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

hey frogbs how's it sounding? i've been spinning Olias Of Sunhillow and it is great when i'm in the right mood. i keep waiting for it to start.

Speaking of which:
https://www.cherryred.co.uk/product/jon-anderson-olias-of-sunhillow-2-disc-remastered-expanded-edition/

Released March 26, 2021

• A NEWLY REMASTERED & EXPANDED 2 DISC EDITION OF THE LEGENDARY 1976 SOLO ALBUM BY YES VOCALIST JON ANDERSON
• NEWLY REMASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES
• FEATURES A DVD WITH A HIGH RESOLUTION 96 kHz / 24-BIT REMASTER OF THE ORIGINAL STEREO MIX ALONG WITH A 5.1 SURROUND SOUND UP-MIX DERIVED FROM THE ORIGINAL MASTER TAPES
• WITH FULLY RESTORED ARTWORK AND AN ESSAY WITH AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JON ANDERSON
• INCLUDES ILLUSTRATED BOOKLET WITH NEW ESSAY

Was it necessary for Yes to replace Kaye with Wakeman in order to achieve the level of commercial and musical success they did with Fragile?

I think Tony Kaye didn't like playing anything other than the Hammond, but by that time synthesizers and Mellotrons etc were all the rage so just sticking to the organ would have seemed a little dated. Plus Wakeman was a much better and more versatile musician.

Sure, but I get the impression some comments above are hinting that something was lost between The Yes Album and Fragile, and it's hard to pin that on anything other than Kaye's departure.

I don’t think Kaye’s presence made much of a huge musical difference. He was a fine player but I dunno... maybe their minds were expanding, musically, as a unit and someone as —um — expansive as Wakeman fit where they were headed much better than Kaye?

Wakeman brought a neoclassical flair to the band that made Fragile and later works possible, but this also diluted the rock elements that made Yes Album so effective. So I think it was necessary, but meant losing a more focused rock energy.

I'm not sure why Fragile is so inferior (imo) but it is. The songs just aren't nearly as strong. They were transitioning away from being a rock group into something else, and they rushed out their transitional album

Or what Moodles said

One listen to Kaye's post-Yes band Badger tells you where he was at musically, kind of blues prog. I don't think they'd have made Close to the Edge with him still there. Topographic Oceans neither, but that's another story.

The Yes Album and Fragile would both be much better with the shorter songs excised, other than Long Distance Runaround/The Fish.

Another way to look at is that Kaye was willing to chug away and let Howe take the lead. With Wakeman, you end up having two lead instrumental voices battling it out for space.

Do you mean "Clap" and "A Venture " from the Yes Album? Really disagree there.

Xp

Squire was always the lead instrumentalist but yes fine ;)

I like Fragile a lot too, though!

The three epic tracks are all amazing, "Long Distance Runaround" is delightful, and the short solo excursions are nice diversions.

Squire is much more melodic than your average bass player, but he still mostly plays the traditional bass role with Howe and Wakeman often layering in lead squiggles over the top.

I thought the shorter tracks on The Yes Album and Fragile broke the flow, although they're not bad in and of themselves (with the exception of "Cans & Brahms", which is the worst track Yes ever put to tape by a long way and I'm including "Circus of Heaven" in that).

Squire is much more melodic than your average bass player, but he still mostly plays the traditional bass role with Howe and Wakeman often layering in lead squiggles over the top.

This is where it all started going wrong on Topographic Oceans for me, the keys and bass are more like colouring or back-up instruments while Howe and Anderson wank off endlessly on top.

hey frogbs how's it sounding? i've been spinning Olias Of Sunhillow and it is great when i'm in the right mood. i keep waiting for it to start.

was pretty fucking amazing. I've always wanted a copy of Olias, should probably pull the trigger on that some day. judging by my last haul apparently I am in the "get all the 74-76 solo albums" phase now

IMO Fragile is better than TYA but I guess I'll have to confirm this when the sun goes down (4:30 PM)

I heard the first two albums long after I knew the rest of the catalogue, and I was surprised to find that Time and a Word featured Kaye much more than the Yes Album did. Of course, Peter Banks was a much more retiring guitarist than Howe, so it may be that Kaye stepped up when there was more room to fill, and stepped back as Howe took the reins. I guess it's also worth noting the Kaye only took 1/5 songwriting credit on a single song in his three albums with the band.

