pfork reassess yes

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Ned OTM!

....if only he hadn't been assassinated

It is the same with King Crimson, if Bruford is in the band, the record is usually pretty good.

The Most UN-"Punk Rock" album ever..

If I ever form a prog rock band this is what we will be called.

Anyway. Where is this Pitchfork thing? And what exactly was there to "reassess"? If Pitchfork ripped off ILM, who did ILM rip off???

I don't think they were so much "hated" as routinely derided for being such a ridiculously easy target of ridicule for those who rightly or wrongly considered Prog Rock to be a bloated, limping horse aching to be put out of its corpulent, pus-oozing misery.

I think it did, which is something most prog bands never accomplished.

sadly, the music itself that resulted from this fusion never really interested me.

How on God's Green Earth did anyone ever mistake this track for r&b?????

Blame me, I took Chris Dahlen's line about that out in the final edit. :(

"Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen was a much BIGGER r&b hit, though. (As was, I think, "Beat Box" if that's what it was called by Art of Noise, who weren't much less prog than early '80s Yes were.)

God that's a shit review from Pitchfork though. I will write one for Freaky Trigger tonight, I PROMISE. The article might talk about PANG too but that will make it even better.

I MEAN COME ON: ice skates! capes! king arthur! and funny noises!! I can even quote from Rick Wakeman's bio (brilliant bluddy book IIDSSM).

http://www.rhino.com/spotlight/yes/yes_facts.lasso

Weird, but true.

I half want to listen to GONG now because I like the cut of their jibsorry, sound of their name. Rolls of the tongue nicely don't it? It's better than "Alex Parks" or "Jive Bunny".

Maybe not the last one.

Of course, but does that alone qualify it as R&B?

Trevor Rabin....R&B PLAYA!

(I'm pretty sure I started the first Yes C/D thread FWIW.)

Ned, Wakeman did key's for Bowie's absolute beginners too, one of his better 80's moments.

As I've said elsewhere the 12" mix of leave it is awesome, and mixes nicely with Yarbrough and Peoples don't stop the music. As for the rest, still think it's a pile of poop despite having shelled out for the double CD last year.

I've only heard "Fragile" and Owner of a Lonely Heart, I like them both.

Really, how interesting -- I probably knew about that but forgot it.

1980 Another Brick In The Wall/Run Like Hell/Don't Leave Me
Now Club Play Singles No. 57
1980 Another Brick In The Wall (Part II) Pop Singles No. 1

Humor aside for a moment, I always liked numbers from early Yes that kicked up a scuff. That usually meant Howe or Banks being forward in the mix which was my gripe with the "Magnification" album. The Yes Album attacks, so does a lot of "Yessongs."

By "Tales" and "Relayer," the arrangements were so busy and buzzing, nothing would stick as memorable.

I liked Badger, too, which is one of things Tony Kaye got into post-Yes. "One Live Badger," a murky, long jam of an album punctuated by a wailing voice seemingly trying to imitate a Gospel singer-like vibe.
Yes on ... cough syrup (th-thump)... and minus Anderson and obvious Squire-ism bass playing.

Pavement's b-side "Saganaw": Simon & Garfunkle's "America" by way of Incredible String Band.

As for Buffalo '66, it's been a bit, but I think "Heart of the Sunrise" is actually in the movie itself as well as the trailer.

1) The title's supposed to be a play on the words "Tornado" and "Tomato," if that tells you anything.

2) The tour was conducted "in the round," meaning as the stage spun, the cables got tangled.

For further hilarity, read Paul Stump's The Music's All That Matters. Great stuff about Topographic Oceans' crappy cardboard stage show, too...

Let that be a lesson to the kids...

The 120 Days of Shameless Bids for Publicity!

also all those interested in 1970's UK politics MUST by the Rhino reissue of Tormato for the bonus track "Money" (Wakeman impersonates Denis Healey!!)

Dave's sort've spot on, here. As much as I love some of Yes' music, my "fix" is quickly sated with only a fleeting spin of Fragile (or something comparable). They're just not the type of band that I get re-obsessed about for days/weeks at a time.

Going to have to be to differ here (altho' I agreed with most of the article). I was listening to TAAW again last night: terrific 60s pop/rock LP. If anything "Astral Traveller" is the weakest moment.

On dave's pendulum point, I dunno so much. A quick fix/binge every few months or so is how I take my Yes. Keeps me happy.

However, as usual, Pitchfork are wrong. Yes = crap.

Personally, I miss my pissing matches with Matt Parisi re: Yes/prog on alt.music.alternative back in 1997; though I'm sure no one else does. Ah, to be young and overwrought again... ;)

www.progressiveears.com

SEVEN PHASES IN THE LIFE OF A HARD-CORE PROG FAN
(adapted from David Hurwitz' great article on classical music fans, by Rob LaDuca)

Do You Recognize Yourself Here?

