more drawn out as well) than on the original album. And it’s neat to hear Wakeman play Kaye’s parts from those numbers, since on record they were just boring backing organs. Wakeman actually mostly sticks to the original parts, and he’s probably bored as hell doing it, but during “Yours Is No Disgrace” he adds random trills and things to that ridiculously simple synth part I mentioned in The Yes Album’s review. Wakeman fucking rules, even if he was as fruity as Jon. As a result of the RAWKingness I mentioned a little before, the crowd REALLY gets into few of the songs here, and the last two numbers (“Yours Is No Disgrace” and “Starship Trooper”) produce audible CLAPPING in time from the audience. They get especially animated in the middle acoustic section of “Starship Trooper.” They’re clapping their hands and stomping their feet to progressive rock! That’s why Yes RULES, because they write this remarkably complicated and crazily dense music, but you can clap your hands, stomp your feet, and sing along. And in the event that you can’t, it’s probably really purty (“And You And I”). Go Yes. Go Yes indeed.
Tales From Topographic Oceans (1974)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Ritual”
Actually, for this album and the next one, forget all that “clapping your hands” shit, since you’d be very hard-pressed to find ANYTHING fun like “Roundabout” on either one of them, though for diametrically opposed reasons. For this record here, the first studio release with new signee Alan White hitting the skins, the reason would be “it’s fucking boring.” I consider Close To The Edge to be the “pinnacle of Yes-ness” because it’s the longest (on a song-by-song basis), most beautiful, and most progressive album made by the classic lineup. Plus it’s better than this one. However, if you want to just go by the sheer LENGTH and WEIGHT of the record and the utter indecipherability of Anderson’s lyrics, then this one wins the “pinnacle of Yes-ness” competition hands-down. See, it’s a DOUBLE ALBUM, and it has FOUR TRACKS. I’ll give you all a minute to think about exactly what that means…
……………………
…Figured it out, yet? Well, if you haven’t, remember that an LP contains two sides, and so this record, being a double, would have four total LP sides. And it has four songs. Now do you get it? There are FOUR SIDELONG COMPOSITIONS on this album. Four tracks, each one about twenty minutes long. If that just triggered your gag reflex, I don’t blame you. But guess what? THAT’S NOT ALL! See, this is also a concept album based around a long footnote Anderson found while he was reading some tantric schlock book entitled “Autobiography Of A Yogi,” and the four tracks are called, respectively, “The Revealing Science Of God,” “The Remembering,” “The Ancient,” and “Ritual.” So let’s recap: This is a double album, containing FOUR SIDELONG pieces, based on a text that, oh, about ZERO of the people who might have wanted to purchase this record had ever HEARD OF, let alone read.
But the miraculous thing about it is that the band could make this behemoth of a project turn out so damn well. Now, it’s hard enough for most bands to write a song more than five or six minutes long, let alone ten or eleven, let alone twenty, let alone FOUR of them, and so, ofcourse, the record seems padded in places. And long stretches of it would be a pretty fucking good cure for insomnia. But YOU try writing four sidelong pieces and see how they turn out, BITCH!
Anyway, though it is BORING in places, it’s uniformly pleasant, and each of the four songs has stretches of brilliance thrown in here and there. The trick is finding them! Not surprisingly, many of my favorite passages are Steve Howe acoustic stuff. Steve Howe sounds like he was BORN with an acoustic in his hands. He’s so good! His acoustic work in the “will we reach…winds allow…other skyyyyliiiines!” part of “High The Memory” is superb, even if much of that song sounds like a fucking cutesy lullaby, albeit with lyrics a two-year-old probably wouldn’t jive with too well (since they don’t speak Sanskrit or Hindi). Anderson’s vocal work in the first part of “The Revealing Science Of God” is great too. Well, it is after the “chants” that open the track. That is a fucking ODD way to open up a record, isn’t it? To chant a few lines like a goddamn druid. Yeah, that’ll sell! GO WITH IT!
You know what else is cool? The percussion solo that opens up “The Ancient,” for which Alan White probably got a sizeable performance bonus. The way that Howe lays down some fusion-y guitar lines over it paves the way for the next record (even if it’s not very exciting), and I always like it when I can pick out patterns like that. It makes me feel smaht. Pretty much all of the first two thirds of the song is weird fusion-y shit that never gets exciting, but the last third is pretty much a six minute excuse for Howe to dick around on his acoustic guitar. Alright by me! The last track “Ritual” gets the nod for the best because it has the most charming and catchy moment on the ENTIRE album, and that would be how Jon sings out “Nous sommes du soleeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiil!” a whole bunch of times (even if that constitutes about 1/20 of the song). Now, French people are ugly, foul-smelling, and they eat babies, so I’ve never bothered to learn French, and thus I have no goddamn idea what it means. But it sounds so NICE it doesn’t matter. Plus, I can’t tell what any of the rest of the album means, either, so it fits right in.
Oh, and during “Ritual” Howe gets lazy and plays the guitar line from “Close To The Edge” once, but I guess they had to fill up twenty minutes SOMEHOW! I mean, there’s enough neat bits and pieces here (Howe, neat percussion, Howe, some nice Wakeman solos, Howe, lovely vocal melodies, and did I mention Howe?) to make a fucking FANTASTIC (almost 10-worthy) 35-40 minute album, but it’s 80 minutes, and thus it’s got all sorts of padding and passages that are just boring, boring, BORING. But this is pretty much a PERFECT album to listen to late at night when you’re tired, or (as it would be in my case) drunk off your ASS. It’s four pretty soundscapes that work SUPERBLY as background-type music, but, if you listen to this at an inappropriate time, expect to YAAAAAWWWWWWN more than once.
Oh, and Squire is buried a LOT lower in the mix than before, so that pretty much sucks sailor cock.
Relayer (1974)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “The Gates Of Delirium”
Hmm, well, um…they sure solved that boredom problem, didn’t they?
Now, even
though Tales just about singlehandedly
(and eternally) ended all critical respect for progressive rock, that
didn’t stop YES! Nope! Even though this record is a return to the Close
To The Edge format (one sidelong, two “shorter” tracks on side two), Yes
manages to go even FURTHER into the deep end of the pool at the local prog-rock
YMCA here. It also marks departure #2 of
a member of the classic lineup, as, unhappy with his contract situation after Tales,
Wakeman left the group to pursue other opportunities in the free agent
market. To replace him, Squire lured top
keyboard prospect Patrick Moraz (from
And the sidelong track that starts the album…I mean, my GOD, have you HEARD “The Gates Of Delirium?” Jesus fucking crap on a STICK! We have here a twenty-two minute musical interpretation of war, and, on first listen, it’s confusing as FUCK, but eventually you’re able to figure out what’s going on. Obviously, being a battle, there’s the prelude, the battle, and the aftermath. However, being so smart and all, I can pick out even more phases than that! First of all, the “prelude” consists of a bunch of different sections, each of which gets progressively harder and more aggressive as the battle draws nearer and nearer. And, hey, for once THE LYRICS MAKE SENSE! YES! Anderson is exhorting his troops to battle until, at one point, someone offers up the question “Listen, should we fight forever, knowing as we do know fear destroys? Listen, should we leave our children?” To this the general replies “Kill them, give them as they give us! Slay them, burn their children’s laughter onto HELL!” As you can tell, this is no longer happy, cosmic, tantric-schmantric Yes. This is an utter anomaly of a record that presents a dark, fierce, aggressive and menacing Yes, who come at you with COMPLETE AND TOTAL FUSION BRUTALITY.
Anyway, the battle begins around the eight-minute mark, and I sense three distinct stages. The first part of the battle features a sort of “call and response” between Moraz and Howe that (I think) represents the two armies. The second battle section features even crazier and more hectic keyboard/guitar interplay, as well as all SORTS of fun sound effects. Crowds of people yelling and shouting in exhortation, metal clashing against metal, the moans and screams of people being killed, MORE metal clashing against metal. Total fucking BRUTALITY. Then a triumphant sounding keyboard melody plays a bit (though still with the brutality), before the winning army leaves the field of battle (illustrated by an instrumental track reoccuring several times, softer each time, until out of aural range). Ofcourse, then there’s the aftermath. I myself can picture Jon standing on an open plain, looking around at the carnage and dead bodies lying everywhere, singing “soon, oh soon, the light!” while the afternoon sun beats down on his shoulders. Nuttiness.
But as brutal as the middle section of “Gates” was, you ain’t seen NUTHIN’ yet, since the second side starts with “Sound Chaser” which is ALL ABOUT the fusion shit, and is just about the most brutal, forceful, and mind-bending song I’ve ever heard. It’s like your head is caught in a goddamn blender for nine minutes. A blender of SHEER BRUTALITY. After an odd percussion intro, the main riff comes in, which contains about 50,000 notes per second (Steve Howe!), and just makes your head spin around in total confusion. In the middle of the song Howe lays down a two minute FLAMENCO GUITAR solo. In and of itself, that doesn’t sound so bad, but FLAMENCO IS NOT MEANT TO BE PLAYED ON A METALLIC-SOUNDING ELECTRIC GUITAR. Fo’-shizzle my nizzle, I’ve NEVER heard anything like it before or since. When Steve finishes up, Jon sings softly for a short amount of time, and you think MAYBE you can relax, BUT YOU CAN’T RELAX, because the main part comes back again and whacks you over the head with a baseball bat LINED WITH SPIKES. Oh, and as if you haven’t been fucked with enough, there is a CRAZY vocal break that goes “CHA CHA CHA, CHA CHA *HHHHRRRRROUGH*” and reoccurs several times, in between which Moraz offers up one of the weirdest, strangest, oddest synth solos I’ve ever heard. Craziness. THANKFULLY, when “Sound Chaser” ends, we are greeted with, quite possibly, the most soothing song Yes ever committed to vinyl in “To Be Over.” As crazy as they were musically by this point, they still realized that one person could only take so much, and so “To Be Over” really isn’t meant to be listened to actively. It’s meant more to cool you down and relax your brain, so that you can function as a normal member of society once the album ends, which you could NOT do had it ended with “Sound Chaser.” There’s some nice pedal steel guitar work from Howe, and I hear a sitar (cool!), but no matter how many times I hear this song, I’ll NEVER be able to remember much about it, since I’m too busy scraping off the pieces of my brain that shot out my hear and splattered themselves on the walls of my dorm room. If you’re a prog-rock virgin, just STAY THE HELL AWAY from this album. Listening to it would be like a basketball player jumping STRAIGHT from the Chinese League to the NBA. If you think you’re cooler than Yao Ming, though, go right ahead, and don’t blame me when your skull explodes during “Sound Chaser.”
