Taking Sides: Yessongs vs. Welcome Back my Friends to the Show that Never Ends

WÜRM

Yessongs does it for me. Love how raw the recordings sound. Almost like a 128kbp soundboard! Overall the playing is treendous. I owned this on cassette as a kid before I owned CTTe and this acted as my gateway drug.

I never owned either so I'm not familiar with that Tocatta or Tarkus (for instance) but I'm tempted to vote Yessongs just because I like Yes more

that kind of cavalier attitude can only diminish the credibility of ILM polls

I love Yessongs because the version of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite that opens the concert is on vinyl, and you can hear pop and crackle. I also have strong affection for it because it was the first Yes album I ever owned, and it convinced me to buy everything from The Yes Album through Going for the One almost immediately afterward.

That said, I love ELP too, and Welcome Back... is possibly the most unhinged of the great '70s multi-disc live albums. This is actually a pretty hard choice. Still, Yessongs it is.

Now I want to hear these. Although any ELP live album recorded before Love Beach is fatally incomplete.

naive teen idol otm

Both of these records represent sort of the apex of bands taking the stage with BIG ambitions before keyboards had sounds you could save and change on the fly, PAs became deafening and mobile recording could actually capture the sound and feel of a live performance.

As a result, in a lot of ways, this becomes a debate over style. One group was deadly serious, but energetic and melodically gifted. The other were incurable but endlessly entertaining showmen.

WBMFTTSTNE (even the acronym goes on forever) was awesome when I was 16, but Yesshows is the album I can still get excited about.

yessongs. "close to the edge" and "yours is no disgrace" live are even better than the studio versions. what a great band

I'd have to say that ELP were very gifted as well but definitely had a much different style. Overall I think that Welcome Back has higher highs but some dry patches while Yessongs is just one classic prog epic after another. At least Welcome Back has things like the blazing fast "Hoedown" or "Jeremy Bender/The Sheriff" to break up the deadly serious tone. Yes almost sounded TOO good - at least ELP had some pretty entertaining flubs

I haven't dug out either one of these records to listen to recently, but it's definitely 'Yessongs' for me without a doubt.

and we can fly from here

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

yessongs, elp are awful

gonna gambool on a 10-to-4 Yes blowout victory here

it's hard telling just from posts, but knowing ILX that sounds like a safe bet anyways

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ha maybe it might be a bit more lopsided than that

Yikes

yow, think I was the 1 too