PROG RELATED

I feel that this interpretation of the Yes catalogue disqualifies the current Yes, yes it's clear. With Yes 50, the keyboards of Geoff Downes don't work, especially "Close to the edge" and "Awaken" The dynamic within the songs are quite lame, and sometimes they don't play well together. Steve Howe seems to struggle with his own part. And the singer Jon Davison struggles, and delivers some inadequate parts

To me, it was important to have this in mind. Jon Anderson and The Band Geeks is not Yes, but their interpretation of the Yes catalogue goes back to what is was. The energy, the complexity of composition is in front of us. To me, it's an interpretation of Yes, but close to Yes. They try to duplicate the sounds of the studio albums, and the avantage is that they understand how the composition is written. The musicians are amazing, and the keyboardist Chris Clark doesn't suffer the comparison with Rick Wakeman (what Geoff Downes does). The choice of the sounds, with Robert Kipp are more accurate than the current Yes. And the bass, delivered by Richie Castellano is just amazing, big, and gives a good rendition of what Chris Squire was to the band, an extraordinary locomotive.

Jon Anderson and the band Geeks delivers something right to the Yes heritage. Not to mention that Jon Anderson has still a wonderful voice.

So if you're a Yes fan, you will love this. And I will always thank The Band Geeks to give us the opportunity to listen to Jon's voice again, at 80 ! They worked so well, they are the new interpreter of Yes music, like all these people in Classical music.

(written by a french guy, pardon my English)

The first track, Career of Evil, is an excellent introduction to the album, allowing each instrument to shine. Through a catchy chorus and more virtuosic passages, the band creates a captivating dynamic that highlights the complementarity of the different members. Next comes Subhuman, with more restrained riffs, which serve as an excellent transition into one of the album's best tracks, Dominance and Submission. In this piece, you can truly feel the band's intensity. The song is evolving, speeding up, and features the voice of Eric Bloom, which is used almost like an instrument of its own. Then, ME 262 is a very fast track with little respite in terms of pace. I see an interesting connection with Highway Star, which relates to a frenzied car race, while ME 262 focuses on the intensity of a fighter jet in mid-battle. Cagey Cretins is certainly a change in style, with a more pop vocal approach and a very progressive sound. Then, we return to a more jagged and symphonic rhythm, even psychedelic, with Harvester of Eyes. It's worth noting that the title is as mysterious as the end of the track, which directly bridges into the superb Flaming Telepaths, featuring a great chorus and riffs that fill the entire musical space.

Finally, the masterpiece that is Astronomy. I'm one of those who first heard this track through Metallica's cover. Metallica's version succeeds in capturing the essence of the original while adding much more bite. It results in a solid version with a hint of progressive rock. As for the original, the balance between all the instruments is emphasized with a lot of subtlety, creating a mysterious atmosphere that perfectly sums up the complexity of the album. The crescendo in this track brings the album to a powerful conclusion. An excellent album, with no real low points, offering an interesting blend of riffs, solos, and, above all, an incredible voice from start to finish.

But the song "The loneliest of creatures" must be about the most underrated song of the world, whereas it should be mentioned in one breath with "Bohemian Rhapsody". A great classic rock song with strong chorus and climax building. Once it did grab you, it'll undoubtedly never leave you, as will not "Hope". 4.5 strong Beatles vibes

"The Best Of Jon & Vangelis" is the debut compilation album of Jon & Vangelis and was released in 1984. As we know, Jon & Vangelis was a musical project between the front man and the founder member of Yes, Jon Anderson and the ex-member of Aphrodite's Child, Vangelis Papathanassiou, in the 80's. They had already collaborated with Anderson's vocals on Vangelis "Heaven And Hell", harp on "Opera Sauvage" and vocals on "See You Later". This compilation has songs from Jon & Vangelis first three albums, "Short Stories", "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo" and "Private Collection".

As we all know, Jon Anderson left Yes in 1979 and was absent of the band between 1979 and 1983. During this hiatus of time, the musical collaboration between him and Vangelis reached its maximum peak. Both recorded together three studio albums between 1980 and 1983, "Short Stories" released in 1980, "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo" released in 1981 and "Private Collection" released in 1983. In 1991 the duo released another third and last studio album, "Page Of Life".

