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

http://yes.iq.pl/images/jade_sea.jpg

Caesar's Palace, morning glory, silly human silly human siillllyy huuuuuuman race....

http://www.doheth.co.uk/profiles/cbg.gif

I fucking love "Yours Is No Disgrace" so damn much. What a beautiful, beautiful song. Howe's playing on the whole Yes Album just blows me away.

I grew listening to WIOT out of Toledo, Ohio, and when 90120 came out they used to play "Our Song" all the time because it had that line "Toledo is just another stop along the good king's highway". Like, they actually thought it was about Toledo, Ohio!!

Yes fans jonesing for more YESSOUNDS should totally check out those two latter-day Os Mutantes LPs, by the way. When they got all progged-out. Total Yes homages.

I thought "yessed out" was some sort of cockney slang for "sucking it's own dick" or somethin'.

Your mention of the "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" video reminded me there was one version that had a guy with maggots crawling around on top of his closed eyelids. Did "Fear Factor" rip off this idea? I think MTV stopped showing that version.

i love yes. sometimes i'll be walking around and suddenly a bass line from some yes song will pop into my head and i'll be all excited.

would that ilm actually were a bit more yessed out.

One of my (many) large gaps of musical knowledge is rock of any variety from 1970-1985 or so.

Wobbly, if you're out there, tell your Jon Anderson at NAMM story . . .

best

Drew

at a booth that sells vocoder software there is a man earnestly saying in a silvery, elven speaking voice reminiscent of Glinda the Good Witch "no, no, NO, you don't understand. I want to make my computer-" and here he erupts into a shivery high melodious flutter "s-i-i-iing!" and it's HIM and he's singing the word "sing" in THAT Yes voice.

What is NAMM, anyway?

I just watched some of that DVD "The Future Is Wild", the cheezy computer animated forecast of what freakish species will dominate this planet in 200 million years. It was very Yessed out too, CGI supercontinent-formation footage and giant global oceans (topographic tales of .. .)

http://stat.discogs.com/R/262506-1103102672.jpg

Olias of Sunhillow Critical Edition, with commentary track guest starring the 'scientists' from The Future Is Wild

maybe a little like the trevor horn yes (or maybe i just wish it sounded more like trevor horn yes).

it's basically arp-heavy metronomic 1978 eurosynth cheese.

I always see a Dean landscape, or some Art Nouveau P. Craig Russell planet landscape whenever I listen to Yes. Except for Yes mach-90125 and onward.

"well kept secret" doesn't have the same pop

haha

"hermetic masterwork"

happy 90125 day everyone

Nice. Jan 25, 1990 was the last time we observed it here.

ty for alerting me to this

I’ve never had any known issues with Rolling Stone magazine although it’s nothing that I’ve ever taken the initiative to read either…I just found out that they named Tales of Topographic Oceans as the 9th most disappointing album of all time though, which makes me want to boycott every word they’ve ever published.

It's an upgrade from how they treated Yes in the 90s. I love half of Topographic Oceans but I think it's fair to feel it's a big disappointment considering the buildup of the previous albums, it probably seemed like they could do no wrong after Close To The Edge.

side 2 ("high the memory") is in the same league as "close to the edge" and "gates of delirium" imho

“Don’t Kill the Whale” is one of my favorite Yessomgs and utter mastery of a genre!

Don't underrate, appreciate

Don't doubt the fact there's life within you
Yesterday's endings will tomorrow life give you
All that dies, dies for a reason
To put its strength into the seasons

Has this ever been shared here before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FkkJz8A644

for real thought at first that was an april fool's joke. nice find!

two weeks ago They Might be Giants and Weird Al were on Tim Heidecker's Office Hours, for some reason they talked about Yes for a few minutes. it turns out John Flansburgh does not like them (his words: "fuck that") but it's not clear if that's because he doesn't like the music or because the band did a one-off Yes pastiche which was apparently extremely difficult to pull off. anyway they proceeded to get all sorts of facts about the band wrong, and couldn't remember how many Trevors there were...extremely frustrating shit, if I was watching live I totally would've called in

Thanks for that Johnny Harris track

xp eugh that's like the sports radio guy i heard "educating" the younger co-host about how dick dale was in the ventures and was the guy who recorded "wipe out".

they're still going, somehow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETEGJTM6plw

not as good as Jon and the Band Geeks, but decent. Mirror to the Sky was pretty okay, clearly better than the two before, maybe this one will be okay as well?

that said something about Jon Davison's voice just makes me tune out though

My old friend Paul did the orchestrations on this, recording them in Prague with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra.

