Yes and 'How Do You Listen To Prog?'

About the opposite of punk or R&B, that is. :-)

Personally, I prefer synth. :-)

shit geir beat me by a second...

And people wonder why my hackles rise when i hear the word "Prog"?

I never listen to lyrics. Also, as noted above, check out Relayer; it's really bizarre and hypercomplex in an almost noise-rock way at points.

I'm not really looking for anything in particular from a prog record - if it jams I like it. If Steve Howe plays a ridiculously extended flamenco solo in the middle, I don't. Generally.

I'm one of those dreaded "active listeners" types, who likes little more than plunking down in front of the stereo and just phasing out the rest of the world for 40-60 minutes. And you know, a lot of prog works veeery nicely that way; while some other music I like doesn't really (T Rex for instance, whom I really really like, are kinda boring when I listen to them like that)

I dunno, I plunked into prog through some of the big ones like Genesis' "Selling England By The Pound"; which was an album that didn't blow me away, but there'd be a bit here and there that I'd REALLY like, and I'd keep coming back for that, and eventually start to appreciate the things around it, and before I knew it I was ordering crap like Balletto Di Bronzo and Univers Zero and having the time of my life.

That being said, "The Yes Album" and "Close To The Edge" were the two that really hooked me on Yes; I always had trouble with Fragile. I don't like Roundabout very much, and yes, Cans & Brahms is really bad. Not to mention Jon Anderson's Tell the moondog crap! ARgh! We got hell, more like.

I dunno, the reason I originally got into prog was because I wanted to hear music that didn't sound like everything else; eventually I would stumble upon all the bands that were just ripping off other progbands, but man were those first months of discovery amazing. And I still find killer albums within "prog", whether it's the symph-pomp of Yes or danciness of Samla Mammas Manna/Lars Hollmer, spaceathon of Gong or the broodiness of Shub Niggurath.

What can be said? Just try to leave old hangups on the door (which is very difficult at times, I know I've had some troubles. My biggest problem with Yes was actually the country-guitarplaying of Steve Howe (though I instantly fell in love with "The Clap")
Eventually things fall into place and you find the progbands you like; because obviously not everyone's going to like fricken ELP and Camel, but there's still plenty else in there.

For pop fans I tend to recommend the likes of Caravan, though warn of some extended jazzy solos. The title track on "In the land of grey and pink" makes me ever so happy.
And Van Der Graaf Generator seems to appeal to a lot of rock fans nowadays too, even ones who hate prog and will then go on to say "But this VDGG stuff isn't really prog, man! I mean, it's all good and stuff!"

Does it sh ow that I wrote this post in spurs, and have no focus whatsoever? Swell!
It's funny how many people I've turned onto major prog bands, who'd never even bothered giving them the chance, out of the assumption that it's all a buncha crap.

I am not liking S.Howe I confess.

What King Crimson albums are the best place to start? Should I start with the early mellotron stuff? What about the later albums - I've always imagined that they sounded like Remain in Light with more noodling and even more polyrhythms. Am I right?

If you like some darker, almost hardrock like stuff, try the mid-70s stuff with Wetton; again, another vocalist many hate. I tend to recommend "Red" just on the strength of "Starless" alone, which has pretty much THE ultimate build-up section in all of rock music, as far as I'm concerned.
Larks' Tongues In Aspic might actually be a better album though, but the "Starless & Bible Black" album is usually hardt o digest for most people, due to a lot of improvised material.

Still, "In the court of the crimson king" is no doubt a classic, though I do think it's got some tedious spots (songs that seem to vamp on just a bit longer than they really ought to etc; the title track's infinite amount of choruses being a prime example)

Of course, you could get "Lizard", which even has Yes' Jon Anderson on vocals during the first part of the 20-minute title track, but be aware that a lot of people hate it. It's sort of like a more jazzed out band, yet still very symphonic in style. Robert Fripp absolutely hates it, which might be another point in favour of it.

The 90s stuff doesn't really sound too similar to the 80s stuff, it's more like a mix of the rhythmical complexity of that, with more of the harmonies you'd find in the 70s, plus some sort of modern traits (particularly the last albums with the e-drums, loops and all)

I'd recommend that you read up a bit on sites like www.gepr.net ; as there's a LOT of information, and a lot of people often only like one or two "periods" of King Crimson.

He was a MiniMoog man. I once saw a photo of him on stage with four of the little beasts arrayed around him.