One thing that I read awhile ago that might not be apparent from the records or the credits was how much Wakeman had to do with coming up with transitions between musical bits; since he was the only one with a serious musical education, he knew the "proper" way to resolve and combine the parts that the others contributed.

I think Eddie Offord's editing skills were a big part of corralling the chaos into coherent musical pieces too, although I suspect that aspect of his contribution was sidelined to some extent by the time they did Topographic Oceans as the egos got out of hand.

IN the meantime, the dregs of current Yes have put out an album as Arc of Life

Here's a video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_84UCEDeEkc

This album sounds exactly how you'd expect an album featuring Billy Sherwood, Jimmy Haun, Jay Schellen (Alan White's replacement/double) and Jon Davidson to sound: like lukewarm oatmeal. It's better than Heaven and Earth though.

Speaking of Davison if you really need a Yes fix you might want to check out his former band Glass Hammer

They’ve got a lot of good ones but If and Cor Coridum very much have a “what if Yes stayed the course after Going For the One” vibe to them

I love "Circus of Heaven". Definitely not near their worst.

I've said it before but those long weird meandering solos on "The Ancient" are really weird and beautiful, I've never heard anything else like that.

I enjoy "Cans & Brahms" for what it is tbh, a quick Wendy Carlos-style arrangement sketch. I know people hate it.

Seems far too short and breezy to be hateable.

I dislike it mostly because its prominent placement on the record can give people the idea that Yes is about "playing rock versions of classical music" like ELP, when that wasn't what they did at all.

As for the question of "What is the weakest Yes original released between 1969 and 1980", I might pick "Clap" or "Onward".

Oh, yeah, it's not the best introduction, especially coming right after the hit.

Hating "Clap" is madness, though.

that little bruford drumroll during the applause right before "starship trooper" launches rules

Howe's guitar sounds unpleasantly trebly on "Clap", and it seems like an exercise. I prefer the warmer classical guitar on "Mood for a Day".

i love "a venture". it's jaunty and trippy. it would have been a highlight on either of the first two albums, where anderson's lyrics were more often linear and narrative

god the yes album is just perfect

Okay, I just played "A Venture" and it seems I'd been mixing it up with "We Have Heaven", it's actually a nice little number. So that's a thumbs-up from me too. Steve Howe's Chet Atkins fantasies can still bog off though. I'm tempted to play "Circus of Heaven" now to see if it's less embarrassing than I remember.

It's pretty weak.

i love that they got one of the dudes from gnidrolog to play record on the first movement of "i've seen all good people", and they go from that into howe totally vamping in the second movement, into "a venture" and the space lounge of "perpetual change." as great as this record is it still sounds so weird

I think he played a steel-string on both pieces? xps

Matt #2 - you don't like "We Have Heaven"?

I have fond memories of singing "Circus Of Heaven" when I went for walks a decade ago.

I thought We Have Heaven was an OK-ish dry run for Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow, which was also part of a "let's all do solo things" project thinking about it. Five Per Cent of Nothing just about beats Ramshackled if we're making comparisons. Squire was the winner both times though, Fish Out of Water is almost the great lost Yes album.

Fish Out of Water loses me a bit on the last orchestral track, but it is interesting to hear Squire's lead voice and his take on the Yes sound.

5% for Nothing is a perfect 30 second song, but Ramshackled is way way down on my listening list.

I wish Anderson had done more like "We Have Heaven", I think he might have used more loops on one of his later solo albums but not sure.

this should come packaged in a vacuum bong

https://www.musicglue.com/yes-union-30/products/yes-union-live-limited-edition-super-deluxe-flight-case-30-year-anniversary-edition

Union tour was the only time I saw Yes live, and it was deeply disappointing

Utterly baffling that they are releasing this and thinking it's something their fanbase wants. Their fanbase wants tours released, certainly; Progeny was proof of that. But they want good tours of the band in their prime, and Union is not that. I can't imagine listening to 30 discs of shows from that tour. This isn't King Crimson.

'union' had its own section in the used bin at my local record store circa '92

I don't think any of the Union live albums have had much tracks from the studio album. I've wanted something like that because Wakeman felt the studio album was butchered but was proud of the live performances, but this is too much.

I saw them twice on the Union tour, lol.