Anyway, I
thought long and hard for a way to describe this record, and I think I’ve got
it: this is a mindfuck album. Now, let me explain. About a year ago I was watching Fight Club
with a friend of mind and one of her friends from back home. At the conclusion of the movie, her friend,
who hadn’t seen it before, described it is a “mindfuck movie,” and I think
that’s a good description for this record as well. When you first see Fight Club, you feel
dizzy and discombobulated and you don’t quite know what has just happened, yet
you want to experience it again, IMMEDIATELY.
That’s what this record is like.
“I don’t know WHAT the FUCK just happened, but I want to listen
AGAIN!” So there you go. And even though I can’t quite give it a 10
(because “Sound Chaser” fucks with me a little TOO much and “To Be Over” can
get a little slow), holy crud do I love this record. It’s the Fight Club of albums.
The first rule of “Sound Chaser” is you don’t talk about “Sound Chaser.”
Going For The One (1977)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Going For The One”
GUESS WHO’S BACK! BACK
AGAIN! Guess who’s back, guess who’s
back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back, guess who’s back…NOPE! It’s NOT Slim Shady! It’s our dear friend RICK WAKEMAN!!! Apparently, the band didn’t want to go any
further into the hardcore fusion camp, and so they released Moraz. Upon hearing of this, Wakeman dropped a few
hints to Peter Gammons that he’d like to be re-signed by the Yessers, and so GM
Squire inked him to another deal!
Yay! Wakeman’s back! Long live the pseudo-classical fruitiness!
And what strikes me about this
record is just HOW MUCH of a departure it is from Relayer. First of all, there are FIVE songs on
it. Now, that may not seem like a lot,
but they hadn’t put that many actual songs on a record since, Jesus, The Yes Album! And hell, TWO of them are
UNDER SIX MINUTES LONG! And they both
rule, too. Yes could write a damn good
progressive rock symphony, but their debut album had some neat “normal-length”
songs on it, so they COULD do that stuff too.
The opening title track, after an album full of uber-complicated jazz
fusion stuff, sounds funny at the start, as it opens with a band member (who is
it? I don’t know!) counting off “one,
two…one, two, three, four!” before Steve Howe plays a butt-shakin’
boogie-woogie riff with his trusty COUNTRIFIED SLIDE GUITAR. The song rules MERCILESSLY, too. Obviously, being Yes, they weren’t about to
put a random boogie-rocker on a record, and so Wakeman’s synths quickly come in
to say “yes, we’re STILL a progressive rock band, don’t worry,” and there’s a
bunch of crazy tempo shifts and such.
This is probably the only example I’ve heard of “progressive boogie
rock,” and it fills the sixth and final spot in my personal Yes “pantheon”
(along with “Roundabout,” “South Side Of The Sky,” “Close To The Edge,” “And
You And I,” and “The Gates Of Delirium”).
And its lyrics make sense (at least some of them)! “Now the verses I’ve sang don’t add much
weight to the story in my head, so I’m thinking I should go and write a
punchline, but they’re so hard to find in my cosmic mind.” Jon Anderson is being FUNNY AND
SELF-DEPRECATING! Who’da thunk it?
The other normal-length song here, “Wonderous Stories,” manages to be
UNDER FOUR minutes long, and I think it was even a hit single! At least in England, maybe. It wouldn’t surprise me. It’s a really gorgeous acoustic ballad with
charming lyrics (“If I was late, I had to leave to hear your wonderous
stories!”) and some kick-ASS Wakeman synth work. TWO superb songs which total a COMBINED NINE
MINUTES! Huzzah for pop
sensibility!
However, there are three more songs
here, so, to all you Britney-lovers, don’t go rushing out to get this to hear
happy fun pop, because it’s Yes, and they don’t DO happy fun pop. They do happy fun progressive rock! Like, for instance, “Parallels,” which is six
minutes of fun, hard-rockin’, church organ-driven prime-level shit. Yes, I said “church organ.” It’s that crazy Wakeman again! Really good tune, though. And, ofcourse, I can’t forget about the other
acoustic ballad on this puppy, the super-pretty eight-minute “Turn Of The Century.” It’s a love song, I’m pretty sure, but
Anderson still liked his cosmic lyrics, so it’s a love song where you can’t
quite tell what the hell’s going on.
Great acoustic work from Howe here, and there’s the sound of a bird
flying off in it! Cool. And that just leaves “Awaken,” which should
drive any of those aforementioned Britney-lovers who still had thoughts of
getting this far, far away. It takes up
pretty much the entire second side (save the three-plus minutes of “Wonderous
Stories”) and is Yes’s last fifteen-minute plus suite for a helluva long time
(and the last on records that I have).
It opens with some frenzied Wakeman solo piano work, and I have to say
the first half of it picks my ass up out of my chair and kicks it OUT THE
WINDOW. The main riff rocks my socks
off, and how Jon sings that “awake the rhythm is TOUCH!” (or whatever the fuck
it is, I couldn’t find the lyrics to it online!) part is seriously
ass-kicking. The middle organ part and
the whole second half don’t quite do so much for me, but are still pleasant. “Awaken” strikes me as similar to one of the Tales tracks minus five minutes of padding, basically.
But, music aside, one thing about
this record bothers the BEJEESUS out of me, and that’s the album cover. IT’S A MAN’S ASS! Now, I have nothing against asses, per se,
but I just don’t see what this particular ass has to do with anything on this
record at ALL. Yes, when not working
with Roger Dean, just could not BUY a decent album cover. The first three are just boring pictures of
the band (who are not very interesting-looking people). Then, from Fragile through Relayer (my personal favorite…it looks like Lord Of The Rings minus
the hobbits! And it REALLY goes along
with the themes of war on the record.), they hired that aforementioned painter
Roger Dean to design their covers. And
his spacey, hypnotic covers really are a perfect match for Yes’s spacey,
hypnotic music. However, they ditched
him here and stuck A MAN’S ASS on the cover.
But, hey, at least it’s not a fat
guy’s ass. That’d be even worse.
Tormato (1978)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Release, Release”
And so ends the classic period, because THIS IS THE FRUITIEST,
DIPPIEST, STUPIDEST ALBUM I HAVE EVER HEARD.
For this one, the band tries to go further into the “pop” camp, and thus
there are EIGHT songs here, the same amount as their first two albums! However, there are so many things wrong with
it I don’t even know where to begin.
First of all, Wakeman has set his synths to “CHEEZE” throughout the
entire album, and instead of all sorts of cool sounds coming out of those
babies as usual, he sticks to thin, papery, CHEEZY-sounding things on every
song. The only exception to this is the
pretty, harpsichord ballad “Madrigal,” which is neat. Plus, he seems to think every song is ten
minutes long, or at least WANTS each one to be, since he plays about ten
minutes worth of notes in every five-minute tune. The band, as a whole, just doesn’t know
whether this is a prog or pop album, and so, basically, they’ve written pop
songs, but still play them like they’re prog songs, so everyone tries to cram
in as many notes as possible AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME, and it just ends up
being confusing. Oh! And then there’s Squire. He has chosen to put an AWFUL “bow-wow-wow”
tone on his bass for the entire record that just sounds STUPID. You know that song “By The Way” by the Red
Hot Chili Peppers? OK, now, you know
that “bow-wow-wow” sound effect that we hear once for about five seconds before
one of the verses? Well, Squire’s bass
sounds EXACTLY like that for THE ENTIRE RECORD.
Ass. And, no, I haven’t forgotten
Anderson! He’s written some of the
fruitiest lyrics I’ve ever heard on a rock album, with song titles like
“Arriving UFO,” “Circus Of Heaven,” and Don’t Kill The Whale.” I ask you, have you EVER heard a stupider
song title than “DON’T KILL THE WHALE?”
And, ofcourse, to top it all off, the album cover is AN EXPLODING
TOMATO. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.
*SSSSSPPPPPPPPPPLLLLLLLLLLLLAT*
But, in spite of ALL that, I get wayyyyy too much more enjoyment out of
this album than I should. For all intents
and purposes, I should HATE this thing…but I can’t! It’s so stupid and dippy that it becomes
charming, like a young puppy or something.
You know what I’m talking about.
You bring your cute little puppy home, and immediately it starts
shitting all over your rug, eating all your shoes, and knocking your expensive
Chinese vases off your coffee tables.
Then you want to scold it and punish it, but it gives you those cute
little puppy-dog eyes, and you JUST CAN’T DO IT! That’s how I feel about this album. I can’t stay mad at it! It’s SO DARN CUTE!
Like, for instance, my personal
favorite track (because it’s just SO FUCKING STUPID it’s fun), “Release,
Release.” It’s a hard driving-rock
song! “ROCK IS THE MEDIUM OF OUR GENERATION!!!!” YEAAAHHHHHH!
ROCK ON, JON ANDERSON! And in the
middle, Alan White gets a short drum solo over which the band has overdubbed
what sounds like the crowd at an outdoor stadium-rock concert. It sounds SO STUPID. But you know what? This song, despite being objectively BAD, is
so goddamn catchy and fun I can’t help but smile. And that’s not the only tune that does that
to me here. Let’s talk about some more
of the lyrics. On “Don’t Kill The
Whale,” Jon is VERY serious about his cause, and he lets you hear about it,
goddammit! “Don’t kill the
WHAAAAAAAALE! DIG IT!! DIG IT!!”
LOL. Christ. Oh, and how about “Arriving UFO,” which opens
with the immortal line “I could not take it oh so seriously when you told me
you had seen a UFO.” Oh REALLLLY, Jon? And let us not forget the “marching” synth
cheeze that Wakeman delivers after the “coming of outer space!” line. Oooooooohh!
Those aliens are coming to get us!
And there are thunderstorm sounds!
SCARY!
No, not scary at all, just dumb,
which is also how I’d describe the inconceivably dippy “Circus Of Heaven.” Its subject matter is a fictional circus,
with attractions such as unicorns and centaurs.
But wait, there’s more! You see,
Jon took his son to the circus! And they
were apparently having a great time, and so he turns to his son and asks “Was
that something beautiful, amazing, wonderful, extraordinary beautiful?” BUT NO, WAIT!
THERE’S MORE! A young toddler-age
boy (who may or may not actually be Jon’s son, I’ve got no fucking idea)
actually ANSWERS Jon, saying “Oh! It was
OK!! But there were no clowns. No lions, tigers, or bears…candy-floss,
toffee apples. No clowns!” Yes, in two albums Jon Anderson has gone,
lyrically, from bloody metaphorical battles between good and evil to
candy-floss and toffee apples. Fucking
fruit.
