ALIVE ON PLANET EARTH

Fantastic live document of two concerts, one from North America during 1998 and the other from Japan during 1999. They play tracks from their first three albums and Ronnie's first solo album, which ironicly is named "The Flower Kings". Right from the start they play one of my favorite FK tunes, "There Is More To This World" as bombastic, energetic and soaring as you can possibly get. "Church Of Your Heart" is an updated version of what I wish YES would sound like, but here it's done very well live and maybe not as majestic as the album version, especially the missing church organ solo, but it's still a super version. The rest of side one is done well with a decent version of "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" with Ronnie playing a guitar solo towards the end. Side two has some softer sounds mixed inside lengthy tracks, especially the first track, "The Big Puzzle", rather soothing. It's not until we hit two awesome tracks, "In The Eyes Of The World" and "The Flower Kings" do we return to some monster jams and Ronnie soloing. The disc ends with a good version of "Stardust We Are Pt 3". Overall, it's got killer sound, great audience participation on disc one, many solos by Ronnie and they fiddle with songs so as not to be complete copies of the studio tracks. And that in a nutshell is what a live album should be. 4 stars! Bravo!