The Night Watch double live cd that came out however many years ago is a great representation of the 70s band.

2/"siberian khatru" is the best number on "close to the edge". I was going to send "the yes album". b/c it is better, but I couldn't find my old copy.

3/ Caravan's "in the land of grey and pink" is really good, and quite on-the-one in places. their other stuff, I don't like too much.

4/peter hammill's lyrics are generally very good i think, as are most of palmer-james' lyrics on the bruford-era crimson stuff. the rest is pretty rank. I don't recall much prog lyrics about elves, wizards etc, i usually associate that sort of nonsense w/uria heep, rainbow etc. keith sinfield's lyrics for king crimson and elp are really astonishingly bad.

5/ prog king of mellotron surely = tony banks?

6/there is an oystein who posts on the progressive ears forum - is that you? (just curious)

6.5/ When I was looking at prog ears thee other day, I noticed someone going on abt melodicism. is that you geir?

7/ oystein & dleone = excellent posts I thought.

Generally when I listen to prog, I want to have a kind of sonic mental journey (sorry that sounds hippyish, but meh). Like if a conventional song is like this little train that goes around and around the same circular piece of track, when I listen to a prog piece I want to go on the east coast mainline between say morpeth and edinburgh, & look out of the window and see lots of different things, one after thee other. I don't give a fuck abt classical music influences, if I want to hear classical, I will put on Shostakovitch, Messiaen or Hovaness, right? Instrumental virtuosity either - IF I wanted that, I'd go for return to forever or s.th like that. I don't generally.

that neil young thread is pretty funny since my prog rock covers band played this cricket club in annfield plain, and when we were tearing down our gear, the barman played neil young's latest CONCEPT
ALBUM which was FUCKING HORRIBLE K-SHIT.

some stuff I like:

van der graaf generator - "Pawn Hearts", "Godbluff"
king crimson - "larks tongues in aspic", "red"
gryphon - "red queen to gryphon three"
anglagard - "hybris", "epilog"

stuff i would avoid as if it carried plague virii:
barclay james harvest
emerson lake and palmer
camel
all that goddamn awful twee songwritery shit like spock's beard and the flower kings - mor shit w/derivative mellotron breaks interspersed =/= progressive music, right?

I was going to say s.th snarky abt dada, but I'm trying hard to like him. It is quite difficult, but i will persevere.

Gotta disagree with you on the Camel though, those early albums are pretty dang good, as long as you don't go pass Moon Madness; for beyond there lies the scrotum of adult contemporary jazzrock, instead of lightprog with amazing melodies and sneezing kitten-drumming.

I don't mind "Roundabout", and like it sometimes, but I actually do find it a little wanky and overrated. I'm surprised that people who hate prog will often confess a weakness for that song. I love "The Fish" and "South Side of the Sky" and enough of "Heart of the Sunrise" to put up with its excessive length. "Cans and Brahms" is shit but it's what, a minute long? I have a certain affection for "Mood for a Day" just because my guitar teacher taught the first bit to me when I was 13 and I always used it to impress people. "Long Distance Runaround" is a pretty classic melody.

The Yes Album is totally where it's at with Yes for me and I think you possibly might like it better, Dr C. The playing and writing is so much more focused and restrained, the melodies are brilliant and are never lost in pointless tangents, and it somehow feels like it almost glows with a certain depth of joy that is rare in pop music.

(I actually kind of like how a lot of their lyrics sound with the music.)

I might get the Yes album tomorrow - I think it's in the HMV sale at 4.99. I have Close to The Edge with me at work today and will give it a spin when I've eaten my bacon roll. Will be back...

Yes were always melodically strong, while ELP were far too often not melodic at all. Thus, Yes wins here, because, even at your most pretensious, you need to have the melody there.

Then, of course, due to their lack of unneccessary pretensious instrumental imprivisations, Genesis win this entire thing anyway. :-)

I love Close To The Edge now. Siberian Thingy is ace, as is the first track. Not sure about And You And I.

I still don't like Steve Howe much.

I've not really added anything to the debate, have I? Oh well... next time I see some of those Yes remastered CDs cheap I'll have to snap a few up, because I want more now.

Some prog bands did eventually go over into fusion, like Soft Machine for instance, who started out as psych, went prog-with-lots-of-jazziness and then fusion.
To me it has a bit to do with how the songwriting and playing is focused. If you've ever seen Mahsvishnu Orchestra sheet music, you'll see there's also a lot of parts left open for ad lib... To me there's a pretty strong link to the sorta complex lines of hardbop and bebop taken up to a rock'n'roll fury.