But, as I said before, I enjoy this
record (with ALL of its shortcomings) quite a bit. Much too much in fact. The songs, as a whole (except for the boring
“Onward” and the long and too “bow-wow-wow”-heavy “On The Silent Wings Of
Freedom”), are catchy, even if they are inconceivably stupid and have awful
arrangements. Frankly, I’d be EXTREMELY
embarrassed to play this record in the presence of ANYONE. It’s that dippy. If I were sitting at my computer listening to
“Circus Of Heaven” and I heard anyone walk in, I’d IMMEDIATELY stop the song
without even thinking. Because “Circus
Of Heaven” is undoubtedly the FRUITIEST SONG I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE
LIFE. But then, when whoever stopped by
leaves and I’m back alone in my room, I’ll clean the shit off my floor, stitch
my shoe back together, and put the song back on, because IT’S JUST
SOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!
Yesshows (1980)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “The Gates Of Delirium”
Hey, it’s another live album! Cool! Unlike Yessongs, which is damn near essential for a Yeshead like myself, this one’s pretty inconsequential, but pretty cool nonetheless. We’ve got performances of seven tunes here, spanning 1976-1978, featuring a nice, tasteful Wakeman on “Time And A Word” (which is still dippy), crazy Moraz on SUPERB versions of “The Gates Of Delirium” and “Ritual,” and decidedly NOT tasteful Splattermato cheesy Wakeman on “Parallels” (doesn’t matter because it’s a fucking church organ anyway), “Going For The One” (not the best rendition I’ve heard, mind you, the band sounds lazy or something…but still an orgasmic song!), “Wonderous Stories” (real pretty, except for the Tormato-synths), and “Don’t Kill The Whale” (WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????????).
I’m not gonna give this thing the longest, most thought-out review, because it’s a B-level live album with no songs from the classic twosome of buttsex on it, but I can safely say that this IS a neat lil’ live compilation, and truly deserving of the 8 I have ejaculated onto my computer screen. Like I said, “Time And A Word” is still dippy, but it’s not bad, because tasteful Wakeman livens it up with some tricky little keyboard trills, and THE ORCHESTRA THAT WAS ON THE ALBUM VERSION DOESN’T FUCK IT UP THE ASS AND THEN LEAVE A BUTTPLUG UP THERE FOR SAFE KEEPING WHEN IT’S DONE, so that’s good. “Don’t Kill The Whale” is also still really fucking stupid, and the “bending synth” solo Tormato-Wakeman lays down is beyond awful, but thankfully he doesn’t place a similar solo in “Going For The One” or “Wonderous Stories,” though the Tormato cheeze doesn’t help their cause, either.
What makes the album is the other three tracks, though. The band absolutely COOKS on “Parallels,” and the two epics absolutely NEVER stop ruling ass here. In fact, this version of “Gates” is the most passion I’ve heard in Jon Anderson’s voice, EVER. As the battle draws near, you can sense an urgency in his singing, bordering on anger even. Like he himself is the general of the army about to attack, and not just some Eastern religion-obsessed high-voiced fairy elf British guy. “Ritual” rules ALMOST as much here, too, especially the section about two-thirds of the way through where it turns into an uber-fusion psycho freakout that rivals “Sound Chaser” for abrasiveness. MAN, I love that. Good stuff. That Moraz guy could really play! Cool.
All in all,
this is a solid secondary live album, I’d say.
Very good, but probably for big fans only. And the bird on the cover is awesome, by the
way.
Drama (1980)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Tempus Fugit”
Yay! Roger Dean is back painting
the album covers! No more splattered
tomatoes and naked male ass-cheeks!
Huzzah! Oooooo, I like this one,
too. Very dark and mysterious, and those
black panthers are cool!
HOWEVER, while Roger Dean is back,
two slightly more important people (i.e. actual members of the band) are
NOT. In fact, Squire outright RELEASED
the two people who most contributed to the overwhelming cheesy fruitiness of Exploding Tomato. First, ofcourse, cheezemaster
Wakeman has been put on waivers. This
should surprise no one, since he had already left and come back once before
(and eventually would a couple more times).
However, the second player put on waivers should, since it’s JON FUCKING
ANDERSON. Yes, the voice of Yes, Jon
Anderson, has been KICKED OUT. But even
though the band had been reduced to a power trio, that didn’t stop them! Nope!
And you’ll NEVER guess who Squire signed to replaced Jon and Rick. Go on, guess!
I’ll give you a few minutes.
*Twiddles thumbs and looks at watch*
You got an answer yet? Well, if you answered new-wave duo The
Eurythmics, you would be WRONG. However,
if you answered new-wave duo The Buggles, you would
be 100% CORRECT! You know The Buggles
don’t you? They did “Video Killed The
Radio Star,” the first ever video played on MTV. And now, because it just makes NO SENSE
WHATSOEVER, vocalist Trevor Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes have been brought
in to replace Jon and Rick. If you’re
starting to lose track of the lineup changes, I don’t blame you. The current lineup is now: Horn on vocals,
Howe on guitar, Squire on bass, Downes on keyboard, and Alan White on
drums. Got it? Good.
So what does the only Jon
Anderson-less Yes album sound like?
Well, different. And
by “different,” I don’t necessarily mean good.
This record has the general reputation of being a step up after Tormato, but I just don’t see it. I
think it’s a little overrated, while the last record is a bit underrated
(despite being really, really, really stupid).
Being a new-wave duo, The Buggles obviously brought a good bit of that
sound into this record, though it’s still generally progressive rock. And also, since the two purveyors of fruity,
prissy shit were gone, the three holdover members take this opportunity to
harden up the Yes sound a bit. Howe adds
metallic flourishes everywhere, and White’s drumming is very much in the
“powerful RAWWWWKIN’ metal drummer” vein.
And, since I know you’re wondering, Horn doesn’t sound THAT much like
Jon Anderson, but they sure TRY to make him sound like him, via a lot of Squire
overdubbing (he sounds more like Jon than Horn does), as well as forcing Trevor
to hit some really really high notes he probably shouldn’t have tried to hit,
since they sound pretty fucking off-key.
So, basically, what we have here is
a pseudo-progressive pseudo-metal pseudo-new-wave record. Eh.
And the opening tells you A LOT about how the rest of it will sound. Yes’s openings are always interesting, and on
this record “Machine Messiah” opens not with a stately *PING*, weird chants, or
rockin’ slide-guitar, but instead with ninety seconds of generic brain-dead
HEAVY METAL RIFFING. And, NO, I don’t mean
“metallic for Yes” like “Heart Of The Sunrise.”
I mean “metallic for Black Sabbath.”
Slow, low, and sludgy. After
those ninety seconds, it goes away and some nice acoustic guitar comes in
before Trevor sings the opening line, and the song goes through a WHOLE BUNCH
of changes and tempo shifts (including a recurrence of the metallic riffing)
before its ending. Again, eh. It has both moments of brilliance and moments
of hideous crap strewn in, and as a whole it ends up being a big, somewhat
interesting, mess.
But what about the other songs? Well, there’s a completely and totally
useless synth-only interlude called “White Car” which apparently Downes wrote
himself (buttfucker). “Does It Really
Happen?” and “Run Through The Light” don’t really sound progressive at ALL (not
that that’s necessarily a bad thing).
They’re OK, I guess. Nothing on
this album really does much for me, to be honest. Actually, that’s not COMPLETELY true, since
one line in “Into The Lens” makes me cringe at its complete and total
STUPIDITY. Somehow, the dumbest Yes
lyric ever was penned NOT by Jon Anderson, but by Trevor Horn. “I am a camera! Camera camera!!!!” FUCK THAT SHIT. Yeesh.
The song’s OK, though. It does
have a neat drum riff going on throughout, but it doesn’t excite me much. Come on!
This is Yesmusic! I’M NOT
MOVED! Goddamnit. The last track, “Tempus Fugit,” is the best
for two reasons. First, Howe plays a
guitar part in the middle so LIGHTNING FAST that it reminds me how goddamn
talented these guys are. And second,
ofcourse, the song’s title is in Latin, and that fucking RULES. But, eh, whatever, the song isn’t really THAT
much better than the rest of the material here, though it’s pretty good. I’m sorry, I’m just not buying this Yes
lineup. I mean, I wouldn’t be
embarrassed to play this in front of people like Tormato, but, at least to
me, Yes lost a lot of their uniqueness here.
Ofcourse part of that is the lack of Anderson, since no one sounds like
him, and a whole SHITLOAD of people sound like Horn, but Howe’s not breaking
out the acoustic guitar anymore, Squire’s bass doesn’t sound as great as it has
in the past…whatever. None of it’s BAD,
but none of it’s very exciting either.
Blah. Blargh. Eh.
Snarf. Bloog. Flort.
And I AM…I AM…A CAMERA!!!!!!!!
Pedro Andino
(pedroandino@msn.com) writes:
come on ya' dumbass! a six?
psssssshh! I will defend it ! as I already told you at prindle's site
machine messiah reminds me of blade runner or ghost in the shell. sexy cyborg
women! (droooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
90125 (1983)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Changes”
After Drama, Yes, for all intents and purposes, broke up. Trevor Horn (poor guy) was booed MERCILESSLY during the ensuing tour. He had asked Squire to lower the pitch of the old Yes material (since he couldn’t hit all of Anderson’s high notes), Squire refused, and, yeah, you can guess how THAT turned out. Apparently, people were THROWING things at him, for god sakes. As a result of this Horn quit performing forever and turned to producing (which he’s still doing). Also, Howe left to form Asia and took Geoff Downes with him. That means there were only TWO PEOPLE LEFT, Squire and White. So, instead of releasing a pseudo-progressive new-wave drum ‘n’ bass album, they dissolved the band.
HOWEVER, a few years later they hooked up with young South African guitar prospect Trevor Rabin, along with a BOIG-time blast from the past on keyboards, to form a band called Cinema. Guess who the keyboardist was! No, it’s not Wakeman again! No, crazy fusion man Moraz wasn’t gonna play on an ‘80’s pop-rock record. IT’S TONY KAYE! He’s back! Wait…FUCK! I HATE TONY KAYE!!!! GODDAMN ASSHOLE AND HIS STUPID BORING PIECE OF SHIT ORGAN!!! GODDAMN YOU FUCKING TONY FUCKING KAYE!!!!!!!
