why late at night in the u.s. does ilm get all yessed out

Thank the heavens for pretentious and weird musicians.

not surprised that the other members of Yes were opportunivores

Steve held out!

there's a super deluxe of the Yes Album out now (feels like this album gets reissued every time I blink); remaster of the original mix+steven wilson mix again, a mono fold down which I guess was a radio promo at the time (pointless), but there are some live things from two 1973 sets which are cool and maybe haven't been out before, dunno, I honestly can't keep track. There's also a 2x45rpm pressing coming out as part of that Atlantic celebration (I don't fuck around with LPs at 45, I do not have enough time to get up and flip sides every two songs)

I do not have enough time to get up and flip sides every two songs

buddy this is the Yes thread

yeah but I'm not talking about 20 minute songs, I'm talking about the Yes Album. They're also going to split Close to the Edge (the song) in half and put half on side one and the other half of the song on side 2. That is dumb.

what part of I get up I get down do you not understand

Even Siberia goes through the motions
Hold out and hold up and flip and place down again (bluetail, tailfly)

The midnight special youtube channel has uploaded some clips of Flash recently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz_yMb1YKco

Very interesting, I really like the first minute or so and clearly Peter Banks brought something to the table that was...no longer at the table afterwards, would have been neat if he had rejoined the fold at some point

I've never been inspired to listen to a Flash album, but I don't hear Banks doing anything in the video that Howe couldn't have done just as well. The YouTube comments seems to be divided as to who was emulating whom.

yeah I think on balance Howe is the stronger player/writer for sure, don't remember him ever doing Banks' weird volume swell thing but I'm sure he was fully capable

still I like a lot of what he got up to on stuff like Survival and Astral Traveller, wikipedia says he attempted to recruit Kaye and Wakeman and Moraz and ended up just skipping keys altogether lol, the rest of the band seems very competent but the writing just isn't there, also not sold on the vocalist, is no Jon Anderson but who is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzrPnMGM-_o

Nice!

I have come around on Mirror to the Sky and most of the Quest; I do not want to like these albums but when I listen to them I can't help myself, they are pretty good, definitely a huge step up from Heaven and Earth and also better in general than those Keys to Ascension albums or the Ladder.

touching of the healing heart

oops i bumped the RONG thread - i must make things right

this lineup was called No

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HWo-YB94LQ

music is a shout of foregone conclusions

I love Steve Howe, but it's hard to understand what he was thinking with this

if we were flowers we would worship the sun, so why not now?

some weird trivia I just found out, Jon Davison is married to Emily Lodge, who is the daughter of John Lodge - "Emily's Song" by the Moody Blues is about her. could this be progressive rock's new power couple?

I am heartened by the few reaction Youtubes of grown-ups silently blubbing to the Todmobile/Jon Anderson live version of Awaken, I thought it was just me.

given how beyond judgmental music appreciation has gotten it's hard to imagine something like "awaken" getting recorded in the first place

"Going For The One" totally rules, why did I ever sell this? I remember an old old friend trying to get me into this record when we were kids in 1977, I was ten and had no idea what to make of it. he called it "hard rock" lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0dS7JYurPY

had never seen this before, pretty cool, but please skip to 2:20 to witness Jon Anderson as a chess piece asking to be moved to any black square

of all the guys you'd think would know the rules of chess

This is awesome!

of all the guys you'd think would know the rules of chess

lol so apparently jon anderson is a white bishop, except there's already a white bishop on a black square. and then after jon moves, black gets skipped and has its knight taken. the white queen should now be taken by the black bishop, but gets yet another turn to scoot

oh wait, that black knight wasn't taken, just like . . . sent away for a bit. now it's back, and moving like a bishop

very unorthodox strategy, especially the rare Hammond Rush Attack

yessed out and chessed out #onethread

also tony kaye should have kept the beard

It's all a travesty, the song's about a game of checkers!

here's a fun prog DJ moment - there's a bit in Fermented Hours by Wobbler which imitates the big church organ middle section in Close to the Edge. I stitched em together and some old guy at the bar said "oh NOW we're talkin"

Old guy at the bar otm

The 1994 album Talk, out of print forever because it was on an indie label that went out of business basically the week the record was released, is being reissued soon, both on its own and as a 4CD box also containing a disc of outtakes and a complete live concert from 1994.

I ranked it pretty high (#12 out of 33) when I reviewed all their albums for Stereogum in 2015; here's what I said:

The final album by the version of Yes that made 90125, Big Generator, and contributed to Union, Talk is actually a better-than-decent melodic rock record for much of its running time. Guitarist Trevor Rabin unplugs some of his pedals and sounds more like Steve Howe than he ever has; the songs are straightforward, but don't seem as cravenly aimed at the radio as they were on Union. Indeed, this was the record on which Jon Anderson and Trevor Rabin finally started to work well together, each man's vision for the group fitting together with the other's. In some ways, the album recalls Rush's Counterparts -- a veteran band exploring modern ideas, in a somewhat stripped-down way, without losing their grip on their own identities. The final track, "The Endless Dream," is where Talk becomes essential listening for serious Yes fans, though. It runs nearly 16 minutes, and perfectly bridges the gap between their 1970s glory years and their poppier work of the '80s and '90s. It's got the epic sweep and meditative beauty of Close To The Edge, with occasional outbursts of high-tech energy and some atmospheric yet aggressive guitar from Rabin.

