YESSONGS

I was wishing to listen to a bit of YES but I didn't know which album choosing. Well, this YESSONGS contains the best of the best YES lineups in their best period, so why spending time in deciding between The Yes Album, Fragile and Close To The Edge? This triple live vinyl has all of them.

It's true that the sound is not perfect, that some adjustments have been added in studio, but it sounds "live". Putting it on at high volume can give you the impression of watching 5 young longhaired artists on stage while islands are floating in the sky and planets are exploding.

Opening the stage with a recorded piece of classical music (Stravinskij's Firebird) and tie it together with Siberian Khatru is a winning idea, so that many years after Marillion has done the same with Rossini's "La Gazza Ladra" and "Slàinte Mhath".

The tracklist speaks on its own: Starship Trooper, And You And I, Close To The Edge, Roundabout....plus a touch of Wakeman's Six Wives...Tales was still to be released actually.

If you have never listened to the classic YES this is the final anthology of their classic period. One may argue that the studio versions are better than those on this live, but they are not "SO" different.

An album full of masterpieces whose vinyl edition is enriched by one of the best Roger Dean's inside pictures, surely better than the anonymous album cover of CTTE.

And if an album is full of masterpieces it can't not deserve the status of masterpiece as well.

Even the differences between Bruford and White don't look so big or so bad. For both YES fans and newbies.