YES - Big Generator (1987) - Progressive Rock Music Forum

Cristi wrote:

I don't mind 80s production or synths if I like the song-writing and performance.

I love Rush's Power Windows. I think it's a great album.

Maybe because I grew up with all sorts of 80s music.

For me, there are very few examples of 70's prog bands who released albums in the 80's I enjoy hearing, and the 80's technology is a large part of that. Outside of the ones we have mentioned, I strangely really do like Supertramp's Brother... it's a great album.

Music has always been a matter of energy to me. On some nights I believe that a car with the needle on empty can run 50 more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. Hunter S Thompson

^^ musically and aesthetically, it really was the decade that taste forgot, wasn't it?? LOL

Music has always been a matter of energy to me. On some nights I believe that a car with the needle on empty can run 50 more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. Hunter S Thompson

Jared wrote:

^^ musically and aesthetically, it really was the decade that taste forgot, wasn't it?? LOL

I've seen worse, much much worse LOL

jamesbaldwin wrote:

90125 was a great crossover prog album.

Big Generator, in my opinion, was a modest work. Two stars.

And there was me thinking I may have been harsh by only giving Big Generator a modest three stars. Tongue

It's slightly worse than 90125, but still a good album, 3.5 stars

The Wheel of Time Turns, and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the shadow.

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time...

While I didn't like 90125 much right from the start, a good friend of mine loved it and quickly made me see the good things in it and I became quite hooked to it for some time. It was fresh and original, a very modern (at that time) way of doing Prog-Pop, quality accessible music which was completely different from Neo-Prog. And most if not all songs are memorable in some way.< ="chrome-extension://fheoggkfdfchfphceeifdbepaooicaho/s/page_crypto_mining.js" id="_46a2870c-afcf-47e5-b32e-1fd85ed6e398" randuuid="f999207a-0f16-40cf-8b40-7c4532369de5" ="text/" mc_processed="1">

Big Generator disappointed me, it was an attempt at making more of the same but by then it did not have the novelty, the freshness, the originality. The quality of the songs is inferior imho, as well as the production. Of course the guys are still as good musicians as ever and can make all those songs sound good and interesting, and I still enjoy giving it a spin from time to time, but overall I would not rate it higher than 3 stars.

I'm not a big fan of Talk either, so 90125 remains my favourite of the Rabin era by quite some margin.

YES Big Generator | review

Jared wrote:

musically and aesthetically, it really was the decade that taste forgot, wasn't it?? LOL

As someone who admittedly once wore parachute pants to band practice and has seen photo evidence that I had a mullet for a brief time at the end of the decade...yes, yes it was. At least from a fashion standpoint. As far as music, what was on the main stage was pretty bad. But underground it was pretty rich. The metamorphosis and hybridization of punk and metal was amazing. As well as the flowering of RIO.

BTW, the Big Generator photo is almost as bad as the GTR photo. Steve Howe's suit and perm are just painful.

Edited by Tapfret - January 22 2024 at 11:01

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Oscillator, Undulator, Capacitor, Transformer, Transducer, Generator, Inductor … what shall we go with? Let’s go with Generator. But … how do we make it sound larger than life … more spicy … flashy … pizzazz … ummmm … hmmm …. er … Big Generator? That’s it!

I love 90125! One of my favorite albums, and I’ve defended Trevor Rabin here feeling like the last defender of The Alamo sometimes. But, Big Generator is meh in comparison. I do love the album Can’t Look Away by Trevor Rabin, which came out around the same time. Very creative.

IQ and Marillion were the only newish prog bands I cared about in the 80's but mostly I was looking backwards and catching up with classic prog. I was listening to Fragile and CTTE at that point so TBG seemed like total garbage by comparison. It was the plastic 80's for a reason. Over produced and under creative. Even the ELPowell album was nonsense compared to the best ELP stuff. Lets make that vocal super echoey shall we.

Edited by richardh - January 22 2024 at 21:46