"The Best Of Jon & Vangelis" has nine tracks. The first track "Italian Song" is a song originally released on their third studio album "Private Collection". "Italian Song" is a beautiful and celestial song, and represents an absolutely perfect and majestic combination, between Jon Anderson's magical voice and the beautiful and floating Vangelis' keyboard sound. This is really a good and relaxing song. The second track "I'll Find My Way Home" is a song originally released on their second studio album "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo". "I'll Find My Way Home" is clearly a commercial song, but however, it's a great song, melodic and beautiful and it has also fantastic musical performances by both artists. This is, in my opinion, one of the highest points on "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo". The third track "State Of Independence" is also a song originally released on their second studio album "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo". "State Of Independence" contains good digital rhythms and percussions and a nice saxophone work. It's a song influenced by the World Music and has a nice but short jazz rhythm introduction. The song ends to be a little bit repetitive and vulgar and it hasn't anything more than that to show to us. The song on this compilation is the single edited version. The fourth track "One More Time" is a song originally released on their debut studio album "Short Stories". "One More Time" is a simple song with beautiful and charming atmosphere created by Jon Anderson's voice. It's the type of the song that in the future would be adopted by the duo. The fifth track "A Play Within A Play" is also a song originally released on their debut studio album "Short Stories". "A Play Within A Play" is a sublime and dreamy song that represents with "Curious Electric" and "Far Away In Baagad" the three highest moments on "Short Stories". It's a song that starts slowly, it grows until reaches the climax and in the end it returns and dissipate slowly again. The sixth track "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo" is the title track song that was originally released on their second studio album "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo". "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo" represents a great moment on "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo". It's a funny and fine piece of music too, worthy of being part of a soundtrack for a "B" class American film noir of the 30's and 40's. Despite be a commercial song and surely isn't a masterpiece, it has enough to can be considered a good musical piece. The seventh track "Outside Of This (Inside Of That)" is also another song originally released on their second studio album "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo". "Outside Of This (Inside Of That)" has soft vocals and calm music. It's a bit repetitive and vulgar song that doesn't represents one the best moments on "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo". The eighth track "He Is Sailing" is also a song originally released on their third studio album "Private Collection". "He Is Sailing" is a good song with good rhythm, more in the vein of their album "Short Stories". Here we can see some effort and some complexity on the structure of the composition of this song, made by Vangelis. The song on this compilation album it's the single edited version. The ninth and last track "I Hear You Now" is also another song originally released on their debut studio album "Short Stories". "I Hear You Now" is a love song, beautiful and melodic and it's also delicate and vibrant at the same time. This is a song that represents the perfect harmony between the two musicians which is, in my point of view, the main hallmark of all "Short Stories".

Conclusion: "The Best Of Jon & Vangelis" is a good compilation album with songs from their three albums released in the 80's. It's representative enough with three songs from "Short Stories", four songs from "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo" and two songs from "Private Collection". About those albums, "Short Stories" is definitely in another dimension. While "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo" and "Private Collection" are two albums with some nice and fine moments with few great moments. But, with "Short Stories" it's another story. "Short Stories" is the only album where the communion between the incredible voice of Jon Anderson and the beautiful music of Vangelis is almost perfect. So, returning to "The Best Of Jon & Vangelis", I can say that it's a nice introduction for those who aren't familiar with Jon & Vangelis music. However, I really think that their second compilation album "Chronicles" is better and more complete than this one is.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)

Wishbone Ash shows the band as a fully realised outfit that only needed fine adjusting to the sound that the band would make their own. Driven twin guitar rock with touches of boogie, jamming and progressive rock. Blind Eye, the opener, has always been a favourite of mine and is very spontaneous. Lady Whiskey has a dirty, bassy riff and extended work out. Errors of My Way is quite pastoral and almost folky in comparison and features some lovely twin playing. Queen of Torture isn't melodic enough to hold my attention on too many listens whilst Handy shows fully the talents of Ted Turner and Andy Powell and is often overlooked by fans and has, unfortunately, been missing from live sets for some years. Phoenix is the album's centrepiece as it still is in the band's live shows to this day. Regretably the band never really tried to repeat the songs structure fully.

For what was essentially a bunch of young kids the album shows great maturity and complexity and must be considered as an essential listen to any fan of seventies guitar rock. 4.5 Long live Wishbone Ash.

I've noticed that the most common critical view of the mighty BOC holds that Secret Treaties was their masterpiece, Agents of Fortune and Spectres were commercial sellout, Mirrors was the collapse, and Cultosaurus was some sort of musical redemption. In a word---poppycock. My admittedly in-the-minority assessment is that Agents of Fortune is their true masterpiece, Spectres was wonderful, Mirrors, while more commercially-oriented and radio-friendly, was at least still fun, Cultosaurus was the collapse, and Unknown Origin/Revolution by Night were the musical redemption of the First Nine albums.

Cultosaurus is one of the greatest examples of a band completely out of creative gas, a title it would hold for just over five years until Club Ninja wrestled that title away from it. Club Ninja and Cultosaurus have tons in common, actually, despite their surface-level differences in production and sound-sheen: both are stacked front to back with lifeless, monotonous, utter-generic template hard rock numbers that begged me to martyr them as "parking lot" albums (an immature outcome we subjected vinyls to as teenagers when we were displeased with their content---essentially a contest to see who could launch them highest over the empty church parking lot by my friend's house and then produce the most glorious results on impact. Immature, for sure, but at the time, hilarious late-summer-night drinking antics.) For Martin Birch, bless his heart, this was not a collection of material he was going to save with a producer's magic.

