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Psychedelic Paul View Drop Down
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    Posted: November 23 2023 at 14:25
Every YES fan will know The Yes Album - the third album by YES and the first to feature guitarist Steve Howe - but Yours is No Disgrace if you're not a fan. In the wake of the commercial disappointment of the first two YES albums, this awesome breakthrough album soars to new stratospheric heights like a thunder Clap and with all the energy and force of a Starship Trooper! 

The Yes Album was the first million seller for the band, earning platinum status, but it also marked the bitter departure of their manager Roy Flynn, to which the Fragile instrumental Five Per Cent for Nothing  was dedicated. Brian Lane would shortly take over the management of YES from 1971 until the end of their Drama tour in 1980, having been involved in A Venture to bring Buggles and YES together, with a mixed reception from dedicated YES fans.

The YES line-up has been one of Perpetual Change where I've Seen All Good People come and go over the years. This is the final YES album with Tony Kaye on keyboards (at least until his Dramatic return for the 90125 album in 1983), where he's soon to be replaced by Rick Wakeman for the classic Fragile album later in 1971. 

5 stars 1971: Yes - The Yes Album - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nY-QvLEUh8bovdW1btwUXJHE8I_W5bIbA

YES line-up:- Jon Anderson; Bill Bruford; Steve Howe, Tony Kaye; & Chris Squire.

Track Listing

1.  Yours is No Disgrace  (9:40)
2.  Clap  (3:16)
3.  Starship Trooper  (9:29)
4.  I've Seen All Good People  (6:55)
5.  A Venture  (3:20)
6.  Perpetual Change  (8:57)





Edited by Psychedelic Paul - December 07 2023 at 06:34
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Psychedelic Paul View Drop Down
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YES at Beat Club, Germany in 1971 and introduced by Uschi Nerke  Heart
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Close To the Edge was of course their masterpiece, but if I was introducing someone to Yes I'd play them The Yes Album as I consider it more accessible to someone unfamiliar with prog.
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Psychedelic Paul View Drop Down
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Originally posted by AlanB AlanB wrote:

Close To the Edge was of course their masterpiece, but if I was introducing someone to Yes I'd play them The Yes Album as I consider it more accessible to someone unfamiliar with prog.

90125 was my first introduction to YES, so that'd be the most accessible YES album from my point of view. I was too young to appreciate YES at the tender age of eleven in 1971, although I was only two years away from buying my first prog album (Tubular Bells) in 1973, even though I had no idea it was prog at the time. Embarrassed


Edited by Psychedelic Paul - November 24 2023 at 12:49
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Not a huge fan of this album... I don't know why, I just never got into it, on many days I prefer Time and a Word to the Yes Album
The Wheel of Time Turns, and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the shadow.

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Steve Howe is massive on this album. No quiet introduction, he practically revolutionised the band straight away. On TAAW they were still very much a left over sixties psyche band. This was a game changer. Not a perfect album it still has 3 magnificent pieces (the long ones!) but the rest is not 'throwaway' at all. Yes were showing a much more accessible side of prog which I guess pulled in a lot of fans who were less sure about the harder edged bands that were swimming around at the time. Yes succesfully married pop ideas with symphonic complexity, something ELP were not really doing and no one else for that matter either. Tull were still very blues based, Genesis were perhaps a bit lost in theatrics and literal high mindedness while Floyd represented the last knockings of psychedelic music. Yes were the 'it band' in 1971.

Edited by richardh - November 25 2023 at 00:00
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Originally posted by Frets N Worries Frets N Worries wrote:

Not a huge fan of this album... I don't know why, I just never got into it, on many days I prefer Time and a Word to the Yes Album

Hi,

I think the album makes much more sense if you pair it up with a lot of the music in 1971. 

With the knowledge you (and all of us!) have of today and so much music, this album will not sound as good or as interesting, despite the remastered version (which is really nice, btw ... I will admit that!) that has been released recently. To my ears, it is even better than the LP, which I bought 10 minutes after hearing one of the pieces from that album on the local radio station, yep ... spring 1971 I believe it was, and Fragile did not come out until about 4 or 5 months later!

