If I had known about this music as a kid, I would not have been into the Monkees!  

BTW, Christopher Squire just turned, umm, 65?  Happy Birthday, Chris!  

 

(Slight editorial - Soap Box Mode 2 alla-dean!)

 

I keep thinking that pretty soon I have to ask my mom for the recordings of me in the crib crying, kicking and screaming! And put it to music and call it progressive just for you all!

 

This is weird for me. Sorry to sound silly!

 

AT the time, I liked checking out and hearing all the Pink Floyd bootlegs, all the Led Zeppelin bootlegs, all the Bob Dylan, all the Grateful Dead, all the Jethro Tull ... and the reason why I liked listening to them? .... they were all different from the regular recording. Even the Beatles said a lot more on the bootlegs than they EVER did on the albums, which, by all intents and purposes had too much Windex, Pine Sol and other lubricants that did NOT make the work by the musicians involved any better! In most cases it was so sanitized and over-mixed as to show the group as they weren't! This is the biggest issue with the Beatles! And it took away the "people" and "persons", and the work they did individually ... to the point that what Geoff says is ... totally ignored, because the Beatles are God and Geoff is sick and a bitch!

 

You would pay hundreds of dollars to hear Ian gasping for breath and saying ... more ... more ... in that insane version of My God ... during his flute solo ... one of the most intense and beautiful flute pieces I have ever heard in my life!  AND NEVER released on any album, btw!!!!!!!!!  YOU can not put a price on 15 different versions of Echoes, or Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, and how those trip sooooo differently from each other despite being the same "song". You can not appreciate how good and strong Led Zeppelin were in concert, that made their albums sound second rate by comparison!

 

In other words ... you felt that you KNEW these folks, and that they spoke for you, and your feelings.

 

Well, I never lost my feelings and what it all was about at the time, in various places, and hearing this stuff now, I can still appreciate the different things ... but some bands, were not that good, on the bootlegs. YES was one of them! Even though I have never found a bootleg of the TFTO that they did and I caught which was very good and clean by comparison to many other bootlegs of theirs. Another band, not very good, and the boots were sad, was Genesis.

 

 

But going back in time? Not for me ... I can listen to these things and still gain the "experience" ... but for the sake of collecting or for the fervour of it all? ... I already have it committed to my heart ... what else do I need? To convince you? ... Ohh yeah ... sure!

 

Unlike many of these bands, YES was not as original and talented at the start as they became, regardless of wether they gained direction from a producer, or the connection of the right folks, clicked properly to make it work and get somewhere! You got to remember that ... if you found a video of YES doing Simon and Garfunkel, you are probably going to say ... so what? It's pop music! Not progressive! And this is the part that tends to distort things some. They were teenagers learning their craft!

 

LIKE all of us and everyone else. AS a historical fact, it is important. As a music document, I am not sure that it is.