The jazz interlude in "Monsters" was a welcome parlor trick that harkened the sense of playfulness this band used to possess, but it's a brief respite. "Divine Wind" is anything but divine, five minutes of relentlessly repetitive plodding. While Buck Dharma could be counted on for a surprise mid-inning stand-up triple as on "I Love the Night" or "The Vigil" elsewhere, here that at-bat would be "Deadline," and he goes down swinging as well. "The Marshall Plan," oh dear, where is that skip button? "Hungry Boys" sounds like a Joe Jackson throwaway. "Fallen Angel" is a nice break from Eric Bloom with Joe B delivering a solid vocal. If I had to come up with one song from this album to place on a BOC retrospective, it would ironically be the last number, "Unknown Tongue," rather than everybody's sweetheart, "Black Blade." "Tongue" has a sinister and playful vibe that would have been right at home on Agents of Fortune, and it has some fine piano playing (by Lanier, I assume.) It has been noted elsewhere that Allen was largely absent from creative input on this album, perhaps another clue into the band dynamic of the moment.

But far too much of Cultosaurus is utterly forgettable, repetitive, and with a sad, performative passion as opposed to music that truly moves you or surprises you. Yes, they are certainly heavier and harder-rocking songs than Mirrors, but you'd never convince me that they're more interesting or ear-pleasing in any way. Members of BOC were trying to find their way back to their first three albums, a spiritual home in their mind, but they lacked the basic quality material and the "early band magic" to pull off such a trick at this point. Mind you, few will agree with my assessment of Cultosaurus, so you'd best check it out yourself. Although, actually, there is one prominent BOC insider who did happen to agree with me, the late great Sandy Pearlman, who noted, "Cultosaurus, I don't like it; some people do. I just don't like it. It doesn't do much for me."

A final point before I exit my soap box is to consider how poorly this album compares to peer albums from other legacy rock acts of the same era---does anyone seriously contend with a straight face that Cultosaurus can stand up to Permanent Waves or Heaven and Hell? Fortunately for our beloved Cult, a more convincingly authentic musical redemption was just around the corner, the one-two punch of Fire of Unknown Origin and The Revolution by Night.

Iommi has completely changed his personal style here; he obviously spent too much time with Van Halen because there are occasions where he clearly tries to adopt the Van Halen style - big mistake. Van Halen is Van Halen and no one is going to accept imitations even if the guitarist is just as talented. There are also tracks where Iommi seems to be moving towards the heavy rock of bands like Free. All of which means that the music is filled with strong vocal and guitar hooks but there is very little of anything else, most especially there is nothing here for the prog fan although with those leanings this particular incarnation of the band is certainly playing to their strengths

This is a fairly good 1980s type metal album, verging on hair metal in places and as such the tracks mostly stand alone leaving the album as a collection of mostly decent songs but without any real need for them to be in the same place at the same time. There is little passion to this album other than those few sections where either Hughes or Iommi push themselves to squeeze a little more out in the vocals and solos. Neither of them really does well enough to lift the listener and so there are no tracks that really could have made it to regular playlists on the radio. I do expect that one or two of these tracks achieved air time in the USA where heavy rock and metal were far more mainstream than in the UK and Europe which, were dominated by pop in the 80s. No Stranger to Love would be a good example of one track that you might expect to hear on the radio methinks - no idea if it was released as a single but I wouldn't be surprised.

Lyrically, this stuff becomes very annoying very quickly with the overuse of repetition in the vocal hooks in order to make the listener believe this is truly great stuff when it really isn't. After 2 listens I start to get the feeling that I want the songs to be over so I am very glad that there is nothing over 7 minutes and only 2 tracks over 5. Having said that the production is very strong although I don't like the newer guitar sound that Iommi is using, the vocals are good too but the drum work is too 1980s for me. The whole thing does remind me of Ian Gillan era Deep purple but only the higher tempo filler tracks that those guys used to throw into their work; in fact there are parts of the Perfect Strangers album that sound very similar to some of this stuff. There is a vague nod to prior Sabbath work with the minute long sound effect that is Sphinx as intro to the title track which seems to have a very familiar chorus. Accessible it certainly is but there isn't a progressive note in earshot unless you want to count Sphinx in which case 1 minute out of 44!!

In all this is a passable metal album but entirely irrelevant in the context of progressive music. If you want progressive metal then please ignore this album. If you are Tony Iommi's mum you will love this.