Phew, anyway, we all know Squire could sing since he had done backup vocals for Yes’s entire career, and Rabin himself actually ended up providing backup vocals on this album here, but, gosh-darnit, they wanted a REAL singer! So…*drum roll*…JON ANDERSON’S BACK!!! Huzzah! The fruitiness! To recap, Cinema’s lineup was now: Anderson, Squire, White, Kaye, and Rabin, and, to top it all off, Trevor Horn was producing. Now they had a conundrum. Everyone but Rabin was an ex-Yes member, and two of Cinema’s members were the goddamn CO-FOUNDERS of Yes. So what to do? Well, how about release this generic ‘80’s pop-rock album under the name of YES! That’s what you do! And prog-snobs who don’t like it can go listen to the frickin’ Mahavishnu Orchestra, because this album is cool!
Even though the record is, basically, generically-produced, lifeless, mid-‘80’s pop-rock, it’s frickin’ GREAT, because the songs are SUPERB. For one thing, Tony Kaye is kept VERY far in the back of the mix, and sticks to generic “backing” synths for the most part, thank GOD. That dumb organ would have sounded AWFUL on these songs. Picture it on “Owner Of A Lonely Heart,” which everyone and their MOTHER knows. It was a NUMBER ONE HIT SINGLE! If you had said in 1974 Yes would have a #1 hit single, do you know how absurd that would have sounded? As it happens, unlike most mid-‘80’s “hits,” it’s quite good, and the middle instrumental break rocks my boxers off. Fuck yeah! My friend Al’s favorite, “Hold On,” is quite good as well. I remember when I visited him in LA this past summer. He had just downloaded this record, and he was always walking around singing “HOOOOOOOOOOOLD ON!” in the highest voice he could possibly muster. It was funny! “It Can Happen” is damn catchy and superbly written as well, and “Changes,” even though it’s NOT a David Bowie cover, manages to kick ASS in spite of this. “Change, changing pla-ces!!! Root yourself to the ground!!!” Sweet.
Those four are pretty tough to top, and the second half can’t top ‘em, but what’s left isn’t bad either! “Cinema” is a short little instrumental that’s pleasant enough. “Leave It” has some cool A CAPPELLA “dum dum du-dum” singing at the start, and, despite having Rabin fill in on too many of the vocals (where’s Jon?) and the middle sounding a little TOO ‘80’s for me, it’s a fine song. “Our Song” opens WITH KAYE’S KEYBOARDS (SHIT ON A STICK!), but I actually prefer cheesy ‘80’s things to his fucking organ, so that’s fine. “City Of Love” is the only miss on the record, and GOOD GOD is it a miss. It’s AWFUL. It’s got pretty much one of the worst riffs I’ve heard in my life (consisting of a grand total of two chords repeated over and over). It SUCKS. Thankfully, “Hearts” washes any memories of that monstrosity away by (shockingly) managing to be GORGEOUS (well, some of it is, not the riffing part) despite the generic production. “Two hearts are better than oooooooooooooone!” Yay for Jon!
But the thing that ASTOUNDS me about this album is how Yes manage to make such a generically ‘80’s-sounding album be GOOD. And, except for “City Of Love,” be REALLY good. First, the songwriting is excellent, and good songs can transcend their production, whether it be really cheap and awful or really generic and awful. But, also, they add these little tricks to a lot of the songs that make them sound UNIQUE, and probably stand out from all the other SHIT that was around in 1983. I already mentioned the middle part of “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” and the a cappella singing in “Leave It.” How about the SITAR that opens up “It Can Happen?” Or how “Changes” starts with that really neat melody played on a fucking xylophone or something?” I LOVE that thing.
And, oh yeah, this was BY FAR the band’s biggest hit EVER, and I bet some of you didn’t even know everything before this point EXISTED, let alone that some of it was so orgasmically brilliant (and it is!). Yes makes a kick-ass generic ‘80’s album! YES RULES!
David Dickson (ddickso2@uccs.edu) writes:
Damn you all to crap.
Do you realize I began the "Brad Holmes Says
The Word 'Generic' Shot Drinking Game" just before reading a couple of
your reviews that happened to be from the '80's? Do you also realize
you used the word "generic" eighteen times in these two reviews
alone?
Yup, it's true: I'm dead.
But don't by death by whiskey bombs that get in the way of the quality
of 90125. Personally, I would be more inclined to use the word
"generic" in a review of Big Brother and the Holding Company,
mentioning the songs that the DUDES sang on--but I digress.
This album is great. The songs that aren't arty are hits, and the
songs that aren't hits are decent prog. What's not to like? Okay,
sure, "City of
catchy chorus gets me every time. I would compare it favorably to Led
Zeppelin's "Out on the Tiles"--dumb verse, dumb riff, but
so-dumb-it's-awesome chorus. The only reasons I don't consider giving
this album a 10 are a.) lack of variety, and b.) the utter WEIRDNESS
of "Hearts". Is it a hippie ballad? A misguided pop song?
A Chinese
folk dance? Whatever it is, it's long and interesting, but not what I
would want to listen to more than once or twice.
Best song: "Leave It." Yes goes dance-pop, four-part harmonies
and
all. Beach Boys (of 1983), get rid of John Stamos.
Without having heard more Yes albums than Fragile, Close to the Edge,
and this one, I crown 90125 tied with CTTE as the best in their
catalog. Eh. . . Yes may not be the band for me. They can play, and
they sure as hell can jam live, but In the Court of the Crimson King
remains the crown LP champion of the genre as far as I'm concerned.
Next week: Play the "'Generic' Shot-Drinking Game" while reading
Brad's Def Leppard page! Try it if you're suicidal!!
Big Generator (1987)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “I’m Running”
Hey! The same lineup stayed together for two whole albums! Dammit! Now I’m gonna have to come up with more real material, instead of making dumb, unfunny sports analogies. Fuck my ASS. Oh well, I guess I’ll just listen to the record. They spent four years working on it, so it must be good, right? Oooooo!! “Rhythm Of Love” sounds cool! The opening has these “oooo-OOOOO-oooo” harmonies that sound like the BEACH BOYS! Neat! Oh, shit, nevermind, it just turned into a generic ‘80’s song. Whatever.
This record is BIG letdown after 90125, as the generic production (at least for most of the album) is back, but it isn’t matched by awesome songs, and so a lot of it just ends up sounding like generic mid-‘80’s garbage. Not ALL of it, though. See, Jon Anderson had joined the sessions for 90125 late, and so he didn’t have much actual input on the material. However, he was the lead singer at the START of the sesssions this time, so he wasn’t about to make an album COMPLETELY full of pop songs. He had a reputation to uphold! Yes were an art-rock band! Thus, the album ends up pretty much evenly split up between generic ‘80’s crap Rabin songs and Anderson-penned new-age sounding schlock.
And the Rabin stuff is, for the most part, SHIT. Three of the four generic pop songs are called “Rhythm Of Love,” “Almost Like Love,” and “Love Will Find A Way.” Excuse me while I GAG MYSELF WITH A SPOON. The thing is, none of these three songs are THAT bad. “Rhythm Of Love,” as I mentioned, does start with that neat vocal harmonizing (and that “Morning! Daydream!” line Jon sings later in the song sounds like the “Bluetail! Tailfly!” part from “Siberian Khatru!”), and the song is generic swill, but inoffensive generic swill. It sounds like something you’d see on VH1 Classic, because EVERY WEEK on VH1 Classic is retro-‘80’s week. Al and I learned that the week I spent in LA. We’d flip back to it impulsively every five minutes hoping to see “Jump” or something equally kick-ass, but instead we’d usually be presented with Pat Benatar. “LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD!!!!” Blech. This is also how “Almost Like Love” sounds, except it’s not as good since the intro is a dumb drum rhythm instead of neat harmonies. “Love Will Find Away” ALSO has a cool opening (fifteen seconds of RRRRRRRREALLY neat strings!) before becoming generic mid-‘80’s swill. But there’s no stupid metal guitar tone in it, so it’s probably the best of the “love” songs.
However, the fourth Rabin-esqe generic song, the title track, is quite possibly THE WORST SONG I HAVE HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. And, yes, that’s counting Limp Biskit, Creed, Britney, and even fucking O-TOWN. Picture a song a LOT like “City Of Love” from the last album, only TEN TIMES WORSE. The funny thing is it opens with some neat a cappella singing a la “Leave It,” but then the main riff comes in, and it is THE WORST riff I have ever heard. Just vomit-inducing. Then Anderson tried to sound all tough. “BIIIIIIIIIG GENERATOR!!! LIIIIIIIIIIIIVES TO THE RIGHT!!!” Just an awful, awful song.
And that leaves the Anderon new-age schlock, which I actually enjoy somewhat, and which raises this album to a solid 6 rating (I thought for a bit about giving it a 7 (!), but the title track is so horrendous…plus it got released in 1987 and all). “Final Eyes” and “Shoot High Aim Low” are the kind of boring-as-HELL “soothing” tracks that should normally suck a big, juicy cock, but they PERFECTLY fit Anderson’s voice. Now, I’m not saying they’re that good, but they’re pleasant enough, and they don’t make me cringe (“Almost Like Love”) or continuously dry heave for twenty minutes (“Big Generator”). “I’m Running,” however, is QUITE good. It starts off with Squire’s bass, which plays a super-funky and fun rhythm, before Rabin’s ACOUSTIC guitar and all sorts of other shit join in. And Rabin CONTINUES with some fun acoustic stuff for a bit! Ofcourse, it descends into REALLY boring new-age crap soon, but the song is long enough (seven minutes) that that awesome rhythm (EASILY the best thing on the album) recurs a few more times. “Holy Lamb (Song For Harmonic Convergence)” is also (and, from the title, obviously) an Anderson song, and it functions fine as the closer. It’s a SHORT new-age schlock song, so it doesn’t really have time to get boring in its three minutes. It’s actually the only song I enjoy (even if it’s only a little) all the way through. Everything else has moments of goodness (even the title track had the opening singing stuff) and moments of horse manure. You know, it’s funny, as a whole, this record is actually LESS generic-sounding than 90125, although the generic ‘80’s half is much MUCH more generic-sounding than the last album’s tunes (if what I just said makes any sense). Whatever, Yes are so fucking good, even a CRAPPY generic mid-‘80’s album isn’t horrendous. Long live Yes!
And I’ve been thinking about it, “Big Generator” is NOT the worst song I’ve ever heard, as much as it pains me to say. That honor would go to “Bodies” by the immortal Drowning Pool. “LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLO’!!!!” Worst…song…EVER.