Obviously this is a discussion that's been going for years. hardcore jazzguys who hate fusion will yell about it having nothing to do with jazz. While most other people tend to go "mano, what be this jazz shits? Get yer cane, pops!"

Try going to groups.google.com and search for something like 'fusion prog', and I'm sure you'll find plenty of arguments pro and con.
I know there was a looong discussion on rec.music.progressive a year or so back called "Is fusion prog?"

Great, genre-discussions! I usually try to keep out, but I couldn't help myself!
Is polka pop?
Is progmetal prog?
Is smoothjazz jazz?
Is industrial electronic?
Is bluegrass c&w?

Thank god I'm going out for the weekend so I won't be dorking up this thread any more http://www.organissimo.org/forum/html/emoticons/whistling.gif

from one listen I agree with Sundar's assessment: nice hooks, melodies but words cannot do justice to how awful that organ part is (with the really weedy ambient shit straight after that). Yes had some great melodies and rhythms but some boring bits. its Its pretty good, but nowhere near as great as Crimson ('red' is the only other prog rec i had before today).

"Soon" is still incredibly beautiful though. And "To Be Over" is great too.

Ditto Zappa. I bought "Inner Mounting Flame" a while back because I remember quite liking it but I found it to be irritating nonsense for the most part.

I'd also recommend to cure your Howe aversion finding some stuff by his former band Bodast. More like late period Small Faces, taut wired, jukebox britsoul rather than the panoramic space symphonies he produced with Yes.

Funny how the third phase (after a first "British blues" phase and the second, "classic" phase) of the band hasn't been referred yet. As Rick Wakeman's solo career declined, and Yes were craving for a new breath for their career, Wakeman got back to the fold and Yes penned two (in my opinion) great albums (Going for the One & Tormato), which mixed their standard complex arrangements with a straight-forward rock feeling.
Highlights from this phase: Awaken - Parallels - On the Silent Wings of Freedom - Future Times, etc.

Then, the band started breaking up: Anderson quit, and Wakeman followed. Instead of quitting, Squire, Howe and White brought the Buggles (Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes) into the band and created my favourite Yes album ever: DRAMA. Probably the heaviest of all Yes albums, it is chock full of great basslines and guitar riffs. Horn is similar in tone and pitch to Jon Anderson (though he has a Police-era-Sting type accent), while Downes keeps himself away from flashy solos, providing mainly some textures and backgrounds, and the occasional melodic line. Machine Messiah, Does It Really Happen? and Tempus Fugit are the highlights, but all tracks are great.

After this schizoid line-up, Yes broke up for a couple of years, just to be reborn as a art-pop number, leaded by South Africa's own guitar-wankery master Trevor Rabin (who tried to overshadow a returning Jon Anderson both on singing and songwriting fields), and produced by former Yes-man Horn, but that's another story...

But yeah what I'm really loving is the creaky, grainy darkness of the folky tracks. All those Mellotrons, I love Mellotrons. Did any more-folk-less-prog bands make much use of the Mellotron? I'd love to hear it.

As for In the Court of the Crimson King, the first two tracks are amazing, but as it goes on I like the rest of it less and less...

I want suggestions!

Fwiw I think you started with the right band (Yes) but I'm absolutely positive you'll like Caravan (they evolved from The Wylde Flowers who of course were part of the Canterbury Scene.... may I presume you're familiar with Soft Machine, Gong, Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers already?) and King Crimson.

After that I'd suggest you give Camel, Barclay James Harvest, Jethro Tull and Van Der Graaf Generator (Mr. Lydon was a fan of theirs you know!) a try too.

In all instances however I suggest you treat their "post-punk" output with extreme caution....

My personal theory (which naturally I am not prepared to elaborate on, discuss or justify in any way whatsoever) is that pretty much all of the Prog bands unconsciously did everything they could to pave the way and set the stage for the advent of Punk; laying themselves wide open to every bit of shit that was thrown at them in the process; by plunging head-first straight up their own self-indulgent arses at some time between '75 and '79.

Of course this is why fine, noble, intelligent, upstanding young gentlemen like yourself and myself believed all the Punk rhetoric and saw nothing of value in Prog - because by then it really was all a load of old bollocks!