Mirror and Quest were generic and mostly inoffensive and totally unmemorable, as this is; they seem to have settled into a 'this sounds like Yes but without any originality' era that is comfortable enough.

YeSTP?

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

It wasn’t a successful album, but I quite liked songs like “To Ascend” and “Believe Again” from Heaven and Earth. It seems like , in response to that album, they maybe felt like they had to make things more prog? I’ve been open to it, but it hasn’t really been working for me either. There’s a rawness and realness to those two 2014 songs.

the vocal melodies on that album are genuinely pretty good and it's got this sweetness to it that Yes has been missing for a while. "The Game" and "Step Beyond" are my favorite tacks. admittedly when you hit "In a World Of Our Own" the album loses me but up until then it's kind of a guilty pleasure. it didn't deserve to get panned the way it was. The Quest on the other hand - boring as shit. "The Ice Bridge" tricks me into thinking it's gonna be fine but it's so lame after that I practically lose consciousness. yes I do think they intentionally went proggier on that one but it's like they just forgot everything they knew, maybe because the band doesn't really have many prog guys left. I do remember thinking Mirror to the Sky was decent though, maybe cut a few songs and you got a good 40 minutes.

First listen to Tales from Topographic Oceans. Totally loving it. I guess Olias of Sunhillow has yessed me up so thoroughly that I'm game for any classic-era Yes. As soon as Jon opens his mouth to sing, I am his

Tales from Topographic Oceans (in Wilson's 2026 mix) (my first Yes album; I'm a new Yes fan, thanks to Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks and, later/recently, Olias of Sunhillow) sounds so fantastic, that the only reason I can fathom for its bad reputation is that the earlier albums are somehow (inconceivably, to me) *even better* ? Who could ever have heard this album and thought "This sucks" ...? It's taking me back to being 8 years old and getting into Floyd's Animals for the first time.

Alright so, I figured that if I love Tales so much, I might as well listen to something else that the fanbase likes to shit on. That's how I found myself getting an ass-kicking from Tormato! Four songs in, it sounds like a sister record to Tull's War Child, which I love dearly.

I love Tormato but they're taking it easy and not doing anything grand, I like quite a few albums like that, with a band just having fun without any grand vision. Topographic is mostly maligned for being too long and it came after Close To The Edge (the best album ever).

oof, new song is very very bad

they're taking it easy and not doing anything grand

Sure, on two or three of the shorter songs, but all four of the relative "epics" are going for Big Statements and wobbling somewhat. It's not quite as bad as people say but bad decisions (sonically, lyrically) are starting to proliferate. The outtakes show how Anderson and Howe in particular were taking different roads.

Tales has an RYM rating of 3.53 so it's not really that maligned. I think its reputation comes from the fact that it was released during prog's golden years, when bands like Yes and ELP were actually hitting the top of the charts and selling out stadiums, so naturally there was an (understandable) backlash to all of this from folks who thought songs ought to be 2 minutes and not 20. Although Close to the Edge was reviewed well I think a lot was made of the fact that it only had 3 songs on it. I don't think any massively successful acts at the time were doing things like that, and now here comes a double where every song is 20 minutes long, also its (let's face it) not a particularly tight double, it drifts around a lot and is full of ambient passages many find boring. Compared to the top tier Yes albums it just doesn't kick enough ass. Originally I think they tried to play the whole thing live but quickly dropped most of it because it just wasn't getting a good response. In short it provided a lot of ammo for the haters. But yeah it's pretty nice as a whole, probably could cut 15-20 minutes but it's got some great passages, guessing it very much appeals to the folks who like Jon's solo work. (haven't heard Steven Wilson's mix yet, I assume it's very good, IMO he's the only guy who oughta be allowed to remix Yes albums)

Tormato on the other hand you can tell the band is kinda checked out, its sorta like ELP's Love Beach where they're not really trying hard enough to really screw things up. It's got parts I like (the first track and the wild bits on "Arriving UFO") but yea, similar to War Child I guess, but imo not as good. I think both this (and Love Beach) are better than their reputation, but I'm not really gonna stick up for them.