Phase 1: Discovery. You hear Yes's "Fragile" in college. "Roundabout" hooks you from the first pluck of Steve Howe's guitar. By the time "Heart of the Sunrise" ends, you are left spent and exhausted from the most magical musical experience of your life to this point. You then learn that Yes is called a "Progressive Rock" band, and that groups such as King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and Genesis are also considered part of this genre. (You even learn to your absolute shock that Peter Gabriel was once a member of Genesis!) This is the most wonderful time of all, when the world seems full of an almost limitless number of classic masterpieces crying for your attention. The only constraint on your enthusiasm is your wallet, and you do whatever you can to purchase as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Phase 2: Fandom. Your taste in various performers leads you to fixate on one or two (or more) who you believe hold the key to indisputable artistic greatness. You can enumerate the subtle nuances during 20 versions of "Easy Money" that you have amassed during your purchase of the entire King Crimson Collectors' Club series. You have Yesshows, Yessongs, 9012Live, Keys to Ascension 1, Keys to Ascension 2, House of Yes, the Masterworks tour bonus discs, and over 100 other "foreign pressings" of Yes live concerts. You begin looking for demos, mp3s of unreleased material, a rare cassette of a drunken Chris Squire's rendition of "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" recorded on the Yes tour bus in 1977...every YesScrap you can get your hands on. You collect every solo album by members of Yes, Genesis etc. You MUST have EVERYTHING relating to your favorite groups. You check the ebay search page for "Yes" 20 times a day. You smile knowingly when friends and family members ask the perfectly logical question: Why do you need 55 different recordings of "Roundabout"? Foolish people!

Phase 3: Expansion. A guy working in a record store notices you keep buying Genesis CDs, and says "hey, try Marillion, they sound a lot like Genesis". They get their hooks in you, and you buy every Marillion album on used CD. Then you realize that these are all the "old" single CD editions, and you proceed to purchase all the remastered and expanded 2 CD versions with the bonus tracks. You get all the Fish solo CDs. You buy all the official bootlegs released by Marillion and Fish, except you cannot find the elusive Yin & Yang, Vol. 26. Over the next several months, the same record store guy tells you that IQ, Arena, Pendragon, Citizen Cain, Galahad, and The Watch sound like Genesis...You are so happy to have discovered so many bands that sound like Genesis!!

Phase 4: Nostalgia. This is a transitional phase: now comes that terrifying moment when you feel that you've heard it all. You've collected all the works of the "Big 5", even the ones everyone else thinks suck, like "We Can't Dance", "Open Your Eyes", and "Love Beach"...on SACD, CD, cassette, vinyl, and 8-track. The record store guy has run out of recommendations. You have reached the dreaded "There is No More Progressive Rock Left to Hear" point. What's missing in your life is the thrill of discovery: that first Rush of enthusiasm for each masterpiece as it sounded when you first really cranked it.

Phase 5: Crusade. Happily salvation is at hand, in the form of dozens of Internet sites for Progressive Rock. You learn that there are fine independent labels specializing in all sorts of prog sub-genres just waiting to be explored. There are two principal dangers with this phase. First is the danger to your health as you eat Ramen Noodles for every meal, because you are ordering so many CDs from The Laser's Edge, Wayside Music, Greg Walker, and Big Balloon. Your fingers have also ended up smashed to bloody pulps because you have installed CD racks on every exposed wall in your house, in order to hold your exponentially growing collection. The second danger is the tendency to make exaggerated claims for music that really isn't all that special or interesting just because it's obscure. People will look at you strangely as you vigorously try to defend the assertion that Gracious was England's best symphonic rock band or that Rick Wakeman was a wanker compared to the keyboardist for Quaterna Requiem. This phase can go on for years, with literally thousands of discs passing through a typical collector's hands in an endless crusade for that Holy Grail of Progressive Rock: the Gnosis "15" that no one else has ever heard of. If you have come to the point where your undisputable "Big 5" means Pentwater, Aka Moon, Groovector, The Red Masque, and Magma ("the Argentinian one, duh!"), then you've gone too far, and it's really time to move on to Phase 6. Certain persons may feel the need to start a multi-band international festival to promote all this new music they have been discovering. If this is the case for you, please check yourself into the nearest psychiatric hospital as soon as possible.

Phase 6: Renewal. One day, while shaving for the first time in 8 years, you spot the "Y" section in your collection, which is housed over the bathroom sink instead of a mirror. You pull out "Fragile", which you haven't heard in years. Playing this classic, just for old time's sake, you're stunned to realize that it truly is better than most of the obscurities that constitute your main musical diet. So you move on to old Genesis, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, PFM, Banco, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Camel, Van der Graaf Generator. It's as if you're hearing them all for the first time--and how alive, how refreshing they all sound! You fall in love with the great classics all over again, and you realize that the judgment of history isn't always wrong. (Well, the ELP has not aged all that well, but you can still look back with fondness at it.) There is a reason why there are 750 individual threads at Progressive Ears devoted to these bands!

