90125

And then they were two. Another earthquake in the line-up : Steve has left the band to explore FM music with "Asia". Only two members of the ClassicYes (Squire, White) are still on board. In 1982, they will meet a South African guitarist : Trevor Rabin. They will experiment a bit and this will be the foudation of the "Cinema" project, produced by Trevor Horn the former Yes lead singer on "Drama". The good old Tony Kaye (a founding member of the band) returns to the keys. Chris suggested to Horn to join again as the lead vocalist but he will turned the proposal down arguing that he could not stand the negative comments of the traditional YesFans. During a party in L.A. in 1983, Chris Squire met Jon Anderson who was quite enthusiastic to join the "Cinema" project. With three former founding members (plus White who is on the drums since 1973) they decided to switch back to Yes instead of Cinema (against Rabin's opinion).

As for Genesis, hords of new fans will enter the YesWorld pushing the sales of the album to more than six (6) million albums sold between 83 and 85 (this is their best selling album ever). I incidently had a chat with a colleague yesterday about "90125". What he told me was exactly what was going on at the time : he had never liked the "old" YesFormula, but quite liked their new sound. So, a broad new market was opened for Yes, but I think that it is very hard to find lots of fans appreciating both YesPeriods with the same love.

"90125" : the title of the album shows that Yes was short of inspiration (as for the cover). Still, they managed to release a great hit-single out of this : "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" : with an almost hard-rock intro (!), it is a good rocking song, the bass from Chris being in the foreground. The chorus is catchy, and definitely I quite like it. "Hold On", is a good song, but it frankly does not belong to the Yes we all once loved (they remind me more of Kansas in this one). "It Can Happen" starts as a nice rock ballad with Oriental influences, and turned into pure FM sound. This will be the trademark of the NewYes but this song is above par in comparison with the majority of their production to come. "Changes" (again Oriental influences) has a more complex structure (almost like before) in the intro (1'30"). It switched then between melodious passages and more AOR sounds. "Cinema" is a vigourous and excellent (but too short) instrumental : powerful and complex as Yes has produced in the good old days (although they were not short back then). It would have been either an intro or a grand finale of a YesEpic some years ago. "Hearts" is also a good song : it really starts after 2'30".The "Chineese" sounds are well integrated into the track. Great vocal harmonies (at last). The rythm is quite rocking at times but not disturbing (to my ears at least). "Our song" has a great intro. It has a very commercial sound but the melody is quite alright. Bass playing is again very good (but who has ever doubted about Chris's skills) ?

The lows of the album are "Leave It" and "City Of Love" : believe me, there is only one thing to do : leave it and trash it ! On the remastered and expanded version lots of bonus tracks will be featured. The only one of the very few valuable tracks is "Make It Easy" (again very much influenced by the Kansas sound and quite poppy but good). I do not understand why Yes did not include it on the original album instead of those two crappy songs I mentioned above. The absolute nadir of the bonus tracks is the incredibly poor remix of "Owner" : absolutely awful. The alternate versions for "It Can Happen" and "Leave It" (obviously) are real bad as well.

At the end of the day, this album is not as bad as that (there will be much worse to come). It is very much Rabin oriented. Three stars.