This was the first Yes album not to appear on a major label -- after two decades with Atco, they shifted to Arista for Union, but Talk was released on the comparatively tiny Victory Music imprint, which went bankrupt soon after, sending it out of print. So it's kind of the "forgotten" Yes album. Too bad, since it's their best 1990s release.

that's cool, definitely one I think I need to revisit - my recollection is that it sounds like Yes with Trevor Rabin, as opposed to 90125 and Big Generator which are more like Trevor Rabin with Yes. I do remember the songs being good but mostly too long. But I still listen to "Where Will You Be?" a lot, its such a pretty song, exactly what I hoped Jon's solo records would sound like (and maybe they do, I only really know Olias). interested in the live stuff as well, I actually have no clue what this version of the band sounded like live

also nice it's coming out on vinyl, for some reason copies of this are very expensive, must not have been a lot pressed. original edition was a single LP which is pretty ambitious for a 55 minute album. might actually be the only Yes studio album that's difficult to get on wax. I thought Union might be too but it's not really. though it was also originally pressed as a single LP and this one's 60 minutes. that's getting into Todd Rundgren territory. maybe they didn't think anyone would actually listen to it.

this is a bewildering release to me, I can't imagine there is much if any demand for it beyond the vinyl. But I hate this album, I think this and Open Your Eyes are their absolute nadir (until Heaven and Earth); some of this is circumstantial, as I first heard it while working a contract job for 3 months for these two guys who were absolute assholes with shit music taste, and one of them would play this album first thing in the morning in our basically empty office at ear-splitting volume.

I don't know if there's demand for anything anymore, but considering how long it's been out of print, I'm sure there's a subset of Yes fans who'll be thrilled to own a copy. I listened to it again yesterday and my original opinion holds up — I'm into it. Had it been force-fed to me at the time, I could easily see turning against it, though.

Never heard this one. I bet True Yes Fans took one look at the new logo and fainted.
I wonder if this means that Tin Machine II, also a victim of Victory Music, will return sometime soon.

tin machine 2 got a vinyl reissue a few years back somehow.

anyway, reading on wiki again about the recording of Talk is kind of a trip as it was tracked to like, Mac SEs or something, with software that was being written at the time. They needed 27 mics to capture the drums and it wound up taking up 34GB of uncompressed space which is something, considering everything was stored on dynatec hard drives which were like, 8 GB and probably cost a trillion dollars. Early digital recording like this sounds like more hassle than it was worth.

“So the story goes…”

listens to leave it

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71B9r8ZqkbL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

im reading this book and its so weird and nerdy i kind of love it - but album still sucks

Kevin Mulryne's YES podcasts are great, nerdy fun to listen to.

I've come around to a lot of Tormato, but the album sounds fucking awful.

sucks bcz oliver's dad was very reinstated 👎🏽

yes i am still salty abt how moraz was treated lol

Didn’t know about the Mulryne podcast but nearly jumped through the roof seeing that there’s an 8 part episode on Tales From Topographic Oceans which is a top 10 of all time for me — but then whoever starts talking about 15 minutes in about the progression from Close to the Edge to Awaken starts going on and on about how he can’t remember a single note from The Remembering and how awful Steve’s guitar sounds on The Ancient and I barely stopped myself from jumping inside my car stereo and letting him know how wrong he is (close call). For one, I feel like The Remembering is probably the poppiest moment on the album (definitely the most vocal heavy) and Steve’s sliding around on The Ancient is one of the coolest bits on the album (esp in relation to the background music he’s sliding over).

I thought I was about to jump into a bunch of TFTO heads really dissecting the album but they all seem to be of the consensus that sides 1 and 4 are the only necessary parts which makes it surprising that this is the first Yes album they decided to tackle in depth.

interested in the Tormato book though lol @ "You'll never hear the album in the same way again!"...do people actually listen to this album often? the condition of the many, many used copies that come into the local shop suggests they don't. though I admit I actually like the weird-as-shit "Arriving UFO"

yes i am still salty abt how moraz was treated lol

really an all-time weird career, I mean his work on Relayer is great, the Refugee album (which I think he wrote the vast majority of) totally rules, and his first solo album is nice...but idk if anything he did after that is worthwhile, after 1976 he's primarily known as the guy who tried to sue the Moody Blues and probably should've won

"You'll never hear the album in the same way again!"

the bit on "The Remembering" where Howe revs up and Jon starts singing "Relayer, all the dying cried before you" is one of my favorite moments in the entire Yes catalogue

do agree the music is a bit bare though, one of those things where they decided to make a bunch of longform tunes without having a whole lot of ideas for them, as opposed to the best prog epics which sound like they had too many ideas and things just spiraled out of control into these amazing semi-cohesive pieces

To me the “:..and I do feel very well” thing on The Remembering is like the catchiest part of their entire catalog, I don’t even like thinking about it because now I’ll probably be singing it in my head the rest of the day.

I’ve never really understood the prevailing sentiment that the album is padded but I do plan to listen to these other 7 episodes to hopefully at least get a sense of what parts people consider those to be (more specifically than sides 2 & 3 as a whole).

moraz claims he wrote like half of going for the one also (which is trufax why it’s good not bad)

meanwhile wakeman on topographic: " 'I don't want to do this free-form jazz" lol why not back to practicing yr scales, fatfinger boy, then you don't fuck them up so often

free-form jazz, what a fkn useless dullard you are rick