Phase 7: Maturity. If you're lucky, you may get this far. You realize that it's not necessary to own 50 progressive rock CDs from the Basque region of Spain, 46 of which you never play, when you can be just as happy with 20 of them, 16 of which you never play. The complete set of Marillion official bootlegs, that rare Yugoslavian pressing of "The Snow Goose", 20 or 30 festival compilation CDs, six different remastered editions of "Red", your cherished 50 CD Klaus Schulze "Historic Edition" box set, and literally dozens of albums about which you remember nothing beyond the fact that they all sounded like Genesis--all of these go straight to eBay where they will be returned to circulation to nourish the next generation of progressive rock CD collectors. And as for you, well, you still purchase new releases, but very selectively, and you take the time to savor every one with deep late night listens on the $50,000 stereo purchased via your eBay proceeds.

(Very funny stuff.)

liar! it's only a 10 CD set.

even if you add the Silver Edition and the Jubilee Editions together, it's still only a 45 CD set.

I knew I shouldn't have let my subscription to Audion lapse.

ha ha, someone had to say it. but you did spoil the fun.

http://www.magnetmagazine.com/

I try to imagine that coming out in '94 and just can't do it.

Thursday night 9/30 on PBS.

10 pm
Soundstage "Yes - The 35th Anniversary"
The longest-lasting and most successful of the 70s progressive rock groups, the band Yes comes together with their classic lineup (Rick Wakeman, Jon Anderson, Steve Howe and Chris Squire) celebrating their 35th year together. The show opens with the band entering the arena to Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite." From that moment forward, Yes delivers an unforgettable performance including classics such as "Going for the One," "Your Move/All Good People" and "Yours Is No Disgrace." Midway through the set they scale things down a bit and perform dazzling acoustic versions of "Long Distance Runaround," " Roundabout" and "Owner of a Lonely Heart," among others. The concert culminates with a rousing rendition of "Starship Trooper." Howe and Wakeman's dueling solos coupled with Anderson's powerful yet delicate vocals make for a memorable finale.

I'm not sure which was first, but I think this guy reassessed around the same time, and probably did a much better job ("probably" because I didn't actually read the pitchfork one, only his)

What's Bill Bruford so busy doing now that he couldn't be coaxed into a big gig like that?

Anyways I wonder if on this PBS special they'll do it right or cheese out. An unplugged "Owner of a Lonely Heart" might not be the best idea.

The YES lineup on that PBS special mentioned above are the same lineup that absolutely killed when I saw them earlier this summer in NYC. Plus, I love Wakeman. Tony Kaye=yaaawn.

In terms of my own empty oppositionality, that trismcall guy got wrong Michael Moorcock in Blue Oyster Cult I think. Wasn't that Meltzer who wrote lyrics for them, and Moorcock wrote some lyrics for Hawkwind? That green font is nice though.

No. Who the fuck cared about Yes in 1976/77?

Playing jazz!

Yes had a no1 album in 1977, so obviously someone still cared about them.

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Haven't heard "The Black Blade," sorry, dude. When I think of Moorcock I think Warrior on the Edge of Time and Chronicles of the Black Sword.

Bill Bruford rules, FFS.

"Bill Bruford too busy" - sums up his drumming pretty succinctly I'd have thought
-- Jedermann sein eigener Fussball

Come on! His triplet hat-snare-kick/snare-hat-kick fills on Heart of the Sunrise are a gift to the drumming world!

"Bill Bruford too busy" - sums up his drumming pretty succinctly I'd have thought
-- Jedermann sein eigener Fussball

http://users.rcn.com/rschrade/vgallosmall.jpg

Did you hear the today programme on r4, btw, where they were doing a thing on the 50th anniversary of the fender stratocaster? apparently one of the pundits they had on seriously claimed that - get this - guitar solos are now dead due to the excesses of prog rock!!

Thursday night 9/30 on PBS.

10 pm
Soundstage "Yes - The 35th Anniversary"
The longest-lasting and most successful of the 70s progressive rock groups, the band Yes comes together with their classic lineup (Rick Wakeman, Jon Anderson, Steve Howe and Chris Squire) celebrating their 35th year together. The show opens with the band entering the arena to Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite." From that moment forward, Yes delivers an unforgettable performance including classics such as "Going for the One," "Your Move/All Good People" and "Yours Is No Disgrace." Midway through the set they scale things down a bit and perform dazzling acoustic versions of "Long Distance Runaround," " Roundabout" and "Owner of a Lonely Heart," among others. The concert culminates with a rousing rendition of "Starship Trooper." Howe and Wakeman's dueling solos coupled with Anderson's powerful yet delicate vocals make for a memorable finale.

I call BULLSHIT!! The did NOT play "Starship Trooper"!! The last song was "And You And I", for fucks sake!

But, it WAS a pretty version of "And You And I". It's just that I ended up with "Starship Trooper" blue balls.

Thanks for letting me know not to wait up for "Starship Trooper". But, fuck, that acoustic version of "Long Distance Runaround" - how much do these guys practise?