90125 - Atco 1983
8 (11)
Best song: Hearts
So Yes broke up after the Drama tour. Big deal! This band had already survived quadruple-turnover in the keyboard slot, a change of guitarist, a change of drummer and the loss of its lead singer and long-time primary creative force. It had managed to survive the change of critical opinion wrt prog rock and art rock as a whole, and had made a valiant attempt at staking its claim as a force to dominate the 80's as well (a move they arguably could have pulled off had they just been willing to LOWER THE PITCH OF THEIR SONGS so that Horn wouldn't be booed every night and practically have a nervous breakdown, essentially ending his singing career). For this band, breaking up was just another minor detail.
Of course, for many people, Yes ends at this point because of the loss of Steve Howe. After a decade of prog, I guess he had gotten a little sick of it and decided he wanted to try something new. So he grabbed Downes (a SHAME that is - I wish so very very much that he'd been able to stay in Yes), hooked up with ex-ELP drummer Carl Palmer and ex-King Crimson vocalist/bassist John Wetton to form the AOR/pseudo-prog group Asia. Honestly, I haven't heard much from the band, but I can tell you that I'm not too fond of Heat of the Moment, their mega-hit. But I digress.
Trevor Horn put out another album with Geoff under The Buggles name, but it was obvious that he no longer had much urge to pursue his singing career. Hence, he began focusing more on his producing career, and sure enough he quickly became infamous as one of the best New-Wave producers in the business. So he was set. As for White and Squire, they had a few potential projects to pursue. The most exciting of these was a venture that would have seen them hook up with Robert Plant and Jimmy Page to form an ex-70's stars supergroup of their own (which would've been called XYZ, for "Ex-Yes and Zeppelin."). A few songs began to come together, but the band dissolved before any official release (though some elements of these tracks would come up in later Yes work - in particular, Can You Imagine? from Magnification survived in almost its entirety, and the main riff to Mind Drive was also born here).
Squire and White were too famous stay to completely unwanted for long, though. They called up an established South African guitarist by the name of Trevor Rabin to come up and jam with them. Sure enough, something clicked, and they decided to form a band. Obviously, though, this wasn't gonna be a Yes-style band, mainly because Trevor's guitar style was nowhere near the same as Steve's. Although Trevor had received classical training (ironic, considering that fans always regard his playing as "less sophisticated" than Steve's, who actually had no classical training), his playing was much more in the line of "generic heavy metal" than anything else (with the exception of occasional stretches of surprising beauty). It also seemed that Chris was willing to subvert his ego to an unprecedented degree, letting his bass merely provide support while Trevor would dominate the front of the mix. It also goes without saying (so of course I'm, er, saying it - stupid expressions) that White's drumming was simplified greatly as well - complex rhythms were now a thing of the past, replaced with Bonham-style awake-the-dead pounding.
So anyway, the power trio decided they needed a keyboardist, and looked for somebody that wouldn't "get in the way." Hence, in came Tony Kaye. THAT Tony Kaye. Yup, he was still alive, and apparently had gotten over his "I don't like synthesizers" hissy fit that had contributed to his departure from Yes ten years earlier. Unfortunately, while his pallette had grown, his playing ability hadn't - he would show the ability to come up with alright moments once in a while, but for the most part it would just be faceless routine genericism. Again, if only they'd been able to keep Downes ... Actually, it should be noted that for a brief period of time, Tony quit and Eddie Jobson came on board, but nothing came of this, and Tony returned. Sigh.
So the power-trio+keyboardist, with Chris and Trevor as vocalists, was in place, and the band came together under the name Cinema. Trevor Horn was brought in to produce, and the layering of tracks continued in earnest. And then it happened. Chris had apparently more or less made up with Jon, and during a visit Chris played Jon tapes of some of the material Cinema had created. Not only did Jon enjoy the tapes, Chris invited Jon to become the full-time lead vocalist, and Jon gladly jumped at the chance. The songs mostly remained the same, but Jon remade many of the lyrics in his own image, not to mention of course that Chris and Trevor were mostly relegated to a supporting role in singing.
The nature of the dilemma was suddenly clear. All of a sudden, the band contained FOUR ex-Yesmen, FIVE if you counted the producer. The band could have attempted to pretend that they weren't Yes, but the public at large wasn't about to buy it. And speaking of the public buying it, it did make more sense from a commercial perspective to use a name that people were familiar with (especially if it could be justified) than to go by the name Cinema. Hence, Yes was reborn.
Of course, Rabin wasn't too thrilled about this - he knew quite well that the material he had helped to mastermind was alarmingly different from the mid-70's classic tracks, and he suspected that many would hold it against the band (and him) when they would realize these differences. Not to mention that he probably felt frustrated that, had he known in advance that the band would turn out as Yes, he could easily have drawn upon more of his classical training in the approach he took to composition. But what was done was done, and Yes' 90125 hit the market.