The one exception to this wildly sweeping generalisation that is so hugely and monumentally, glaringly bloody obvious that I can't possibly even attempt to ignore it, is King Crimson ("like Remain in Light with more noodling and even more polyrhythms" isn't too bad description of 1981's "Discipline" and 1982's "Beat" btw, although of course they've gone on somewhere else again since then!)

Oh and there's absolutely nothing wrong with compilations when you're trying these bands out either; that sounds like just another pompous conceit to me (although that might just be a fragment of those old blinkers still stuck in the corner of my eye). In fact I'd specifically recommend:
"Where But For Caravan Would I...?"
"The Compact King Crimson" (or failing that "In The Court Of The Crimson King" AND "Discipline")
"Echoes" (Camel)
"The Collection" / "Mockingbird" (Barclay James Harvest)
"Original Masters" (Jethro Tull)
"First Generation" (Van Der Graaf)

No mellotrons, but if you want the darkest, dankest, proggy folk, you could do worse than investigate the first album by Comus
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~rneckmag/comus.html

Fwiw (I did say I wasn't going to attempt to justify my comments precisely because I knew they'd inevitably lead to this sort of debate!) my belief is that the demise of Prog through auto-asphyxiation and the advent of Punk (in the UK at least) were both direct consequences of the huge bottleneck that seemed to exist at that time between the bands with the dry ice and the flying pigs and who could fill the stadia (the "rock aristocracy" that Dadaismus describes above) and the little guys slogging their way 'round the pub circuit.

The guys at the bottom thought they'd never be able to get to the top (hence the willingness of so many of them to leap aboard the first passing bandwagon that offered a chance for them to break the stalemate and get noticed) and the guys at the top who had no real competition and thought they could do what ever the fuck they liked.

Of those at the top, the Proggers simply happened to be those whose self-indulgence was most obvious and undeniable and this in turn made them the easiest targets!

Hence of course the reason why it was OK for Mr Lydon to wander 'round wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt with "I hate" written across it whilst singing the praises of Can, Beefheart, "Bitches Brew" and Van Der Graaf Generator!

A flawed gem.

Q: "Would the Mahavishnu Orchestra appeal to people who follow prog rock?"
A: "For many, yes."

Q: "Is the Mahavishnu Orchestra a 'prog rock' band or a 'fusion' band?"
A: "Who cares?"

Not a hard-core Hammill nut, but have heard a few...

Definitely Recommended:
A Black Box

Good:
Silent Corner...
Nadir's Last Chance
Fireships
Loops & Reels

Eh:
Chameleon in the Shadow of Night (solidly in the minority here)
Out of Water

I agree with you, if you replace the words "suffers badly from..." with "if so much fucking better it hurts because of..." :)

I love 'Inner Mounting Flame', but I still have a bit of a prob. w/ the jazz-rock electric violin on it (at least there's no jazz-flute!)

Does that song seem to be riffing off of "Mademoiselle Mabry" (off of Miles' Filles de Kilimanjaro), or am I just imagining things?

Relayer
Tales From Topographic Oceans
Yessongs
Close To The Edge
Fragile

Prog was un-Peel because the man himself felt that groups like Yes, ELP and Deep Purple didn't need what limited exposure the show could offer them (he was presenting Top Gear at the time, I think). The odd thing is, while he wouldn't play Deep Purple, he's perfectly content to play the Datsuns. But I don't want to concern myself with them here.

It's funny how Tales From Topographic Oceans makes Relayer seem as concise as an early Beatles album.

The Yes Album is totally great, Phil - you should definitely pick it up. I can't imagine that you wouldn't like it. It's got Bruford, Squire and Howe, for crying out loud! It has to be good!! "Starship Trooper" and "Yours is No Disgrace" are as "prog" as anything on the follow-up Fragile.

Let's talk about Going For the One! I love that record. The title cut is one of the best songs they ever wrote, and "Wonderous Stories" is classic hippie Anderson.

Has anyone heard that alternate "Gates of Delerium" yet?

I actually really like "tales from topographic oceans", even though it's really kind of indefensible in a lot of ways - it's overlong and unfocussed in many places, the playing lacks the crispy dynamic feel of their earlier albums, the whole "concept" is a bit flakey, and so on. I don't think the record's actually great in itself, but there are so many great bits on it, that I really enjoy listening to it.