Anderson
Rating: 4
Best Song: “Let’s
Pretend”
First, before I get to reviewing
this stupid album, I would like to apologize to several YesRecords, namely Time and a Word, Drama, and Big Generator. While I stand firmly by the ratings I have
given these albums, given my recent exposure to everything Yes put out after RabinYes’s second chart-topping
smash, I feel the language I used in the reviews was unnecessarily harsh. I had simply not been exposed to the bottom
of the Yes barrel yet, so I was comparing them to, say, Close to the Edge instead of
Now, to this record. In a bit of clarification that anyone already familiar with Yes already knows, let me first say that this is technically not a “Yes” album. Apparently Jon Anderson was bored of actually making records normal people might want to hear, so he ditched Squire and Rabin and all the other people responsible for creating the #1 worldwide smash hit single “Rhythm of Love” and re-hooked up with some of his old chums. Seeing as how both Bill Bruford and Steve Howe were out of work at the time (due to Robert Fripp’s being a douche and Asia’s general suckitude, respectively) and no one in their right mind would ever buy a Rick Wakeman solo album, EVER, they all eagerly got together with Jon faster than you could say “fruity adult keyboard swill” and decided to make an album. Since Chris Squire was something like 6’5”, 260 by this point, he threatened them all with severe atomic wedgies if they even so much as thought about calling themselves “Yes” without his bass services, so they went out and got everyone’s favorite G. Gordon Liddy impersonator and occasional session bassist Tony Levin (also out of work because of Robert Fripp’s being a douche) and set to work. When said album was finished, in a veritable cornucopia of genius marketing moves, they stuck the names ANDERSON BRUFORD WAKEMAN HOWE in BIG, BOLD LETTERS on the front of the album so everyone would be VERY FUCKING CLEAR about who had made it, got Roger Dean to paint a cover that looked disturbingly like the one from Tales From Topographic Oceans, and, to top it all off, pasted a big sticker that said “FROM THE MEN WHO BROUGHT YOU ‘CLOSE TO THE EDGE!’” on the front.
Right. Well, judging from the rating I’ve stuck up there, you’d be right in guessing that this is easily the worst Yes album yet (assuming you think of it as a “Yes album,” which I do, sort of). Although it seems to have its admirers and semi-admirers among the web reviewing community, I simply cannot understand anyone’s liking this record unless they just like Yes because their songs are long and have multiple sections and they have a fetish for ridiculous Rick Wakeman keyboard solos. This record, while not soul-suckingly awful or anything, is just about retarted. It’s childish and lightweight to the point of being absolutely idiotic. It has no bottom whatsoever, and I don’t think I actually hear an audible bassline in more than one or two songs (therefore making the prodigious talents of Mr. Levin useless). The drumming is nothing special or noticeable at all, a fact that makes you wonder whether Bruford was actually in the studio when they made this thing because, you know, HE’S BILL FUCKING BRUFORD. Hell, except for an occasional acoustic plucking session (like sections of “Quartet” and the admittedly pretty album closer “Let’s Pretend”), you can’t really tell that Steve Howe is on hand, either, and occasionally this album features some vintage eighties metal guitar tones straight out of Trevor Rabin’s playbook. So without Levin, Bruford, or Howe contributing anything memorable, who does that leave?
Right! Anderson and Wakeman, who are both everywhere on this godforsaken thing. The combination of Jon’s incredibly fruity new age bullshit lyrics and Rick’s incredibly fake, trebly, and powerless French horn-tooting keyboard blasts are what greet you on the majority of this record, and while that should be enough for you to stop reading this review right now and decide, once and for all, not to buy that Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe thing you’ve seen in all those used CD sections for five bucks a pop, that’s not the end of this review. See, when looking at the track listing, you might think that large sections of this album are gonna provide you with some serious progressive rock bombast, given that like four of the tracks here are broken up into subdivisions and a the thing manages to stretch nine songs into a full sixty minutes. You, however, would be wrong. As I have said before, the music here is retarted adult pop keyboard swill that happens to occasionally toss in a cheesy keyboard break section or graft three separate and unrelated “movements” into one track in an attempt to look like prog-rock despite the fact that these songs have about as much weight to them as a pre-teen anorexic Romanian gymnast. “Fist of Fire” and “Birthright” try to be “heavy” or “serious” or something to that effect, but “Fist of Fire” turns into a complete mess of out-of-place keyboard blasts that sound like out-of-tune accordions, and while “Birthright” isn’t that bad, the next time Jon Anderson attempts to sing anything political, I will immediately yank off his neo-hippie man-dress and expose his most likely hideously pale and lumpy body for all to see. I love Yes and all, but listening to all this late-period shit over the last few weeks, I’ve realized how easy it is to think Jon Anderson is an idiotic new-age fruit. The reason? He is!
Moving on, “The Meeting” is a limp-dicked ballad I do not enjoy listening to at all, and “Teakbois” attempts to graft some sort of jumpy African rhythms onto Wakeman’s cheese-merchant keyboard trills and ends up being one of the most idiotic songs I’ve heard in my life. Most of the remaining tracks are divided up into “sections,” and while an occasional catchy melody pops out of the swill of “Brother of Mine” and “Order of the Universe,” and the intro part to “Quartet” is actually quite nice indeed, for the most part these songs just meander around not knowing what to do with themselves, at least until Wakeman takes over and starts blasting away on his toot machines. Except for occasional insipid moments here and there and the entire monstrosity that is “Teakbois,” this music is not horrible. It’s just childish, lightweight, and retarted. It’s almost perversely entertaining in a “wow, remember when these guys had balls and power?” kind of way, although I feel like I’m losing brain cells listening to it. The part in the middle of “Quartet” when Jon starts running off titles of Yes albums and songs gone by is just moronic. It’s so inconceivably stupid. And the end of “Birthright” where he starts yelling in Spanish or something. What the hell is he doing? Doesn’t he realize how much of an idiot he sounds like? I mean, he sounded like a moron when Yes was making aggressive, original, complicated, ballsy music. Now they’re making this twee crap, and his idiocy just skyrockets. Whatever. Oh, and I will mention again that the closing ballad “Let’s Pretend” is very pretty and nice and the only song I like on the record. I know that had no connection to the rest of this paragraph, but it needed to be emphasized and didn’t really fit anywhere else, so here it goes. What, you were under the impression I was a good writer?
I certainly do not hate this album. I may hate the fact that such talented men who have produced such wonderful music in the past have been reduced to spitting out a bunch of retarted fruity keyboard pop for morons, but it certainly doesn’t offend me in the way it could. So hooray for that. It’s still terrible, though. This is not Yes. It even says so right there on the cover!
plaidman99@hotmail.com writes:
yo, just read your review for
ABWH. Freakin' awesome! You put into EXACT
words how much I think it's crap- right down to no one buying Wakeman
albums!
Union (1991)
Rating: 3
Best Song: “Lift Me
Up”
Right, like I’m not gonna agree that this is the worst
Yes album ever. It’s
So, the famous backstory. With the release of Anderson Dewey Cheatem and Howe, the astute reader should realize that we now have two competing camps of ex-Yessers, the Rabin/Squire/Kaye/White axis responsible for all the band’s funtastic eighties pop success, and the Bruford/Wakeman/Howe group, responsible for both Fragile and the piece of crap directly preceding this record, with Jon Anderson and his fruitiness languishing somewhere in the middle, having provided vocals for both halves. See, this is what happens when you change lineups like David Bowie changes images. You’re left with SEVEN stuffy, clueless British prog-rock dinosaurs (and one young South African metal guitarist) all fighting each other for the right to put the “Yes” moniker on their shitty songs, then eventually saying “fuck it,” joining together in the studio all at the same time and commencing their sucking all for one and one for all. How could anyone have possibly thought this was a good idea? Two guitarists? Two keyboardists? Two drummers? Jon Anderson? Hasn’t anyone ever heard the expression “Too many cooks spoil the broth?” How about “Too many washed-up prog-rockers spoil the record album?”
Yes, my friends, this album is nothing you should ever have to subject your ears to, though I will say it’s not unbearably awful all the time. As a matter of fact (and I’m dead serious here), if you only listened to the first half of the album and then turned it off, you’d probably think “yeah, it’s bad, but it’s not, like, terrible. What’s the big deal? It’s a little better than ABWH, in any case. I’ll give it a solid 4 and like it like Cheerios!” Because a lot of the first half is actually tolerable and even decent in places. It goes without saying that the token Steve Howe two-minute instrumental acoustic plucking exercise, “Masquerade,” is pretty tasty (I mean, how could it not be?), although to compare it to earlier examples of his picking artistry such as “The Clap” and “Mood for a Day” is absolutely ludicrous. But that’s not all! Delving deeper into the first half, the opener “I Would Have Waited Forever” is acceptable, if not good, and the poppy “Life Me Up” is a song I don’t mind listening to one bit. Good melody there, and some excellent harmonies. Eons better than anything on ABHW. Hell, the token track where they all flail around in an ill-fated attempt to write something “proggy” (“Miracle of Life”) isn’t all bad either, and I do love the sections with the mandolin in there. Sure, “Shock to the System” is a horrid metal track about as bad as “Big Generator,” “Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day” is just as bad, and “Saving My Heart” is some sort of reggae/gospel atrocity that might just be the cheesiest song in the history of the world, but if you stopped here, you’d just have a run-of-the-mill not-good album, not something as infamous as Union has become.
Ofcourse, there’s a whole other half to get through. Bruford’s retarted attempt at something else “proggy,” “Silent Talking,” is absolutely atrocious, like a stretched-out version of “Five Percent for Nothing” crossed with generic Rabin metal guitars (though I suppose the random “atmospheric” Jon moments aren’t awful). Moving on, “More We Live/Let Go” is just about unlistenable atmospheric mush, and “Angkor Wat” is not only worse, and not only possibly the worst song ever written by this fine band, but also possibly the worst song ever written by anyone. Why are there a bunch of random synths doing absolutely nothing? This is worse than a Robert Fripp dick-a-thon, because at least his shit isn’t “new-age.” It’s ear-corroding, yes, but not “new-age.” And, for the love of cereal, WHY IN GOD’S NAME IS THERE A SMALL CAMBODIAN CHILD RECITING POETRY???????????? Are you kidding me? And why did you deem it necessary to insert a GENERIC, ASS-SOUNDING HIP-HOP BEAT into the middle of “Dangerous?” You’re YES!!! You don’t do that. Putting these two songs back-to-back shows once and for all how idiotic everyone involved in the making of this record had to be during its production. I’m well aware of the stories of power-mad producers and session drummers and keyboardists replacing Bruford’s and Wakeman’s parts (which is just about the most heinously ridiculous thing in the history of music), but I don’t care, and I want everyone involved in the making of this record to apologize to me right now. It may have been tolerable for half an hour (which is why it even gets a 3…it’s very close to a 2. Take out “Masquerade” and “Lift Me Up” and I’d slap a 2 on there in a second), but, by the end, it, unlike ABWH, is soul-suckingly awful. Piss on this crap.
