Also, it doesn't sound so different from 80s Rush anyway, so I wonder if only second generation prog rock bands are 'allowed' to incorporate AOR or New Wave elements in their music.   The only thing that doesn't go down so well with me is that it feels as if it was quite consciously made with an eye on commercial accessibility but, again, that's not to me such a huge consideration as to put this one down and applaud Drama in the same breath.  Thoughts?   

However, there are people who think that anything that remotely smells like a commercial song, let alone sounds like one, is automatically a bad thing. It isn't, but it's probably best to ignore the snipers and carry on enjoying. 

The eighties is almost a total write off for most seventies prog bands with only Rush and King Crimson seeming to have an actual artistic vision.Rush's music about impending oblivion was hardly the stuff for radio airplay.

It's not at the level of "Fragile", "The Yes Album" or "Close To The Edge", but it's a good album.

 

Perhaps he just didn't like the album. I could never hear it again and would never miss it. It does nothing for me. Personally, I think Going for the One is underrated and Yes sounds rejuvenated and lyrical on that release after falling into the ELP Works I and II trap with the bloated and pretentious  Relayer and Topographic Oceans albums.

 

Interesting. For me the holy trinity of Yes albums is The Yes Album,Fragile and Close To The Edge. That may have had something to do with the line ups. Moraz never really fitted into Yes and should have remained in Refugee imo. I still like Gates though. Going For The One has some very strong material but it feels a little bit too forced for me.

 

ELP's Works Volume album is a decent effort and much more interesting musically than many albums of the time. I wish it was more respected. The average rating it currently gets of around 2.5 is criminal imo.

  Good heavens, I can only imagine!!  Going from "Owner of a Lonely Heart" to "The Ancient".....!!

At the 35th Anniversary Tour in Chicago, there were many older fans like myself who also brought their kids along (teens, twenty-somethings etc.).    I watched the crowd throughout the show because they were so interesting...

When OOALH was played, it brought a loud cheer & the "kids" became visibly animated....so yes, I believe that OOALH and 90125 did bring some new fans back to Yes.   The kids responded well throughout the show, I think because the lighting and visual presence was so stunning, if not only for the music.  A sublime performance, one of the best I'd seen from Yes. 

Now, how much these new fans ever got into "Tales" is beyond me!

Genesis had a similar experience, when the "Duke" era band would pull out old classics....I had heard that their audience would go "Huh?" when "Apocalypse in 9/8" was performed.  I don't think the kids got into it quite so much as the Yes kids dug the band.  

It's always interesting to see how these bands attempt to woo the younger generations! 

Definitely, in much the same way as many people got into older Genesis on the back of albums such as ATTWT & Duke.

 

Agree...totally not under rated here. It is a great album released during the 80's where most rock music was in some kind of transformation period.

Punk, new wave was taking all the cash. In those days commercial albums were paying the money, so why does anyone have a problem with Yes taking a piece of that pie? They deserved the commercial success (paycheck) that 90125 gave them and hoards of new fans from huge FM radio play.

 

To me when a band has a mainstream succesful album such as 90125, it makes new fans dig into the older catalog and discover their beginings.

To me its one of Yes's most complete albums musically, only the Yes Album comes close.

Your avatar frightens me, badly!  However, I must say that I'm quite impressed with your opinion. 

I would have guessed "Tormato" as most underrated, but it seems to get quite a bit of appreciation on this forum.   Good point regarding TAAW and The Ladder!  

Eh, Big Generator is comfortably much worse than it.

Not to mention "Onion," errrr....."Union."  

Great live show, though!  

What do you mean by "just perfect"?

 

The point is, all of it should be very good while it is being overlooked. Half ain't gonna' cut it.

 

Yes proved that the same spirit and vision could be embodied inside the conventions of the 80's.  If I somehow believe that the mellow 70's should have gone on for another 10 years, then I am filled with the inconsolable longing for impossible things.  But "Close to the Edge" was never coming again, and in it's context, Yes showed themselves to be just as relevant as Survivor and Duran Duran.

 

The video for "Owner of a Lonely Heart" brilliantly illustrates the theory behind the album, actually, with the protagonist struggling within the confines of a black-and-white authoritarian regime to break free and fly.  The only way to do it is to jump over the edge!

 

The real mistake came later on, when Yes attempted to repeat this formula in the 90's.  When the electric dreams of the 80's proved just as ephemeral as the hippie utopia of the 70's, the culture was adrift, and musicians still trying to prop up the discredited beast called popular music brought well-deserved scorn upon themselves.

 

In short, the 80's were a time to pretend to be something other than yourself.  Yes and Genesis and King Crimson did so, quite artfully.  But when the 90's came, anything that smelled even faintly of inauthenticity was brutally dismissed.

Second the motion.

Iván

80s, dance music, disco, etc. I would say, "no thanks", and would be pretty much sure that I wouldn't like it.

I hardly even know what disco is, but my guess is that 90125 is about as progressive and disco can be.

90125 bears as much relation to disco as I do to a sexy supermodel.

 

I think the disco link is there because Jon Anderson sings "move yourself; you are the steps you take" in Owner Of A Lonely Heart

Just joking, as was Vibrationbaby who brought up the disco thing, I think.

I do think Steve Howe is at least right for some part when he says that the emphasis on '70's Yes was melody, and the emphasis of '80's Yes was rhythm. He's not completely right, but not completely wrong, too.

Oh, well then I was right when I said this haha.

Ya know what I was getting at anyways. They took a style that I don't like and made it great.

Unless you are a sexy supermodel, lazland.

