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

"Fly From Here : Return Trip" sounding so good on a Summer evening.

the greatest prog album of all time turned 50 today. who's getting yessed out with me

beauty begins at the foot review

GOAT

I LISTENED HARD BUT COULD NOT SEE

fragile better

ok not really

and you and i is the apex for me

Young me liked Fragile because it has the "hits", but I think I might prefer CTTE now.

Siberian Khatru is my MVP jam here

hell yeah

what I love so much about the title track is that it really does feel like one very long song, as opposed to other prog epics like Tarkus, Suppers Ready, Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, etc. which come across more as a bunch of sections stitched together. it goes through all the movements of a traditional 4-minute pop song, it's just....longer. and way more complex & intricate. you can't really separate any of it out.

That's why I feel just slightly off about hearing them out of sequence live, but that's a bit nitpicky

Siberian Kathharrtutruuu

what I love so much about the title track is that it really does feel like one very long song, as opposed to other prog epics like Tarkus, Suppers Ready, Plague of Lighthouse Keepers, etc. which come across more as a bunch of sections stitched together. it goes through all the movements of a traditional 4-minute pop song, it's just....longer. and way more complex & intricate. you can't really separate any of it out.

― frogbs

in terms of compositional chops CTTE really is next-level, it's like it's got fuckin' thematic development or something. that's one of my favorite prog-rock stories, somebody played _the polite force_ for aaron copland and he was like "this is just a bunch of wibbly bits repeated four times and then there's a solo or something, none of the themes are developed at all", so mont campbell spent the next 18 months figuring out how to develop a theme and then he wrote "enneagram". anyway CTTE to my ears does kinda the same thing, way more argument for "fusion of pop and classical" than taking a pink floyd tune and throwing an orchestra and choir on it (nb i actually like "atom heart mother" better than "close to the edge" so not throwing shade on floyd or ron geesin here)

John Covach's analysis of it ("Progressive Rock, ‘Close to the Edge,’ and the Boundaries of Style" in Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis, edited by John Covach and Graeme M. Boone, Oxford University Press, 1997) was very good. He broke it down as a significantly expanded AABA form. I also did an analysis that I presented at a bunch of conferences in a previous life but it wasn't as good.

another one i bought because i was excited to be seeing them in a month and i wanted to know the album first. all these 50th anniveresaries are bombarding me with my ancientness.

oh dear, I do wonder how these yes shows are going to go

The CTTE 50th show was my first gig post-Covid. Fear not, they perform it superbly well. The earlier pre-CTTE set was fine, if a somewhat inevitably ersatz experience, but the album run through was where they stepped up, fully engaged and properly took off. It was technically immaculate, individually characterful, emotionally true, and performed with love and joy.

listening to Fragile now. this was my first Yes album and actually one of the first records I ever bought. that was 20 years ago! I still have the same copy! looks scratched up but it plays great. I haven't listened to it in a while but damned if it still ain't great. you can focus on any individual instrument here and have a blast. "South Side of the Sky" is such a cool epic for them. they're like trying to do heavy, evil-sounding rock but they can't cuz they're Yes. instead they hit on a really different sound that I don't think any other band quite captures. I dig the interludes too. I really disagree with anyone who thinks the album would be better without 'em (ok, maybe "Cans and Brahams"). and does "Long Distance Runaround" have the sickest bassline ever played on FM radio or what? such a classic record

South Side is my early morning cold as fuck walk to the bus stop jam

The long bridge section of "South Side" with the jazzy piano and wordless vocal harmonies is so gorgeous. For some reason I always forget it exists, so it always hits like the most pleasant surprise when I listen to that song

^^ that's what actually convinced me to put it on! I was thinking of getting yessed out and then that "laaaa laaaa la-la-la-la" bit popped in my head so I was like Fragile it is

https://i.imgur.com/uTwOjvy.jpg

Almost

i once saw nyc graffitti where underneath "Clapton is God" someone had scrawled "Bruford is Good."

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

I didn’t know how close these two bohemoths came to releasing something. Thank god they didn’t

why late at night does Lizzo get all yessed out?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qRQUNnm3MM

Nice, I would've pegged her as more of a Tull fan

what percentage of the audience recognized that

just took a DNA test and it turns out I am 100% that shining flying purple wolfhound

how can the woodwind with its twerks all around me

Same part of the same song also interpolated by LCD Soundsystem at their Long Goodbye show

Other Yes songs are available -eg fail-safe party-starter "The Gates of Delirium"

“So cold that we cried” always gets the stadium emotional

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

so this is awesome, "Crawdaddy Simone" by the Syndicats, Steve Howe's earliest band. starts out pretty standard UK electric blues but hang on, at about 1:20 the drummer starts going apeshit and there are parts of these (the middle and end) that are wilder than any Yardbirds, up there with the Monks for feral pummeling energy

A Joe Meek Production!

oh shit really?

Yup! Although according to https://www.last.fm/music/The+Syndicats/+wiki Howe had left by the time they cut that track.

leave it

Pretty interesting interview with Benoît David:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/benoit-david-yes-singer-still-hurts-1234671770/

Wow. Seems like a good dude. I think FFH is tgeir last great (very good?) album. I’m happy to read that he’s doing fine. Thanks for the link, Tarfumes!

Yeah, wow indeed. I am not the biggest Yes fan but that interview was amazing from beginning to end.

yea exactly the sort of inside baseball I've always wondered about with this group. curious that him and Anderson both had the same vocal issues...wonder if the fog machines they used had anything to do with it?

I suspect it's more to do with the demands on the singers put on them by the instrumentalists. That is, it's far less physically taxing for a bassist or keyboardist to play every single night, but a singer needs rest, especially one singing at the top of their range for three hours a night. It seems like Squire et al were never particularly sensitive to the physical demands singers are subject to.

More to the point, Squire shit on David because he cracked on the highest note in Yes's oeuvre during one concert, but kept booking tours with 3-4 dates in a row.

i liked when he said styx were always super-tight but the yes lads were sloppier and then worried he was going to get sued

sued by the ghost of chris squire for pointing out he didn't practice enough

To be fair, the music of Styx is a lot more straightforward than the music of Yes.
I'm glad to hear he's made his peace with his time in the band.

funny he mentioned it being too loud on stage, I think Jon A. complained about the same thing, particularly the bass. can't imagine it's easy to sing when you can't really hear yourself.

funny he mentioned it being too loud on stage, I think Jon A. complained about the same thing, particularly the bass. can't imagine it's easy to sing when you can't really hear yourself.

Don't know why this would be a problem in the era of in-ear monitors. You get your own dialed-in mix right there — "onstage sound" shouldn't be an issue at all.

I remember people talking about the Yes/Styx tour at the time, apparently Yes were sloppy as fuck for the first few dates due to the fact they couldn't be arsed to rehearse properly. Plus drink problems. Styx are this super-slick Vegas/Broadway live act nowadays, probably goes down better in the sheds than Squire et al stumbling through Yours Is No Disgrace every night.

In theory, sure, but if your mix is all set in your in-ears, and then the bassist decides during the show, "Fuck it, I'm turning up," there's not a lot you can do about that, especially if the bassist uses speaker cabinets onstage. We've all been to shows where someone couldn't hear someone else properly -- with or without in-ears -- and all of those shows had lengthy soundchecks. Ginger Baker's hatred of Jack Bruce is almost entirely down to Bruce turning way up during shows -- from 1967 through to the Cream reunion in 2005. Sometimes musicians, in the heat of the moment, think turning up is a) a good and fun idea, and b) won't affect anyone else.

xp