OK, fine. “Holding On” is just “standard-issue awful generic bullshit” instead of whatever “Angkor Wat” and “Dangerous” were supposed to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s not terrible, and while the little instrumental “Evensong” and the closing “Take the Water to the Mountain” represent a return to the tolerably bad material of the album’s first half, the record takes such a giant shit during the songs immediately prior that I don’t see how anyone could even care by that point. I would also like to say that I don’t know or care which group of musicians is responsible for which tracks, and although I could easily figure it out by assigning the cheesy-yet-decently tolerable pop songs to the Rabin band and “Angkor Wat” to Satan, I feel that actually taking time to do so would somehow dignify this record’s existence, something which clearly should not happen. This album is legendary in prog-rock circles for all the wrong reasons, and it’s easy to see why.
Talk (1994)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Walls”
So are we pretending all that ABWH and Union crap never happened now? Whatever, nothing would surprise me anymore with these guys. They recycle keyboardists like condoms (although I wouldn’t recommend fishing a used and inferior one out of the trash 15 years after throwing it out, a la Tony Kaye), don’t think twice about replacing one of the most talented drummers of all time and pretending nothing happened, pull in random South African dudes off the street to replace Steve Howe and play eighties pop, replace their universally recognizable lead singer and co-founder of the band with a Buggle…whatever. So the entire mishmash of competing YesCamps and ex-members is shot to hell and the band that brought you 90125 and Big Generator is back intact and making another album, despite the fact that they haven’t made anything as a group in seven years and the difference in popular music taste between 1987 and 1994 is just a little bit different. Fine. Screw it.
As an album, Talk is not good. It’s certainly not bad, and it’s positively brilliant compared to the last two things I’ve reviewed on this page, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the weakest Yes or Yes-related album outside of those two to this point. Picturing what this album sounds like isn’t that tough if you’ve heard the two eighties RabinYes albums. In the intervening time between Boig Generator and this one, the eighties’ fascination with synthesizers kind of, um, left, so the album certainly sounds more organic than its predecessor. I suppose that’s good, right? It’s also absent anything as offensive as Big Generator’s title track, so that’s also good. However, if you think more organic-sounding instruments and an absence of anything truly vomitessent a good album make, you obviously don’t know music. First off, “organic” does not mean “not overproduced.” Au contraire! I’d hazard to say that this is actually the most overproduced of the three RabinYes albums. From the GIANT, BOOMING, OVERSIMPLIFIED retard drum tracks of Mr. White to the barely-there “heavenly” backing synths in so many of the more atmospheric moments (specifically the entire track “I Am Waiting”) to vocal harmonies that are overdubbed so many times that they cease to be beautiful and just seem fake (with an exception made for the wonderful “Walls,” where the mixing board must’ve been having a good day when Jon and Trevor overdubbed themselves for the 68th time), this record is often killed by overproduction.
Two songs,
however, are actually quite good and the first unqualified “good” songs
produced by a band called “Yes” since the better tracks on the aforementioned Big Generator. Both “The Calling” and “Walls” are very well-written, albeit admittedly
overproduced and semi-cheesy, pop songs that never fail to put a smile on my
face, especially since I’ve been popping this thing in directly after finishing
I wouldn’t,
though, because there’s a whole 45 minutes left to dissect. While nothing here really pisses me off too
much, I can’t say I really like any of it, outside of possibly a few isolated
sections of the altogether much too
long “Hey! Look at us! We’re still a prog band!” suite “Endless
Dream,” specifically the part where a bunch of synths sound like they’re
vomiting up bad soup (I know, bad description, but it sounds pretty cool). The
overcooked generiproduction, combined with half-assed unmemorable songwriting
and absurd song lengths, sabotage
what’s left of this thing. See, there’s
basically seven tracks if you count the intro and outro to “Endless Dream” as
part of the main track, and this album is fifty-five
minutes long. And it’s NOT a prog
album. It’s a pop album through and
through. So do we really need seven-minute pop songs?
Especially if they’re not so hot to begin with? The fuck we do. “I Am Waiting” might be pleasantly atmospheric,
but why seven and a half minutes of the same thing? And “Real Love”…well, it sucks! It’s the worst song on the album! All retarted eighties metal guitar tones (In
1994! You can’t recreate the “Big
Generator” guitar tone in 1994! 1994!!!!!) and awful, annoying
singing. And it goes for NINE
MINUTES! That is utterly ridiculous. “State of
Just
mediocrity all around here with two real nice pop songs to make it
semi-interesting at the right moments.
Nothing more, nothing less. It’s
such a nondescript album, even more so than Big
Generator, and that’s just sad. How
can you be more nondescript than Big Generator? Is that even possible? You’re Yes!
You’re supposed to be interesting!
Even when you suck, you’re supposed to suck in interesting ways! People could talk about the ways in which
nikus80@hotmail.com writes:
I strongly disagree. I won't
deny that this record is overproduced, that
some songs are long just because they're repetitive, but... I dunno, except
for Where Will You Be which is pretty but overlong, the rest of the record
doesn't looks like a misstep to me. The Calling is frickin' classic, from
the cool opening riff, the really catchy vocal melodies and the wacky but
cool jam. I Am Waiting may be a 3 minute song stretched to 7 and a half
minutes with "heavenly" synths, but the various melodies are very,
VERY
good, so I consider it a winner. And my fav. song of all time is Sad Eyed
Lady Of The Lowland, which is simply a short song repeated a few times to
fill eleven minutes, so how can I complain?
But that's not all. Real Love is a good song, with a good, if overdone, dark
ambiance to it. I'd love to hear it live, I'm pretty sure it would rock
hard. And the Rabin solo at the end is pretty damn great. In fact, Rabin
guitarwork is a constant highlight in the record for me, even in Where You
Will Be, which has a couple great solos.
But THATS NOT ALL! State Of Play is underrated, I underrated it too, but the
second part of the song, the "emotional" part of the song is pretty
exciting, and while it may sound like "obvious" emotion (especially
the
Rabin decoration at the end), it sucks me in. The jam is cool, too. Walls is
a nice pop song, although is the only song where the vocal harmonies bother
me, funnily enough. And Endless Dream, though flawed, is quite exciting too.
The opening is a bit flashy (though it fits quite well), and the last two
minutes sound incredibly tacked on, but the rest of the song (the Talk
section) pretty much rules. The synth vomit section is quite cheezy, but I
think is groovy, especially when the drums enter. and the melodies are quite
emotional, especially around the 10:00 mark on the Talk section, when they
sing "and this endlesss......
DREEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Is not as good as Close To The Edge, but it's pretty darn great, as the
record as a whole (a solid 8). In fact, I like it better than some of the
"classics" records.
oh, and also this was the first yes record I heard, but I dissmised as a
merely decent Yes entry on the nineties. after listening to ctte, fragile
and tya, I went back to this and enjoyed it quite fine.
Keys To Ascension (1996)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “
So, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Talk was the worst-selling Yes album since their really early stuff when no one even knew who they were. Making an album of overproduced, soulless 80’s pop in 1994, when your last album as a quintet was Big Generator seven years ago, when your last popular album was 90125 ELEVEN years ago, and when your average age is something like 50…why even bother? You’re expecting it to get radio play next to Vitalogy, Siamese Dream, Superunknown, and In Utero? The fuck it will. By 1994, the idea of Yes attempting to make music that sold in large numbers to anyone below the age of 40 was laughable, and even though I feel terrible mocking this band due to my deep respect and admiration for their monstrous talent and creativity, I feel I must do so due to the fact that Jon Anderson is a fruity hippie idiot.
Anyway, it should go without saying that, after Talk and its subsequent tour, the Rabin/Squire/Anderson/Kaye/White lineup broke up for good. Consequently, in what everyone should really have expected, the competing YesFactions, now both languishing in obscurity, decided to make nice, the first result of which was this live album, wherein the “classic minus Bruford” lineup of Anderson, Squire, Howe, Wakeman and White provide impeccably rehearsed and played versions of many of their old seventies classics, as well as tacking a few generally terrible new studio tracks onto the end to make all the hardcore Yes fans so excited their pimples burst (by the way, I do consider myself a hardcore Yes fan, but only of their material up to and including 90125. After that point, I become about as skeptical of them as Dick Cheney is of sunlight). Yes, folks, with no more young eighties metal guitarists or recycled keyboardists with no talent whatsoever around to produce drab overlong malarkey like “I Am Waiting,” you can safely sit back and listen to your favorite YesMembers play…wait, “Onward?” Snuh?
Yup, in
what is actually a pretty neat move from the Yessers according to yours truly,
the setlist for this live hibbity-jibbity is, outside of the two selections on
disc two before the studio stuff (“Roundabout” and “Starship Trooper”…both of
which still rule!), fairly surprising and unexpected. The all-live disc one contains a kick-ass
run-through of “Siberian Khatru” (a song I had forgotten I dug so much), the
20-minute “The Revealing Science of God,” a 10-minute cover of a Paul Simon
song called “America” that they supposedly put out as a single back in the day,
but which I had certainly not heard prior to this record album, a quite lovely
“Onward” (certainly better than the Tormato
version, where it stuck out as the only track that didn’t make me fall over
laughing), and an honestly slightly-boring version of “Awaken.” Though it’s not like they went and dipped
into material from their debut album or Drama
or something, it’s safe to say that none of those tracks are “A-list” Yes
material, at least in terms of fan popularity.
However, after Big Generator, ABWH, Union, and Talk, any Yes
fan who doesn’t get a goofy, excited little smile on their face the moment
Steve rips into the opening riff from “Siberian Khatru” has no soul, and the
live chunk of this record, while obviously rote and lacking freshness,
charisma, etc., is entertaining as hell to hear, as well as a relief, because
who knew for sure that these old guys could still play this stuff? It sounds
really good! Not as good as Yessongs or Yesshows, but good nonetheless.