My wife certainly thinks that I SHOULD be!!

 

Wise words. Truely - what was mainstream formula of sound which Yes could theoretically apply to their music in the 90s?

Nirvana? Prodigy? Spice Girls? Metallica?

There were melting of mainsream to many-many-many short streams, which ended up in our times lethal crisis of music industry.

Neoprog? But Yes is the prog.

So I think that they were right in 90s.

As to album - it's overrated if you are knew all Yes discography - there were much more impressive albums.

It's underrated if you are too deep in 70s Yes, cause there were impressive songs on 90125 - riffs in "Owner", vioce play in "Leave It"... This music could bring joy to art- prog-rock fan.

And it's correctly noted - for many listeners 90125 opened the world of Yes.

As example for me the same thing did "Union".

And maybe the more rock than traditional prog moments on the record didn't do it a lot of favors with some long time Yes fans.

Will it go down as one of the greatest in Yes history?

Maybe not. Glad it's there though. It kind of breathed some different life into the band.

 

 

Seriously, next to the KTA material, 90125 does happen to be the post-Drama Yes album I like the most.

 

here is a regrettable example :

 

slaughternalia wrote: Personally, I don't like it at all, along with 80s Rush.

 

 80's Rush is fabulous by the way...

 

 

It seems underrated because there are many proggers and also old Yes fans who hate it. 

For me it's a great album. (but I like Union, too)

This. 

All of which are great albums. 

 

Grace Under Pressure is incredible! One of my favorites. Couldn't do without it.

I think not. It hasn't hold as well as some of the classics because it was too much of a pop album from its time. The song Cinema held up well but that's because it was composed when the band's intentions still were to do progressive music. All of the fans that "grew up" with that version of Yes will disagree with me on that but, most of us who were around for "Close To The Edge" forth know a more adventurous brand of Yes.

90125 is a good pop album with streaks of progressive but it is not an essential album to the Yes experience. As a matter of fact, it feels out of place in regards of the rest of the catalogue (same goes for Big Generator and most of Talk).

I will agree with brainstormer in the sense of Tormato being the most underrated album. It seems that 1978 was a straining year on progressive rock acts. Genesis came out with "...and then there were three.." which the band members dismiss today as one of their weakest (I tend to disagree. After all, they are the same band that came out with "Invisible Touch"). Tormato to me has the most incredible performances that Chris Squire has ever put on an album. "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" has to be one of the best instrumental moments the band has ever had.

Perhaps the conditions from which the album was produced weren't the best and most fun. Band's will tend to relate those experiences to what they think of their albums. I know that was the case with Genesis' ATTWT. Phil often speaks as how much he disliked the album but in reality it is a good album its weakest piece happens to be their first big hit ever ("Follow You, Follow Me"). I think they actually did a great job considering they just lost a huge contributor (Steve Hackett).

The members of Yes don't have a great recollection of the recording sessions for Tormato. Given that, plus the fact that the music tastes were changing in favour of punk and more of a techno sound, Tormato never had the chance it deserved at the time. However, in time the album went platinum which is not easy for an album that wasn't really a commercial piece to begin with.

90215 was Yes more commercial effort ever as it shows by its sales (triple platinum). The downside of it comes not from the sales but from the way the music held with time. To me, it is a reminder when MTV played music. Catchy tunes that are almost danceable. Something reminiscent of radio and people not really familiar with the music from Yes' illustrious past.

The album was a reflection of the industry at the time. It wasn't too soon after when JethroTull came out with "A", a synth-heavy version of the band. Yes and Genesis found new life at the time in doing pop music. Genesis was able to keep it up until almost the end whilst Yes pop stint lasted for a couple of albums before they resorted to go back into a less radio-friendly format.

If there is one thing that's very wrong with Yes, it is that for the last thirty or so years, they have seen themselves as a business more than a band. Therefore, business-like decisions are made which aren't necessarily the best thing for their creativity. Hence, no more Jon, no more Rick and not even Oliver (whom I really liked filling his dad's shoes).

Trevor Rabin came in and went out of Yes as a business decision. These decisions are made to the benefit of the band's income but, as it happens with anything artistic, emotional inspiration is the real driver and motivator and when that is gone, you loose something big. 90125 made the band the biggest monetary payoff they had ever seen but, when people talk about Yes, they still talk about "Close To The Edge' or "Roundabaout" and both are world's apart from "Owner Of A Lonely Heart".

That's my two cents anyway.

I'm sorry, but he didn't, and that is actually far from the truth. Rabin actually joined Chris Squire, following the decision by the latter to disband Yes when he didn't like the direction Downes & Horn were taking them in, and the idea was to form an outfit by the name of Cinema, featuring Squire, Rabin, and White.

It was only when Atlantic suggested that Anderson might want to be involved with the project that it was called Yes. 

Also, Rabin is on record many times as saying he wished it had stayed as Cinema, not called Yes. 

And why do you think Atlantic "suggested" that hey called the project Yes? Far from the truth? I don't think so. The band wasn't called Cinema after all. Rabin was supposed to be the new lead singer until management objected to it. Isn't management the business branch of a band? The whole reason that the name Cinema was dropped was because it didn't make good business sense not to capitalise the leverage from the Yes brand. Also, Yes didn't split because of the direction that Downes and Horn were taking them. As a matter of fact, that's exactly the direction they've taken today. They split up because Trevor Horn didn't want to be in a band any longer he took a turn in his career to become a very well known record producer. That was the catalyst for the band's disintegration at the time. So, as you see, my statement is not only far from the truth but closer to it than what the popular version may be (whatever that is).