The local station in Santa Barbara, had a very good FM signal, and here is a slight listing of what was being played ... when YES was added to it: (the station was an independent FM station up until the late 70's which helped bring out so much new music and longer cuts!) ... AND REMEMBER ... IT IS ALL IN STEREO ... AM radio was mono! So you either got the album or listen to the station for the stereo.

Elton John
Willie Nelson
Pink Floyd (Ummagumma)
Bob Dylan
Allman Brothers Band
Jefferson Airplane
The Doors
Grateful Dead
Santana
The Who
Led Zeppelin
Frank Zappa
Iggy and the Stooges
Chicago
Lou Reed/Velvet Underground
Jethro Tull
Spirit
James Gang

... just for starters. It spread out even more in 1973 and 1974 with Guy Guden adding some incredible numbers of new things to the station. I posted, elsewhere, a listing of many of the stuff played in 1974 for example.

The major thing in these listings, were that almost everything was a lot longer in terms of time. The big thing, then, was how much a FM station wanted to sound good compared to the rinkydinky sound of the AM station and its 3 minutes songs. Thus you heard a lot of long things, that today we kinda dismiss ... but you can see how YES would easily fit in that listing in 1971, and from then on!



Edited by moshkito - November 27 2023 at 07:52
Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
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dr wu23 View Drop Down
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Wonderful lp......'Starship Trooper' being one of my favorite Yes tracks from them.
One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
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Psychedelic Paul View Drop Down
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Originally posted by moshkito moshkito wrote:

Originally posted by Frets N Worries Frets N Worries wrote:

Not a huge fan of this album... I don't know why, I just never got into it, on many days I prefer Time and a Word to the Yes Album

Hi,

I think the album makes much more sense if you pair it up with a lot of the music in 1971. 

With the knowledge you (and all of us!) have of today and so much music, this album will not sound as good or as interesting, despite the remastered version (which is really nice, btw ... I will admit that!) that has been released recently. To my ears, it is even better than the LP, which I bought 10 minutes after hearing one of the pieces from that album on the local radio station, yep ... spring 1971 I believe it was, and Fragile did not come out until about 4 or 5 months later!

The local station in Santa Barbara, had a very good FM signal, and here is a slight listing of what was being played ... when YES was added to it: (the station was an independent FM station up until the late 70's which helped bring out so much new music and longer cuts!) ... AND REMEMBER ... IT IS ALL IN STEREO ... AM radio was mono! So you either got the album or listen to the station for the stereo.

Elton John
Willie Nelson
Pink Floyd (Ummagumma)
Bob Dylan
Allman Brothers Band
Jefferson Airplane
The Doors
Grateful Dead
Santana
The Who
Led Zeppelin
Frank Zappa
Iggy and the Stooges
Chicago
Lou Reed/Velvet Underground
Jethro Tull
Spirit
James Gang

... just for starters. It spread out even more in 1973 and 1974 with Guy Guden adding some incredible numbers of new things to the station. I posted, elsewhere, a listing of many of the stuff played in 1974 for example.

The major thing in these listings, were that almost everything was a lot longer in terms of time. The big thing, then, was how much a FM station wanted to sound good compared to the rinkydinky sound of the AM station and its 3 minutes songs. Thus you heard a lot of long things, that today we kinda dismiss ... but you can see how YES would easily fit in that listing in 1971, and from then on!

Santa Barbara FM sounds like my kind of radio station. Thumbs Up
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moshkito View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Psychedelic Paul Psychedelic Paul wrote:

...
Santa Barbara FM sounds like my kind of radio station. Thumbs Up

Hi,

It was a special time, when the "new" FM radio was showcasing its STEREO ... something that very few people ever heard before, and all of a sudden being able to HEAR IT and then go buy it at the store, made it really big. Gotta remember that The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck (I didn't include the jazz folks!!!!) and many others, made it for a very special listening all around ... it might be weird on a "hip" station to hear these things, which made the whole thing special ... something that today ... no one can relate to, or have any idea of what it was like ... it helped put "progressive" in the book, but I think one could, just as easily, say that it was STEREO that brought us all this music ... and nowadays, we take it all for granted ... like it was meaningless.  It wasn't. And a couple of years later, adding someone like Guy Guden to the mix ... just spread out the wings of the music played and shared ... by 1974, it was totally far out ... something that we can not even conceive here at all.

