9012 LIVE (DVD)

This concert video was filmed in Edmonton, Canada, in September 28, 1984.This video is a selection of songs performed during that concert, because during that tour YES played more songs in concert:"And You & I", "Roundabout", "Yours is No Disgrace", "Hearts","Our Song", "Roundabout", etc. (For more information:www.forgottenyesterdays.com ). It is a very good concert with the line-up of the "90125" album, even if the passing of time let me see that the quality of the images is not very good, being filmed more than 20 years ago. But the sound is good, even if Tony Kaye`s keyboards are mixed lower than the rest of the instruments. This video is "decorated" with some scenes from the 1950s and "visual effects" done by a company called Charlex. Despite that this video was nominated for some special awards (it didn`t win, I think), I can`t understand what is the relation of these 50s scenes to YES` music and image. In fact, I think that it could have been better to leave the concert images without these "strange scenes", which sometimes appear in some songs (like in "Changes") apparently to illustrate the meaning of the lyrics. Anyway, this video has performances of 7 songs from the "90125" album, plus two songs from "The YES album". The credits which appear in the back cover of the "9012LIVE-The Solos" mini-album (credits which I included when I added this video to the Progarchives data base; the video doesn`t include these credits; the video only lists the names of the members of YES with individual pictures of them at the end of the video) say that Tony Kaye and Alan White sang backing vocals.The only song in which they appear "singing" is in "Leave It", but this is not true, IMO, because it seems after seeing several times this video that, with the exception of Trevor Rabin`s and Jon Anderson`s shared lead vocals and Trevor`s guitar in this song, the rest of the music and vocals are really played from tapes, with the band really doing a playback. Alan White in the first part of this song appears at the front of the stage "playing" two Simmons electric drum pads, something that, for drummers at least, is like discovering a playback or "acting" (where are the bass drum and the cymbals?; Alan White smiles a bit while he is doing this "singing and playing electric drums" acted part!). Apart from this song, all the music and vocals in the other songs are played and sung "live in concert", with the additional help from some programming done in the keyboards.The songs from the "90125" are played very well. Two of these songs appear in the mini-LP called "9012LIVE-The Solos", released in late 1985 ( to promote this then forthcoming video, I think): "Hold On " and "Changes". (The solos released in that mini-LP, which were also played during this tour, were recorded in Dortmund, Germany, in June 24, 1984)."Owner of a Lonely Heart" starts with an instrumental Intro taken from the song "Make it Easy", which was released in the "Yesyears" Box Set in 1991.The two songs from "The YES Album" are played well, but differently to the original versions. For example,`the "Your Move" section from "I`ve Seen All Good People" is played by Trevor Rabin in an acoustic guitar, not with a Vachalia, like Steve Howe did. "Starship Trooper" is played more as a "rocker", with some "heavy" lead guitar parts by Rabin and a brief organ solo by Tony Kaye. The final results in both songs are good, anyway, even if some of the 70s fans don`t like to see this line-up playing old YES Prog songs from the 70s. Jon Anderson plays a bit of acoustic guitar in "I`ve Seen All Good People", and in other songs (the "Würm" section of "Starship Trooper" and in "Changes") he plays a keyboard. In the credits section which appears at the end of the video, there is a credit for "additional keyboards and programming" for keyboards technician Casey Young (he played the additional keyboards backstage, I think, as only the 5 YES musicians appear on the stage; I also can hear an additional rhythm electric guitar part not played by Rabin in "Changes"; maybe Young played this guitar too, who knows?).This video has been unavailable for buying for some years, but in YES` official website they recently announced that this video is going to be released in DVD this year (for more information: www.yesworld.com )

Update (11-June-2009): last year I bought the DVD version of this concert video. It has the concert with and without the visual designs and scenes done by Charlex. Of course, the best version of this video is the one which doesn`t have the things done by Charlex. The only disappointment was that the full concert wasn`t released again (three particular songs I would like to see played live are "Hearts", "Yours is no Disgrace" and "And You and I", which were played during that tour, but again they were not included inthe DVD). It also includes in the Special Features Section a version of "Roundabout" played and recorded during the same concert. This live version is not very good, becuase Trevor Rabin didn`t play it very well and similar to the original studio version. The introductory guitar part, for example, was played by him using the volume control of his guitar to make it sound very different to the original version. The next parts of the song are better, but not enough to be considered as a good version. In contrast to Rabin`s style which really didn`t fit the style of the song,Tony Kaye really played a very good organ solo, and he also played very well in the other parts of the song. The DVD aslo has in the Special Features Section one "behind the scenes" documentary done by Steven Soderbergh, and also interviews with all the band members of that line-up. Tony Kaye while being interviewed remembers being fired from YES in 1971 because at that time he didn`t like the sound of the synthesizers and the mellotron. But by the time of this interview he says that he liked the new synthesizers of the eighties.