I especially enjoy that “
I suppose I
should talk about the two new studio tracks now. They’re not good. Now, they’re not offensive like
Ofcourse,
the band does the nice thing and tacks the studio tracks onto the end of disc 2
after “Starship Trooper” fades out, so you can just avoid them completely and
have something like 75 minutes of entertaining, if unnecessary and
inconsequential, live YesMusic for your personal enjoyment. If you have Yessongs and Yesshows
(and you should!), you have no need for this whatsoever, but it’s certainly effective
as a “Hey! Look at us! We’re back together making seventies
fruity-proggy music!” nostalgia trip, which is obviously all it was intended to
be anyway. Plus it’s one way to get to
hear their cover of “
Keys To Ascension 2 (1997)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Going For
The One”
And Yes doth played their old seventies material, and the people doth rejoiced, and Yes doth raked in buckets of sweet cash and decided to do it all over again, because they doth enjoyed yonder buckets of cash wholeheartedly (in fact, the buckets of cash were so large that Steve How doth actually considered getting a haircut). And so, less than a year after Keys to Ascension conquered the world of old fart jukebox nostalgia tour albums, a sequel arrives with the same title, structure, and cover art. And ofcourse I still enjoy listening to all these faithfully and expertly reproduced versions of wonderful YesTunes, but (also ofcourse) the existence of Yessongs and Yesshows makes this album totally inconsequential, and (also ofcourse) the new studio tracks suck nads.
Like I said, the live tracks are still a grand old time to hear for any and all Yes fans, though the selections (including “I’ve Seen All Good People,” “Close to the Edge,” “And You and I,” and “Going for the One”) are a little more obvious this time. Old-school ass-poor dippy ballad “Time and a Word” is, like on Yesshows, turned into a decidedly pretty time by the lack of a horribly-integrated orchestra in the background and Wakeman’s skillfull piano tinkling, and “Turn of the Century” sounds just about like it sounded on Going for the One. The only track here that really pales in comparison to its previous incarnation is, unfortunately, the band’s signature epic “Close to the Edge,” which seems to plod along just a bit, especially during the fusion intro, where Alan White apparently says “fuck it” and just plays a standard drum figure any retard could play even though the rest of the band is busy working up a sweat (except Jon, who’s probably standing there awkwardly in his moo-moo). No surprise that “Going for the One” cooks here, ofcourse. Over time I’ve realized that the tune is really no worse than “Roundabout” or any of the band’s other uber-famous tracks. It’s just on a more obscure album. Love the boogie guitar! I’d also like to place a pox on Rick Wakeman here, since his absence from the Relayer proceedings in 1974 means that, between these two records, none of the three songs from the 3rd-finest album of Yes’ career make an appearance. While I’ll admit “Sound Chaser” and “To Be Over” aren’t exactly live staples, where the hell is “The Gates of Delirium?” You play 60% of Going for the One, dip into Time and a Word and Tormato and then leave “Gates” off? Douche.
OK, unfortunately we’ve got an entire full CD of new studio doohicky this time, and that 50/50 old/new ratio is the only reason I’ve downgraded the rating from 7 to 6, because there sure as hell isn’t much of a difference between the two records’ live tracks. And, as you probably could have guessed from that last sentence, the new tracks are not good. Maybe there are a few moments where something besides bastardized new-age fruity crap nothingness pokes out of the haze (specifically in the semi-energetic “Foot Prints”), but they are few and far between, and the label of “unfocused and boring semi-Yes meandering” that I slapped on the two songs from the last album fits pretty well here, too. “Mind Drive” is the token new 19-minute track the band threw on here because it’s Yes and Yes is supposed to have 19-minute tracks on every goddamn album they make, and it somehow has come to be revered by deluded hardcore Yes fanatics who own Alan White solo albums and don’t think ABWH is a childish joke, but ofcourse I can’t agree with these people. Like “That, That is,” it’s just a bunch of random “Yes-sounding” sections (The acoustic intro! The main part that thinks it has a pulse but doesn’t! The atmospheric keyboard bridge!) slapped together haphazardly into something that sounds like Yes might sound if they didn’t know how to write stuff. None of the others are worth hearing, though the closing “Sign Language” is admittedly pretty, in a sleep-inducing new-age meditative kinda way.
No thoughtful conclusion necessary here, since we just have more of the same. The studio tracks still suck, and the live tracks were actually taken from the same show! Blah blah blah blah blah. At least the mullets are still around.
Open Your Eyes (1997)
Rating: 4
Best Song: “Open Your
Eyes”
A lot of people, including just
about every web reviewer I read on a regular basis, consider this record a
relatively good product. Not up to Yes’
seventies standards, obviously, but still a nice, enjoyable record that can stand
next to, say, Drama or Yes or some of the other “2nd-rate”
Yes albums that no one outside of Yes fans actually have, but that said Yes fans look at with admiration, if they
admittedly don’t get the urge to listen to them very much. On the other hand, a supposedly large number
of Yes fans (though not a single one I’ve ever run across) look at this
rushed-out product as the ultimate
embarrassment in the Yes catalog (and yes, that means they think it’s worse
than
OK, so a little background. First, despite the fact that this thing came out only months after the second KTA album, we have another lineup change! Why? Because it’s Yes! I haven’t had to post any new musician pictures for like seven albums. You knew that wasn’t gonna last. Anyway, Wakeman is out for about the fifteenth time, replaced by guitarist/keyboardist Billy Sherwood on, well, those instruments! Truth be told, to label this a “Yes album” isn’t the most accurate designation, since much of this material was actually written by Mr. Sherwood himself and apparently intended for a Chris Squire solo album, but some sort of record label switcheroo and/or snafu that you can read about on John McFerrin’s page necessitated that Yes put out another studio album RIGHT NOW, whether they had anything ready or not. So Sherwood, who had produced some of the KTA stuff and been somehow involved in the Talk tour, was by necessity welcomed into the band, and his songs were hastily reworked into YesMaterial that sounds a whole heck of a lot like Big Generator and Talk, which probably pissed off a lot of the dorky Yes fans who wanted another “Mind Drive” because they’re idiots.
Anyway, I suppose the general sound of this album is mildly better than the two previous records, since Big Generator REEKED of eighties-itis and Talk was just boring. This record has an impressively thick and full production, with walls of very nice vocal harmonies that are certainly better than those in both Big Generator and Talk, so upon first listen it will probably sound pretty good to you (unless ofcourse you have no corny cheese overproduction tolerance whatsoever, in which case why the hell are you listening to nineties Yes albums?). However, upon further listening you’ll realize that the difference in the records lies in the songs. Big Generator had a handful of nicely written ones. Talk only had two, but the rest was just overlong and boring, not awful. This album ALSO has two quite good songs, which unfortunately come next to each other right at the start. The opener “New State of Mind” is a BIG, LOUD SONG, much more so than “The Calling,” and despite being not quite as good as its predecessor, it’s catchy, has a few interesting rhythmic breakdowns, and is chocked full of those nice harmonies, so it’s a good time. The following title track, then, is a straight pop song through and through, making no attempt at anything progressive at all in its catchy melodical harmonious self, but providing five minutes of exceedingly enjoyable fun anyway. It’s like the analogue to “Walls” here, only not quite as good. And it has a banjo! I think. And thus ends Section #1.
At this
point, while the album doesn’t begin to suck right away, the quality does take
a noticeable dip. One complaint many people
have about this album is the weak-ass guitar playing, and while I notice very
few examples of when Steve’s guitar parts are obviously piss-poor, I also
notice very few examples of Steve’s guitar parts, period, and for that reason I suppose I will concur with the
majority. You can also add to this a
lack of interesting keyboard parts, since Sherwood is a guitarist by trade, and
voila! You’re left with an album whose
overall production feel is generally agreeable, but whose specific instrumental
parts are lacking, and you know what happens when lack of interesting musical
goodies is combined with weak songwriting, don’t you? Yup!
Boring music, which is exactly how I’d describe the three decently
mediocre yet no better songs that make up the decidedly “eh” Section #2 of this
album. “
And then the album turns to shit. “Man in the Moon” is an utterly idiotic track with synth-string blasts that give me a headache and “Wonderlove” sounds like the meandering, formless crap that made up most of the KTA studio songs. “From the Balcony” is an acoustic filler track that obviously took two minutes to write in total (I am convinced Steve Howe was actually asleep when he provided the guitar part to this track. And Jon’s lyrics are embarrassing. “La La Love?” Are you serious?). “Love Shine” and “Somehow, Someday” are the two worst songs this band has laid down since the second half of Union, and the closing “The Solution” isn’t much better. I won’t even mention the TWENTY MINUTES of new-age water noises that Jon sticks onto the end. However, I WILL mention the “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, all good people!” lyrical chant in “Love Shine” that manages to rip off Abbey Road and self-ripoff The Yes Album at the same time and is, for my money, the most embarrassing moment in the entire Yes catalog that doesn’t involved Cambodian poetry or hip-hop. And I will also mention the guitar tone in “Somehow, Someday” that sounds like a refugee from the darkest, most unlistenable recesses of Trevor Rabin’s brain. And thus, thankfully, ends the abominable Section #3, which takes up fully half the record.
I am so tired of reviewing these crappy Yes albums. In the studio, do you realize that it’s been a decade since BIG FUCKING GENERATOR, and they still haven’t put together an album to match it? It’s not like that record’s that great, either. I love Yes. I really do love Yes. I firmly believe that no one’s record collection is complete without a solid section of seventies YesAlbums. But I’m objective, and I’m certainly not deluded. Yes, in the studio, haven’t been any good for fifteen years now, and with this record they’ve officially sucked for a full decade. It hasn’t even mattered who’s been in the band. With or without Rabin, with or without Wakeman, with or without Howe, they’ve sucked. Blargh.
The Ladder (1999)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Lightning
Strikes”
About. Fucking. Time. As a card-carrying member of the YesFanclub, you have to believe that it killed me to keep ripping into Yes like I’ve been doing for so many albums (not that it hasn’t been fun, too…but those pangs of anger and sadness are certainly not entertaining). Yes is one of my 10-15 favorite bands of all time. They were one of those special bands who, at their peak, made music no one else has ever been capable of making (like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, etc.). I don’t take that fact lightly, and thus, although it’s not like The Ladder is anywhere near a return to the heights of Fragile, Close to the Edge, or Relayer, it is unquestionably the best Yes studio album since 90125, which was made SIXTEEN YEARS before, and definitely the first batch of new Yes material I can without hesitation characterize as “good” since that silly time when Yes somehow became worldwide superstars on the strength of the pop songwriting skills of Trevor Rabin (I mean seriously…what the fuck?).