And almost 50 years later, Guy is still doing it, with new things just about every week ... I can make listings of a portion of the material he played, from 1974 to 1978 and 1979, when I started UCSB and could not keep up with the show as much. But those first several years as the roommate was filled with more music than we can imagine. Heck, it was in 1972 that I got blasted with Mike Oldfield, Genesis, Nektar and Tangerine Dream in one evening, and all I could do was go back to my room and headset and put on Hawkwind (Space Ritual) again! 

The quality of the sound ... that STEREO, was the miracle of all dreams! 
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^ Meanwhile, back in England, this is the kind of pop-tabulous, humungous chart playlist we can expect on Radio FAB 1 FM in the brand new computerised network chart, which is brought to you in association with Peppermint Essence, for all of your home peppermint requirements of a pepperminty kind. 

Smashie & Nicey's Radio FAB 1 FM Top 10 Chart Rundown

10. Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares to You
09. U2 - Nothing Compares to Sinead O'Connor
08. PM Tension - Time of the Month
07. DJ Jaffy J JFK the Presi Fonz featuring KLM, KLF, EMF, MFI, REM, EMI, London W14 3WW
06. Cliff Richard - God is Nice (and So Are Little Children)
05. Guns and Roses - The Devil is Nice
04. Dannii Minogue - I Should Be My Sister
03. Kylie Minogue - I Should Be Madonna
02. Bono - I Should Be Put Down
01. Bachman Turner Overdrive - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Let's Rock!



Edited by Psychedelic Paul - November 27 2023 at 16:35
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^ Sonya is such a delightful and harmless person to be the subject of such vitriol (allbeit coming from the fictitious Smashy and Nicey). However substitute Sonya for Bono and now you're talking!
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Originally posted by richardh richardh wrote:

^ Sonya is such a delightful and harmless person to be the subject of such vitriol (allbeit coming from the fictitious Smashy and Nicey). However substitute Sonya for Bono and now you're talking!
Fixed it. Tongue
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Originally posted by Psychedelic Paul Psychedelic Paul wrote:

Originally posted by richardh richardh wrote:

^ Sonya is such a delightful and harmless person to be the subject of such vitriol (allbeit coming from the fictitious Smashy and Nicey). However substitute Sonya for Bono and now you're talking!
Fixed it. Tongue
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Originally posted by Frets N Worries Frets N Worries wrote:

Not a huge fan of this album... I don't know why, I just never got into it, on many days I prefer Time and a Word to the Yes Album


Neither am I. The only song I really like on it is Starship Trooper, and then I enjoy the live version from Keys to Ascension so much better that I don't really see much reason to play the original again.
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It was certainly a nice surprise having Steve Howe on board. He brought in to the group a lot of acoustic guitar . Steel string acoustic, nylon acoustic, mandolin, and on The Yes Album you somehow knew after hearing it that YES were about to change. Steve Howe was like a ball of energy on stage...his head bopping up and down...he was aggressive on the acoustic and it totally changed the band. The way he naturally played the guitar was impressionable and sometimes shocking because you could say that in a sense not many bands had a player like him . In a way it felt new and different when he joined YES. His ideas felt new. I'm sure other guitarists were playing acoustic in bands, but the way in which Steve Howe presented it was actually different. I believe he was influential to others because of that.

Edited by Jacob Schoolcraft - December 01 2023 at 17:15
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Where the story began... a masterpiece
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A fantastic album.

Has anybody bought the super-deluxe box set? Smile
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Originally posted by Octopus II Octopus II wrote:

A fantastic album.

Has anybody bought the super-deluxe box set? Smile

I almost bought this super-deluxe box set, even though it included the Open Your Eyes album. Smile
 






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Originally posted by dr wu23 dr wu23 wrote:

Wonderful lp......'Starship Trooper' being one of my favorite Yes tracks from them.

I love the Prog Geeks version of Starship Trooper with Anne Marie Nacchio on vocals. Heart
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