"A Night at the Odeon" captures one of the most prolific and creative periods of the English band, about to take off in the world thanks to the immortal "Bohemian Rhapsody", which curiously in the setlist of the concert is part of a medley shared, without its complex operatic section, with the vaudevillian "Killer Queen" and one of the most progressive and best achieved pieces of the band, the intricate "The March of the Black Queen". The album also includes powerful pieces taken from their first four albums, such as the hard rockers "Now I'm Here", "Ogre Battle" (very close to heavy metal), "Keep Yourself Alive" and "Liar", the infallible and complex solo guitar display by Brian May after the also rocking "Brighton Rock", the intense and emotional pause proposed by the beautiful "White Queen (As It Began)", the restless and very brief "Bring Back That Leroy Brown" with almost no vocal work, and the lilting "In the Lap of the Gods. .. Revisited" which for some reason failed to become a stadium anthem despite its very chantable chorus.

The approximately five thousand people who packed the theatre also watched as Freddie Mercury's band paid tribute to 50s rock and roll with a medley that included fragments of "Jailhouse Rock", "Stupid Cupic", "Be-Bop-A- Lula" and "Shake, Rattle And Roll", before the final encore with the only single from "Queen II", "Seven Seas of Rhye" and its B-side, the bluesy "See What a Fool I've Been", and finally the tape version of the English hymn "God Save the Queen", the closing song that the band kept as an unalterable tradition in their live shows.

"A Night at the Odeon", with a very good sound production work, is another great opportunity to appreciate many of the songs that stopped being part of Queen's setlists in later tours, displaced by the mega hits that began to follow one after the other after "Bohemian Rhapsody".

4/4.5 stars

First, this live album is excellent. Doubtful a YES fan wouldn't find much to enjoy. This is a GREAT band that Anderson has surrounded himself around. World class.

Second, a criticism of Jon. The material on this album comprises only YES songs, and from the years 1971 through 1977, with nothing before or after. I know this is what most consider the crème de la crème of the band's output, and it is my favorite era for them as well, but there are decades of amazing music from both YES and Jon outside of YES. So, being in a position to dictate mostly what is played, why is he so restrictive on what gets performed? Why ignore so many gems from over the years? The criticisms of the Steve Howe led YES are understood by me, but one thing you cannot peg on Steve is a myopic approach to setlists. He has dug deep into the Peter Banks era, given a few nods to the Trevor Rabin era, and does not ignore the 90s and early 2000s era of YES when putting shows together. With his YES you know there will be fun surprises in their concerts. I hope Jon maybe digs a little deeper if he continues to tour with the Band Geeks for a while.

Third, some praise for Jon. Dude sounds amazing. I couldn't believe the power he is getting at his age. His timbre has changed over the years, but this was amongst the best he has ever sound in parts.

Ok, now the songs. 1) Yours Is No Disgrace: A+ 2) Perpetual Change: B-; one of my favorite songs, and this was enjoyable; but, the middle instrumental syncopated section didn't really flow well. It sounded more like a woodshed where the band was still trying to get their timing right. They finish it off in great form, though. 3) Close To The Edge: A+; this fired on all cylinders. Really great live version. 4) Heart Of The Sunrise: a surprising A+ from me. I'll explain ? initially I decided I would not give this greater than an A- simply because of so many special Chris Squire performances being etched into my memory, and this would not be Chris. But, it sounded like bass player Richie Castellano was possessed by Chris on this song with Chris then telling him to take that spirit and make it his own. And that he did. Wow. 5) Starship Trooper: B+; a fine performance, but nothing special. Not the same energy as the others. Would rather they played something obscure, like "The Prophet" or "Magnification". The keyboard solo on "Wurm" is awesome, though. 6) Awaken: A; Admittedly, I am not real big on live versions of "Awaken". I enjoy watching the band play it live more than listening to live versions. The studio version just has some magic to it and is so perfectly performed and produced. Nonetheless, these guys really nailed it, and most importantly they did not ritard the climax after the "Masters" section. YES always made the mistake of slowing that part down before coming in big, but that only lessen its impact. It works so well in the studio version because it's played in time. The Band Geeks played it in time. Bravo, and thank you. 7) And You And I: A-; seems maybe the mix was off a tad. Not sure. 8 ) I've Seen All Good People: A- 9) The Gates Of Delirium: A-; Why were the keyboards so low in the mix in parts? Anyway, my only beef with this is what Jon has been doing since the year 2000 ? he sings the "Choose and renounce.." and "Words cause our banner.." lines too high instead of following his original melody. As a singer myself I get it ? it feels good to blast something out a bit differently; but, one must always remember the most important melodic juxtapositions and follow them, and he doesn't here, which dampens the mood. So, this was riding on a B+ until "Soon", which is probably the best version of that section I have heard since the Detroit 1976 Cobo Hall performance on 'YesShows'. It is truly immaculate. Got chills at the end. 10) Roundabout: yeah, whatever+

Aside from some mixing issues here and there this is a solidly produced album. Highly recommend!

P.S. Fourth, I haven't watched the DVD yet.