Yes, 4/1/2011, Hampton Beach (NH), USA

This was my second time seeing Yes, and both were with the new singer, Benoit David. Unfortunately, bad weather and transportation difficulties caused me to miss the first 1 and 1/2 songs of the set.


Setlist:
Stravinsky -Rite of Spring (Intro)
Parallels
Tempus Fugit
Yours Is No Disgrace
Soon
Close To The Edge
Steve Howe solo (including To Be Over)
Your Move/Seen All Good People
Machine Messiah
Owner Of A Lonely Heart
Long Distance Runaround
The Fish/Chris Squire & Alan White solo spots (including On The Silent Wings Of Freedom)
Starship Trooper

Encore: Roundabout

Thoughts/Opinions
 The place was almost sold out, not many empty seats at all, and in fact was hard to move in some places while getting to our assigned seats. The crowd was extremely responsive and enthusiastic, spontaneous dancing breaking out in a few places.  As for the band, they were tight as hell this night, and really seemed full of energy.
Definitely brought their 'A game', and were really feeding off the energy from the 90% capacity crowd.

The music was awesome, as you would expect from a band of their caliber. Close To The Edge was great, with good vocal harmonies and even a bit of improvisation from Oliver Wakeman during the synth solo.
Howe's solo was another highlight,  really showing off his skill there. Machine Messiah was another highlight, rocking even harder than on the last tour. By the time the show was over, everyone left on a really high note, and it seemed throughout that everyone had a good time, even the band. Of course there were many older people, but there were a surprising amount of people in their 20s and younger in the crowd.

As for the band itself, everyone played perfectly as far as I could tell, and Chris Squire introed a few songs himself.
Fans seem to be polarized about the new singer. Yes, he's not Jon Anderson, but let's face it....Jon's voice isn't what it used to be. Benoit David doesn't sound EXACTLY alike, but close enough for it not to matter, because it fits the music. He sounded much better at this show than the show I saw in 2009; at that show he wasn't very animated, a bit timid really. But now he seems a LOT more comfortable, even playing guitar on a few numbers.

All in all, a really great show!


Edit: Changed the composer's name. Again.






Edited by Entity79 - April 04 2011 at 03:49

The guitarist in my band went to the Hampton Beach show. He got backstage as well and met the band. He said all in all Benoit was the most personable and talked about the new album. There's going to be a 20 minute epic according to David! He said he also spoke to Oliver who was also quite nice.

Cool! I'm interested to see what the new music sounds like.

I'm disappointed that they didn't play "Aliens Are Only Us From The Future".

Edited by Harry Hood - April 04 2011 at 02:19

Good to see they're picking up some younger fans. The last time I saw Yes it was like a Saga outing.