The approach of starting with the uh...less good albums I think is interesting, but I think for that you might want to consider the albums released after Tormato to be sort of a separate entity. Drama is great and does still sound like Yes (despite having no Jon or Rick), 90125 is really good but doesn't much sound like Yes (despite Jon's vocals), after that things get pretty wacky and strange, at one point there were two incarnations of Yes touring at the same time and it was basically a disaster. They did have a period from 95-01 where they brought back some of the 70s magic but they were clearly a nostalgia act at this point.

related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN2b7-CDxYA

https://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2021/07/attachment-Air-Supply.jpg

Hover connections

an FB post today reminded me that Arc of Life (essentially, a bunch of the current Yes lineup without Howe or Downes but with Jimmy Haun) exists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbXXXP7mrgE

(it is not good at all. it makes Circus of Heaven sound like fucking Close to the Edge)

idk what it is about him but I just do not buy Jon Davison. he was fine with Glass Hammer, kinda charming actually like "awww they got their own Jon", but he's like the Temu Jon. yeah I'm sure he can do the "I get up I get down" part on CTTE pretty well but he doesn't have Jon's other vocal modes, and he certainly doesn't write songs like he does. he does write strange nonsequitur lyrics but not in a way that sticks in your head, he doesn't really sell it like other Jon, old Jon comes off like he's taken heroic doses of psychedelics in order to personally greet and befriend the machine elves, while new Jon just comes across like he's really into Jesus. just my opinion

yeah for that reason I prefer either of the two Trevors and even Benoit David to him.

I just wanna yell at him FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU DO like he's the Chunky

Circus of Heaven is awesome. This is my kinda pop song

happy 35th to UNION, an album that had its own subsection at the used cd store i frequented in college

Benoit was great. I don't know why they felt that Horn needed to re-do the vocals on Fly from Here.

I saw them twice on that tour in case anyone was mistaken that I was cool or something.

Xp

I think Horn felt like he wanted to redo the vocals so they let him. I think both versions are good.

There are also some good things on From A Page, the album that got aborted in favor of Fly From Here, including a different take on Into the Storm.

watched some old Yes footage late at night (of course), including some from the Drama tour. I don't think I'd ever seen any live footage of that, Horn and Downes just do not appear comfortable on any of the classic material, but they're basically fine. then they hit "Tempus Fugit" and it's totally killer. watching Horn mug for the camera is so odd, I mean you almost forget the fact that they just took in the Buggles wholesale like that. cool era for them, wish it had lasted.

after that watched some 2003 stuff...basically the classic lineup, and they are still very good, but you can kinda tell by their stage demeanor that they aren't really enjoying themselves. outside of Jon, who always is I suppose. amusingly in a few of these Jon would just come out in a t-shirt and hoodie which I think made Wakeman/Howe/Squire's outfits look even sillier. anyway at the end of "Siberian Khatru" they launched into a long jam session like they always did and it's pretty apparent none of them want to have a thing to do with what the other members were doing, Howe's just off in space, Wakeman waiting for it to be over, Squire's scowling at everybody, and Jon's just dutifully slapping the tambourine...weird times. but still a good performance overall.

This was very much the vibe I got from the Union tour, they were bored and didn't like playing together, very little enthusiasm, just dutifully cranking out the hits. Hard to overstate how much more lively and entertaining Jon Anderson and the Band Geeks were.

Does that weird crustacean-looking stage set from the Relayer tour give anyone else the ick?

xpost I dunno I saw them in NYC on that 2003 tour and they were on fire.

Good piece on ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/yes-owner-of-a-lonely-heart/

Just found out there's a Steve Howe + Jon Anderson cover of Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. Not enough overdubbed-Anderson-choir on the verses, and too much soulless turn-of-the-century major-label-rock sheen everywhere, but still, it's pretty neat.

all complete in the sight of seeds of life with you

bear season 5 teaser episode makes the best use of "heart of the sunrise" i've heard since buffalo '66