Close to the Edge vs TFTO

I think CTTE is the better.

CLOSE TO THE EYE... And dreaming... CLOSE TO THE EDGE!!!

"TFTO is close to the edge to win, but it didn't"

micky wrote: Sacred 22 wrote: The Miracle wrote: How to explain this... CTTE is a greater album, but I enjoy TFTO more   Interesting way to look at it. I listen to Tales a whole lot more and enjoy it so much. The YES Album to me is another album I love to listen to as well. I love CTTE but there is something about Tales. I kind of look at it as a treat for us YES fans. Anyway, I look forward to some of the other opinions on this. The Miracle is correct in a way.. regardless of how we feel about TFTO.. .it can and has lost people along the way.  CttE is the perfect blend of complex, challenging music... that can connect with al (or nearly all) prog fans.... and, of course, those who are not prog fans. It's massive sales being proof of that.  I do think TFTO is a better album.... but at the sake of accessibility...

I dont know if the sales are that different!!! Now maybe they are, because CTTE is considered as a classic in music in general...but back in the days (and please correct me if Im wrong) TFTO achieved the ranked number one in the most saled albums of the month it was realesed... while CTTE did not achieved the number one position in the charts... so maybe TFTO did sale as much (if not a bit more) in thouse years than CTTE...

...a, and by the Close to the Edge is also not my favorite Yes album (the Yes album and Relayer are)...but I consider CTTE to be the best album in prog...

el böthy wrote: micky wrote: Sacred 22 wrote: The Miracle wrote: How to explain this... CTTE is a greater album, but I enjoy TFTO more   Interesting way to look at it. I listen to Tales a whole lot more and enjoy it so much. The YES Album to me is another album I love to listen to as well. I love CTTE but there is something about Tales. I kind of look at it as a treat for us YES fans. Anyway, I look forward to some of the other opinions on this. The Miracle is correct in a way.. regardless of how we feel about TFTO.. .it can and has lost people along the way.  CttE is the perfect blend of complex, challenging music... that can connect with al (or nearly all) prog fans.... and, of course, those who are not prog fans. It's massive sales being proof of that.  I do think TFTO is a better album.... but at the sake of accessibility... I dont know if the sales are that different!!! Now maybe they are, because CTTE is considered as a classic in music in general...but back in the days (and please correct me if Im wrong) TFTO achieved the ranked number one in the most saled albums of the month it was realesed... while CTTE did not achieved the number one position in the charts... so maybe TFTO did sale as much (if not a bit more) in thouse years than CTTE... ...a, and by the Close to the Edge is also not my favorite Yes album (the Yes album and Relayer are)...but I consider CTTE to be the best album in prog...

I have become a litle tierd of CTTE but TFTO it seems i will never get tierd of so i shoose it.

Can I vote for Relayer? I think it's way better than both of them.

Sacred 22 wrote: Sacred 22 said:   "TFTO initially sold more records before it was released based on the success of CTTE" Micky Said: "exactly... it reached the charts as it did.. on the basis of advance sales... once the press started have their say on it  (was there  an easier album ever made, that was easier for the cynical musical press (ie. the musically uneducated)  to lampoon, than this one?) sales fell off.  It's sales and reputation... never recovered ahahahhah."       It is probably the least deserving of the negative reviews by the mainstream media as anything ever released. The irony surrounding this work is incredible, which has added to it's very mystery. I often wonder how highly rated this work would be even on this web site if the mainstream media of the day actually gave the credit this album truly deserves. People are so strongly effected by public opinion. Not everyone thought it was a bad album though. Time Magazine called it one of the years best releases.   Changing the subject, the subject material on this work is interesting in that it's origins come from the far east. The place where Atlantis is believed to be now is in the South China Sea. The legends must have been a plenty in that part of the world long ago as they were in Egypt. Our very history has quite possibly been hinted at on this album and I find that fascinating. There is so much more to this work than many people will ever know.

yeah... one of my hobbies is reading other people's feedback on albums.. in particular internet album reviewers... some of the the time they  are just damn entertaining ... other times they really hit the nail on the head. 

From John McFerrins website....

How do I feel about it? I'm giving it a 13. Call me a pretentious jerk, but I love this album. No matter how many times I listen to it, I never fail to be struck by how beautiful and how powerful this piece is (btw, although TFTO is listed as having 4 tracks, the reality is that these are merely movements in an epic symphony). Even if it is nonsense, and don't get me wrong, it seems it a lot of the time, it actually seems to make more and more sense with each successive listen. Not only that, but I love it when a band shows ambition (which this album has in spades) as well as a desire to do something that nobody has ever done before (well, ok, ambition isn't enough, as failed ambition can be far worse than failed humility - you have to succeed in fufilling in your ambitions, and I feel Yes did just that here). And within in the context of pop and rock, this completely blew away anything that had been recorded previously in terms of traditional "boundaries." It's not every day, after all, that you come across an album with four extended pieces containing interlocking musical and conceptual themes (apparently the double-album/four-song routine had actually been done in a couple of previous instances, but in those cases each piece was a completely seperate entity and not part of a holistic whole). They thumbed their noses at the notion that song ideas have to be placed into concise, immediately recognizable structures (and that was an interesting step for Yes, given that they *were* at heart a trumped-up pop group), and showed (at least in my mind) that fading in and out of song ideas over a lengthy period of time, as if in a strange hallucination, is not something that should necessarily be a failure.


well said John... he really summed up exactly how I feel about the album... hopefully a sign that old school thinking is going by the wayside with this album... and a newer generation (John is a college kid) can evaluate the album with a fresh perspective...


as far as your last thought.... that is so true... that's why I find it so interesting... there is SO much going on with that album.  With every listen... I either hear something I haven't heard before or have some glint into what Jon is trying to get across. 

.........close to the edge.........