"Going for the One" is pretty cheesy in a lot of places, I think, but the two tracks where they used the swiss cathedral organ ("parallels" and "awaken") I really like. I wish they'd used it a bit more. "Awaken" I love, I think it's the last really great track they did - "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and all that stuff I like just fine, but you don't, like, inhabit the musical landscape like you do w/say "close to the edge". In "Awaken", it's the whole section where the song breaks down to just the harp and pipe organ, then it builds and builds from there that gets me. Put it up on some decent speakers, nice & loud, and it's just fukcing great.

The new yes remasters are really good, I must say. They seem to have proper dynamics, not maximised like the omd and simple minds re's i got recently, the sound is nice & crisp, the bonus cuts aren't great for the most part, but they are generally interesting at least, and the packaging is nice. They made me happy!

No it isn't. Let's see - Neu: songs all on one chord (E usually); all in 4/4 time (no variation allowed); solos (none to speak of); virtuosity and technique (irrelevant). Not really much like Yes then.

I have to admit, I really love the sound of the full-fledged pipe organ when it's placed outside of the usual, expected context (church music, etc.). One of my favorite tracks by the Incredible String Band is "Antoine," which is just church organ, violin, and vocals...excellent arrangement.

On CD it's just called Spheres and only four relatively mellow cuts have been retained.

Prog?

As for prog, what's Over by Peter Hammill like? Of all the stuff he's done, this is what I'm most curious about.

That's "Ginasteria," coming soon to a store near you! Be on the lookout for the first single: "Pour Some Melody on Me"!

It's pretty good but more of a "song" album than a "prog" album - it's also one of the most miserable, self-obsessed, self-absorbed albums I've ever heard, all about his marriage breaking up

http://www.pepsi.com/music/shakira/wallpapers/wallpapers.php?wp=white_hot_800

Stewart - nothing yet. I've been sidetracked by one of those intensive Bowie binges that happens once every couple of years. I will prob get 'The Yes album' and 'Yes' at the weekend. Maybe a King Crimson or a Caravan or something if I can get them cheaply.

PROGMETHEUS UNBOUND
a provisional cartography of progward tendencies through the last 40 years of music; a prototype taxonomy of prog substyles, prog-adjacent musics, and post-1976 prog sprog genres.

Some may quibble with some of his classifications, but I thought his conclusions were eminently reasonable and level-headed.

Haha, I notice he hasn't gotten to Henry Cow and Art Bears yet. Points for trying though! Also points for recognizing Virgin Records' importance, not just for prog necessarily, but for experimental rock in general.

Actually it reads pathetically like some indie kid trying pretend he's like really really down with hip hop - or else a middle aged music journalist struggling to come to terms with the latest trends in hipster in-car entertainment

"The other thing is that of course an awful lot of not-at-all-awful music after punk fits some or many of those ‘progressive’ parameters. So the cartography above treats ‘prog’ as as a suffix or prefix, something that through hyphenation can come into surprising proximity with things we love. For some, maybe most still, it’s a contaminant, a worrying tendency, something to ward off with punky/indie-rock squeamishness. It’s really weird how long the reflex has persisted, with presumably less and less first-hand contact with the stuff as the years go by."

i thought some of his list was funny, other bits provoked puzzlement/surprise/sputtering (Bill Nelson's Red Noise? wtf?)
but also a few thought-provoking bits eg FGTH's 'Liverpool' album => all that Trevor Horn & ZTT hugeness => if that album is going to be in there then Propaganda's 'A Secret Wish' seems fairly qualified too - which is not something i imagine some of ILM might feel comfy with (and Morley is then in guilt-by-association with ZTT-Prog up to his neck)

in general though it seems a bit strained - i was just waiting for a '*' reference of 'the bassist used to wear flared trousers'

i like what (little) i've read of SR over the past yr or 2 - i maybe had stopped reading music papers by the time he was a journo cos i don't remember him - and the last section is interesting....BUT:
mellotrons != 'gauche and clumsily overblown gestures in quest of sophistication and high art stature' !
mellotrons were beautifully artificial/awkward/unworldy/delicate sounding - i don't associate 'sophistication' with the kind of phrasing/articulation generally needed on an instrument with a such an unweildy response/sustain/recovery time !

Can withdraw this extraordinarily twattish remark? No? Well I tried, ha ha.

I haven't read anything by Simon Reynolds for years - his compulsion to always stay ahead of the pack got to me after a while.

