All YES Appreciation Thread

I just heard Tales once again, and it's about as I remembered, Great Ritual, the other songs have great moments and not so great moments, and rather difficult moments for me. However, that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the greatness of the album, It's just I don't have THAT MUCH patience (and ofcourse I love epic songs, that's not the problem here). I'll have to keep on listening to the album from time to time.

I "came up" feeling different.  Ritual I saw as padded; Ancients was tough at first, but then I broke through it's brutal nature to the story beneath, if you will.  No time now but in coming days I hope to get more into talking about this great record.  Number one any time I've made an all-time prog list.

I was just doing some digging in Notes from the Edge. I didn't find anything about Howe's enjoyment of the CttE sessions, but he thinks (at the moment of that interview, he says he changes his mind on the subject from time to time) that the quintessential Yes piece of music is Tales from Topographic Oceans as a whole. He says that one's totally different from anything before because of the freedome they got by changing the guidelines on the recordings of "Roundabout" and "CttE", were they lost all sense of what a rock band was suposed to be, and thus determined to do somthing that was bigger than themselves. This interview is the first Steve Howe interview included, from october 1993. It really takes quiet a time to search for somethin in this interviews, and I don't know when I'll have time to check out another one in case there's something else interesting. So what do you people think about Tales? Do you agree with Steve? I haven't heard it in a while, but as far as I remember I found it a bit too long, I guess I would rather agree with Rick on this one, it would have been far greater if it hadn't been made so long. Revealing Science of God is really wonderful to me, but the other songs might have been better if they had been shorter. However, I hope I give myself the time to hear this album a few times again soon to comment about it again. As far as I've read in this forums there's lots of respect for this album.

As to the question about Howe's recording of CttE in one take and those sessions being his favourites, I really have no idea, but perhaps on the site of Notes from the Edge, which includes many interviews, there could be an answer if you want to spend some time reading to them.

The live Perpetual Change is like a whole different song, I love it, and it has Bruford (in other words, it's not different because of White).  The drum solo is ca-razy.

My feeling on White is he's fine on that album if you can get into that whole arena rock deal.  He does live what is typically called "exciting"; Bruford does live what is typically called "interesting" (check him out with KC).  I prefer the latter style, but I can understand.

I love the live Khatru and Heart, and have even liked the live Heart over the studio version at times, truth be told.  Live, they certainly get a high drama out of so few musicians by the final chorus of that song.

Of course live Mood and Wakeman's Excerpts are not to be denied. 

I was fortunate enough to grow up on this record, among others, and played every one of the six sides like there was no tomorrow.

Dellinger:  I wonder if you caught the questions I put out, more or less to you, in my last bunch of posts over recent weeks.  Take a stab at any of that?

PS: the fog on Tyne is mine, all mine...



Edited by American Khatru - October 14 2009 at 15:34

Yessongs  ok love the album but feel its lack of production depth doesnt do some of the songs justice   mind you thats my old vinyl copy CD may be better.  As for the drumming to be honest I think White does a good job and to my mind does create a better rhythm section with Squire.   Technically Brufford was amazing and probably better suited to album versions but I think White played the thing differently enough to make a valid statement of his own

progkidjoel wrote: ... I love both Open Your Eyes and Tormato, since my dad was playing them from when I was 4 years old until I was 10!

Open Your Eyes came out about 12 years ago so I guess that makes you 16 at the most.  I didn't discover Yes until I was 14 or 15 in the early 80's so you are well ahead of me in that regard.  The first I heard was either some tracks from Drama that my friend recorded off the radio when it first came out, or Tormato, which the same friend taped for me.  I couldn't allow myself to like Drama at the time as I already knew of the Buggles and it seemed wrong even though I knew nothing of Yes. Now it is one of my favourites and I am going to one of the shows this year in the hope that I will hear some of it live for the first time. Tormato I had mixed feelings about. I thought the first few tracks were brilliant but it kind of fizzled out after that.  Even though I felt there was something interesting there, I  kind of persuaded myself I wasn't that interested in the band as I had limited record buying power at the time and was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the music that I was starting to learn about. My favourite band at the time was Genesis so I concentrated on collecting them. 

Then a few months later I heard And You And I on the radio. I couldn't resist any longer and bought CTTE the next day. This was soon followed by TYA, and Yesshows.  Yesshows was very mysterious to me as it had these long tracks on that seemed to have come from nowhere.  At that time, TFTO and Relayer were never seen in the record shops I had access to and I didn't know of their existence (in those days it was really hard to find out about this stuff if, especially if you didn't live in a big city).  I came across both of the albums in a record shop I found when visiting a different part of the country. By now I was quite obsessed with the band so you can imagine what an amazing thing it was to find these two albums.  I was on holiday with my parents so I had to wait to get back home a week later before I could play them!

One interesting thing is that I pretty much went off Genesis as I got into Yes and, although I don't  mind hearing the odd track now and again, I've never really had much of an urge to listen to them since.  Whereas with Yes, although I stopped listening to them so much in the 80s as my tastes went off in different directions (generally away from prog), I never stopped liking them and always enjoyed them when I did listen to them.  I saw one of the ABWH shows in 1989 but it was the rise of the internet and especially the news of the KTA shows and then the subsequent tours that really sparked my interest again.   And these days I probably like Tormato more than I ever did - Arriving UFO and Circus of Heaven I find have a rather quirky charm rather than just being embarrassing!  I have to say though, Open Your Eyes is absolutely terrible and is almost - but not quite - down there with Union.!

ghost_of_morphy wrote: Unlike the rest of you guys, I had the good sense to gag when I heard Tormato.  :)

Unlike the rest of you guys, I had the good sense to gag when I heard Tormato.  :)

I agree. Despite its obvious flaws in terms of the production, which was awful, and the sense of a band falling apart at the seams, there are some wondrous moments on Tormato, and it retains a special place for me too.