Besides these altogether praiseworthy facts, this also marks the debut of Yes as a six-piece, as Billy Sherwood and his totally inaudible keyboard parts are demoted to permanent second guitarist only, and crazy Russian guy Igor Khoroshev is brought in to function as some sort of rough facsimile of Rick Wakeman (by the way, the history of Yes’ keyboard slot now looks like this: Kaye-Wakeman-Moraz-Wakeman-Downes-Kaye-Wakeman-Sherwood-Khoroshev, and I’m sure I forgot somebody in there. Go Yes!). Also, unlike the rush-job batch of Billy Sherwood songs that was Open Your Eyes, the tack-on useless nothings that were the KTA studio tracks, the washed-up eighties-sounding rejects that made up Talk, the moronically stupid ensemble mess that was Union, and the Squire-less non-Yes crap thingy that was Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, this is the first time since TORMATO (which is admittedly a ridiculous album, but it came out only a year after Going for the One, right?) that Chris Squire, Jon Anderson, and Steve Howe (the core members of Yes as it was constituted at its peak) went into the studio on friendly terms and with all the time they needed. And the reason I bring this up is that I don’t see anyone else ever mentioning it anywhere. I don’t mean to write off the last twenty years as a bunch of Buggles/Rabin/in-fighting/disputing faction/Sherwood-led mistakes (especially since 90125 rules and all). I just mean to point out that perhaps the less than optimal working conditions and/or lineups of the last, say, seven albums contribute to their general lack of quality.
Anyway, enough of the obligatory band lineup history thesis that comes hand-in-hand with writing a Yes page. This is a good album. Now, before I get started, I’d also like to admit that, yes, it’s a little corny at times, and it’s also a little “adult-contemporary.” That is to be expected, and you’re gonna have to get past one or both of these things to objectively discuss anything Yes put out after, hell, 1977 even. The band has always been a little corny, especially since Jon Anderson is a new-age washed-up hippy fruit whose voice rises two extra octaves every third album, and the band members are all easily into their fifties by this point, so the adult contemporary factor was inevitable. But, for the most part, the songs here are well-written, interesting, and melodic, and the production is the best it’s been since 90125 or even Drama. Why? It’s DISTINCT. Open Your Eyes sounds pretty cool production-wise, but the fact remains that the individual parts are sometimes hard to discern (that and the songs blow). Not so here. Steve’s guitars, Igor’s keyboards (including occasional old-school organ embellishments! And not one-chord retardo-playing like Kaye, neither! Cool lines!), Jon’s voice, the band’s still-lovely (and this time thankfully subtle) harmonies, and Chris’ bass (which occasionally goes on these clearly audible lightning fast runs that we haven’t heard since the mid-seventies and I missed dearly) are all separate and clear. They make the nine-minute opener “Homeworld (The Ladder)” the best Yes extendo-song since fucking “Awaken,” although it’s clearly not as good as that fine track and Capn Marvel’s unabashed love for it is a little beyond me. Nevertheless, though, a non-cheesy, well-written, well-constructed, interesting track. Planning went in here, people. There are natural transitions and crescendos and crap that were painfully missing from the KTA extendo-tracks. It’s not fantastic or anything, ofcourse, but I’m pretty sure this is the most thought, care, and planning Yes has put into a song since the good ol’ days of Going for the One. I admire it very much.
Moving on, while the other extendo-track that bookends the album (“New Language”) has a bad-ass organ/guitar heavy prog intro that cooks and really reminds me of the good ol’ days, the rest of the song ain’t that much to look at (it’s fine, and eons better than some of the stuff from earlier in the decade, but kind of boring, although I enjoy Igor’s keyboard tone very much), the remaining songs are definitely Pop with a capital P, and those looking for these crusty new-age hippies to remake Relayer will be sadly disappointed. There are three ballads that would certainly qualify as “generic adult contemporary cheese” were they made by a lesser band (or this band 5 or 10 years ago, for that matter), but in the hands of these men in 1999, “It Will Be a Good Day (The River),” “If Only You Knew,” and “To Be Alive (Hep Yadda)” all work, albeit to varying degrees. “If Only You Knew” is probably the worst of the bunch (it sounds like it should be on a Jon solo album, so small is the remaining band input), but I enjoy “To Be Alive” way more than I probably should, considering it wouldn’t be that out of place at a dentist’s office. The keyboard tones (Igor! I like Igor) are wonderfully chosen throughout, and that “heyeyep!” chorus thing (or whatever the hell it is) is very pretty! But not as pretty as, say, Natalie Portman, who I swear is still thinking of the time we passed each other on the way to class five years ago. Really, she is! I swear…
OK, as you all could have probably guessed, my favorite song here is again debatably the stupidest, but I can’t help it if I love the stuffing out of the pseudo-dance thumpity track “Lightning Strikes.” The jaunty flute intro is great, Steve’s acoustic guitar is ace, and the main part of the song is just so fun! And there are like horn and tuba blasts and everything. What a cool song. Sounds like nothing else Yes have ever done, with the possible exception of the abominable “Teakbois” from ABWH (there’s a very vague resemblance, admittedly), but that wasn’t actually a Yes song, right? Right! So fuck it. “Face to Face” is another fun-yet-stupid modern-sounding track (Squire’s bass line is fantastic here), and the last third of the album is unfortunately not that strong. “Finally” is a generally mediocre and annoying rocker, and “The Message” tries to use a “funky” hi-hat pattern and get down with its bad self, but it ends up pretty bad. Then we have the aforementioned “New Language” and the token slow, pretty, short album closer “Nine Voices (Longwalker).” You remember “Let’s Pretend” from ABWH or possibly “Holy Lamb” from Big Generator? No? You mean you’ve never listened to those albums because you’re not a dork? Well, anyway, it sounds just like those songs.
Christ, look at me. I’m writing 1,500 word reviews on nineties
Yes albums NO ONE outside of serious Yes fans would ever considering purchasing
in the first place, especially when I have a whole bunch of very popular new
releases sitting on my computer waiting to be reviewed (you know I’ve already
gotten like four “When are you gonna review Takk…,
huh? Huh?” emails? I answered all of them individually and then
commenced typing a review of
Magnification (2001)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Don’t Go”
And so we come to what is, as of now, the end of Yes’ recorded studio output, a fact my indie rock-hound roommate will surely appreciate (sample conversation over the last two weeks: “What is that shit, Yes again?” “Yeah, this album sucks.” “No shit it does.”). And because it’s Yes, we again have to address lineup issues before actually discussing what the album sounds like. First, at some point after the band finished The Ladder and before they went out on their famous “Masterworks” tour (the setlist for which was filled with such snappy little pop songs as “Close to the Edge,” “The Gates of Delirium,” and “Ritual”), Billy Sherwood, whose reason for still being in the band was extremely tenuous, given that they had a full-time keyboardist and Steve Howe was on lead guitar, quietly left because no one wanted him there and they had no use for him, no doubt joining Trevor Rabin, Peter Banks, and Tony Kaye on the “Yes Rejects Tour,” coming next Thursday to the SeaTac Hilton Airport Lounge. Then, sometime during said Masterworks tour, Igor Khoroshev bit a female security guard (Seriously! With his chompers! This band is always so entertaining…), and was therefore summarily dismissed when the tour ended, because the only YesMembers allowed to bite people on tour are Chris Squire, Jon Anderson, and maybe Steve Howe. Certainly not Alan White, and sure as shit not Igor Fucking Khoroshev. With the revelation that Igor was categorically insane, however, Yes had a problem. Namely, no keyboardist! It’s not like they hadn’t been through this before, but after Wakeman rejected their inevitable pleas to rejoin for the seventeenth time, the band apparently looked at each and said “Fuck it. We’re Yes. Let’s hire an orchestra.” And so they did, as well as bringing in film score composer Larry Groupé to write the orchestral arrangements and thus serve as the band’s unofficial pseudo-fifth member, even though he doesn’t actually play anything.
Now, if the idea of Yes’ combining their songs with an orchestra sets off alarm bells in your head, I don’t blame you. Remember, that was the main reason that Time and a Word wasn’t any good. However, Mr. Groupé apparently knew what he was doing better than whoever arranged the Time and a Word material, and, although certain moments certainly sound overtly soundtrack-ish, I am pleased to say that this record presents the second enjoyable YesExperience in succession. Tribbles! Again, like The Ladder, it’s not like this is a return to the heights of the band at its peak (though anyone expecting that at this point is severely deluded). What it is, though, is a well-conceived, well-written, extremely pretty-sounding and undoubtedly worthy addition to the Yes canon, and what’s interesting is that, outside of the dumb, corny rocker “Spirit of Survival,” it takes a very different road to get there than The Ladder. Whereas The Ladder was sharp, crisp, upbeat pop smooshed into Yes’ corny/proggy/artsy vision of what smooth happypop should sound like, this album is nearly uniformly a very relaxing listen. The Ladder was fun and chipper and incorporated all these modern stylistics in cool and interesting ways (although it occasionally went too far or sounded too much like cheeze, admittedly), but this one incorporates absolutely no modern stylistics whatsoever. In a way, that shouldn’t be surprising, since The Ladder was just Yes’ 500th post-90125 bid for crossover pop success, but after it tanked horribly at the stores (even though it was actually good), the band apparently realized that they would never have mainstream popularity again. Sure, this realization came about a decade late, but it’s nice to know it finally came, and a non-desperate commercial whore Yes is obviously a better Yes.
So, anyway, like I said, the tunes here are very smooth, flowing, and languid, and this vibe is emphasized immensely by the well-integrated orchestral film score music in the background. Even with all the strings and shit and Jon Anderson’s ever-higher voice, this is probably the first album since Going for the One that the average cheese-phobic indie douchebag would not be embarrassed to listen to. It’s just so smooth. There are melodies, ofcourse, but they don’t JUMP out at you and smack you in the head like “Face to Face” or “Lightning Strikes.” They morph and evolve slowly, though by the choruses to the better tracks here they are certainly catchy. The opening title track is a good time, and both “Give Love Each Day” and especially “Don’t Go,” with it’s splurgetastic jaunty oboe break, hit pretty hard once you get into them. Other than that, everything is just languid, slow, and pretty, albeit with loud movie strings and overdubbed Jon/Chris harmonies everywhere, and while the specific member musical tastiness is sometimes hard to discern behind all the other instruments, a great guitar line like the one in “We Agree” is not too rare an occurrence. This relaxation does actually go a bit too far with the duo of 10+-minute songs near the end, “Dreamtime” and “In the Presence Of” (these songs are certainly not bad in any way, just a little mushy and meandering. Certainly not as focused as “Homeworld,” to take a roughly analogous track lengthwise), but I’d surely listen to this mushy orchestral slight boringness than the crap that filled so many Yes albums before this one. And there’s a fruity two-minute closer with the word “Time” in the title (“Time is Time”), but you probably could have predicted that by this point.
Good album, this. Not great, and I have a hard time saying whether or not it’s better than The Ladder, since the two records are so different, but it’s certainly more pleasant and consistent than its predecessor, if not as exciting. I am pleased that Yes is making good music. I enjoy when they do. And now, if you haven’t yet, go buy Fragile RIGHT NOW. It’s not a bad record.
I beg to leave to hear your
wonderous stories.