Yeah, Dada is pretty OTM here. He's pretty good at making up some cute lists, but doesn't have anything interesting to say. It's like he's trying to shout, "hey I like this rock stuff too!" after years of blathering on about his precious white label garridge blah blah etc. He even claims to like the White Stripes now (after some post earlier this year where he claimed he didn't even need to listen to them. Whatever. Nobody comes to you Reynolds to learn anything about rock music anyway. It's not like he's going to write a post that parses out the differences between Hackett and Howe's guitar styles or something. He should probably go back to his beloved electronic music; as it is, he's kind of making himself look silly.

Dleone totally OTM about the omission of Cuneiform. I mean, come on.

He wouldn't mention Cuneiform because, like many of the poseurs on the Prog bandwagon, he probably hasn't heard of it and because he is not interested in modern prog bands (understandably in the latter case IMO).

A couple of things other things to note

1. He describes Family as a "blues-rock" band, I've never heard Family play a solitary note that could be described as "blues-rock, time for some research Simon.

2. The fact that Eno played on a Camel album is mentioned as being of some significance. Can I remind him that Eno has spent the last 100 years producing U2 AND James - his taste in music is obviously not a good as he likes people to believe!

I think it's very interesting watching a second generation independently pick up interest in prog. It's not coming from the places that supported the genre initially, a lot of the new attention is coming from the indie-electronic sphere, so it's not really a surprise to me that Reynolds is doing some preliminary foraging into this area on his blog. I read more playfulness in this list than I do contempt.

Points for referencing Cutler's under-referenced book of criticism 'File Under Popular'. I actually wish he'd write more, though I know it's a tricky balancing act maintaining both disciplines.

What I read is desperation.

Didn't Steve Howe play on ASW?

''(a) = 'i don't actually understand music technique'(b) = "I'm against corny Pavlovian pop", both of which postions are tenable but how is it possible to believe both of them at the same time!''

I think its fair enough to hold both positions.

You don't like Triumph?

BTW I've come to think CTTE is pretty great though those parts of the title track still bug me. I think I've always secretly loved "And You and I".

Re "Escape" - only 'problem' I have is that the G/D/A part just utterly fuckin' destroys me. More air-drum seizures! Then that subsequent ONE LINE from Perry is just "this is the voice of God speaking", a magisterial "we have achieved orbital velocity now, goodbye Earth!", the rest of the song seems like an anticlimax to me. Still an incredible attempt. Sonic analog to the picture on the cover!

Re Triumph - dunno, never could get with the singing. Maybe if Rik Emmett was Steve Perry...but then nobody is, are they?

TERRIFIC video! Haven't yet seen any video of the Blasquiz-era (though have seen Bobino, which more than makes up for it).

Guy Clement = Tony Levin's French twin?

http://www.csi.edu/ip/ce/yesology/
http://www.billboard.com/bb/tangledweb/index.jsp

I always suspected the people of Southern Idaho are closet Shakira fans!! :)

By the way, what's Fish Out Of Water like?

http://blissout.blogspot.com/
PROGMETHEUS UNBOUND: THE RETURN

So how do YOU listen to prog now?

with glittery cape on
http://wgsu.geneseo.edu/blog/images/rickwakeman.jpg

So, Dr.C never got around to hearing 'Relayer'. Pity.

I'm terrified of seventies Yes but I need to listen to it a bit for a research project. Where should I start? My best friend liked Yes so I heard it quite a bit. Not my steez back then. Such were the times...

Like Jethro Tull is cited as "progressive". I thought they were a "punk" band.

I'm scared of Yes. I'm afraid it might conjure memories of scarily free hippie people.

I'd rec either the Yes Album or Fragile. The Yes Album is probably the best for newcomers but Fragile has the full "classic" lineup and shows off pretty much everything great about 70's Yes. Nothing to be scared of - stay away from Tales, otherwise most of their peak period is chock full of great instrumental parts. Obviously they were a lot whiter than Parliament but they kind of have the same vibe - with a different singer and less time changes, you kind of feel like they'd be known more as a funk band.

I was going to say the same two albums. there isn't anything scary on those. stay away from tales of topographic oceans and relayer, they are full of scary (and boring) things.

Man, Relayer is awesome. If you are scared of awesomeness, stay away from Relayer, otherwise enjoy.

Also, Close to the Edge rules too.

second The Yes Album as a good jumpoff

yeah Relayer and CttE are great albums (CttE is slowly becoming one of my favorite prog albums ever) but you kind of have to be into the band in some respect first.