YESSHOWS

I saw this album in a record shop in late 1980, and I asked one of the shop`s employees if Anderson and Wakeman were in the album, and he said to me that it was true. Even if the recordings and the mixing of this album are not very good (the keyboards are very much in the background, the bass guitar is higher in the mix, as the drums, the guitar sometimes sounds thin), this live album has very good live versions of "Parallels" (with a great synthesizer solo by Wakeman), "Going for the One" (despite Wakeman`s keyboards are almost inaudible), "The Gates of Delirium" (a heavy performance, with Patrick Moraz almost inaudible in some parts) and "Wonderous Stories" (with a good mixing). "Time and a word" also suffers from bad mixing (again of the keyboards), but it is a good version. "Don`t Kill the Whale" is a better recording (done by the B.B.C., with a better mixing). I don`t like very much the "Topographic Oceans" album, but the live version of "Ritual" included here (divided in two parts in the L.P. version, "Part 1" in Side 3 and "Part 2" in Side 4), with Moraz on keyboards, is good in the "Part 1", but I found some musical excess in the "Part 2", too much "noise" in my opinion, but with a good job by Moraz (again in the background most of the time). It seems that this album was going to be released in 1979, so Chris Squire (credited as mixer in the gatefold cover with two recording engineers) mixed these songs, but the album wasn`t released then. But in late 1980 the record label released these mixes in this live album. I don`t know if the remastered 2 C.D. version sounds better, but I think it should sound better. I only have the 2 L.P. version.