Now, here's the thing that you MUST be willing to accept up front - this is nothing like the mid-70's Yes. But that doesn't mean it's BAD - lengthy prog explorations aren't everything, after all. If anything, actually, this incarnation of the band bears a strong resemblance to the original Peter Banks incarnation of the band. I mean, lessee - an emphasis on compact/catchy melodies, solid vocal harmonies (thanks in no small part to Trevor Horn, whose layering of the vocals on the album is often quite genial. And as an aside, even if you hated Jon's voice during the classic albums, it's quite possible that you'll enjoy him in this context. There's a very polished, ringing and clear tone to his voice on this album, seemingly making his voice stronger with age.), good interplay between guitar and bass (albeit with slightly more emphasis on guitar) and boring keyboard work! Yup, seems right. Point is, if you hate this incarnation for violating the spirit of 70's Yes, just think of it as an 80's update of the original 60's Yes. Trust me, you'll feel better.
Of course, this album is slightly less consistent than Yes, which is why it gets a lower grade. A couple of the tracks just aren't quite up to snuff. City of Love, for instance, is really only good for kitcsh value, most of which comes from Anderson's singing over such a heavy track. Problem is, this heavy track is based around a "riff" that consists of TWO chords played again and again, plus some occasional ultra-generic soloing from Trevor and uninteresting keyboard work. Goodbye one rating point (maybe more). There's also Hold On, which despite the nice a capella break mid-song, has just a whee bit too much of an air of arena-rock genericism for my taste.
Everything else is good or great, though. Everybody in the whole world has heard the mega-hit Owner of a Lonely Heart, and while for many people this makes the song the focal point for all of the hatred that is directed towards the Rabin era, these people are nuts. It's catchy as hell, it has Police-style drumming, smooth-as-butter backing vocals from Trevor, you can dance to it, and it has a generic guitar solo in the middle that still manages to be fairly entertaining. Alright! As popular as that one is, though, it's far from the best song of the lot. Heck, it's not even in the top two of side one. It Can Happen is a WONDERFUL pop song - it's not every day you're gonna find a song with clear production and an electric sitar and a catchy melody and a chorus that you will want stuck in your head for hours and incredible vocal harmonies. Yeah yeah, I know, it was all over the radio, so I know people want to hate it, blah blah, IT RULES YOU MORONS.
As does Changes - except for the lyrics, which admittedly are a bit cringeworthy ("I look into the mirror, I see no happiness, all the warmth I gave you has turned to emptiness," ehn), I would be hard pressed to find any fault in the track. The harmonies are once again nice, the melody is untrival while still memorable, and the chorus once again rules (oy, I love "One word will bring you round, CHANGES"). And most impressively, the song manages to simultaneously be well-developed AND compact - it grows and expands on the main theme, but not a SINGLE note is out of place, and I stand by that.
Side two (even accounting for the dumb City of Love) isn't much worse. The side-opener Cinema is a phenomenal instrumental that accomplishes a surprising amount in just a little over two minutes - it's so good that Yes actually won a Grammy for it, no small feat given that Yes had gone a few years without massive critical respect at this point. And then there's Leave It, which I once hated for whatever reason. The lyrics are kinda dippy, but the vocal layering is simply beyond PHENOMENAL. Everyone's voice makes it into the mix (even Horn's! Tell me you don't hear him in "HellO hellO heaven"!), and there's staggered "dooh dooh"'s and Squire towering over all in "I can feel no sense of measure ..." ... The instrumentation is a little cheezy, but we'll just accept that. There's a REASON this album only gets an 8/10 ... Anyhoo, there's also the unfortunately overlooked Our Song - a gorgeous piece of power-pop that has a slightly obvious main synth riff but still manages to get stuck in my head relentlessly.
Unfortunately, the album kinda crashes into a generic stand-still with City of Love, but we do NOT end on this glum note. No, the band truly saved the best for last on this album - I know that many, many will disagree with me, but Hearts is not only the high point of YesWest, I also consider it one of the ten best songs the band ever did. Nowhere else on the album does the whole "60's-Yes enters the 80's" feel come across this strongly, and the result is pure gold. I know I've been raving about the harmonies all throughout the album, but it is here that they absolutely take the cake - Jon's voice practically *glows* in its beauty, Trevor gives good counterpoint, Chris supports in a way not heard since CTTE, and I haven't even mentioned the incredible interplay during the uplifting chorus. The lightweight hippie of 1970 has seemingly grown only more idealistic, and the lyrics and vocals combine to provide a feel so beautiful in its naivety that it can't help but bring a tear to my eyes.
And I haven't even discussed the playing yet. The general consensus on the playing here is that the first portion is nice, with just a light touch of synths laying the foundation of the piece, and that the ending (with a guitar solo that glistens in every note) is pretty, but that the middle "80's" portion basically wrecks the song. This is one of those cases where I firmly break away from the crowd. Trevor's initial "heaven-and-hell"ish solo is somewhat generic in construction, but it still pulls off the requisite purpose (building the tension, giving a slight foreshadowing of the future) just fine. And then, after some more of the glorious harmonizing, we hit *it*. The "Who would believe you - wise men do" section, with Trevor's guitar playing call-and-response with Jon's angelic voice, with Tony's simplistic keys suddenly exploding with energy and verve and life not even HINTED at on the rest of the album ... this is not only the greatest moment of the album, this is THE DEFINITIVE MOMENT of the Trevor Rabin era of Yes. Twenty seconds or so that sum up everything good about this version of the band, and which make me listen to the song again and again after the album shuts down.
All in all, then, a great great start for this era of the band. There's unquestionably an alarming dose of genericism throughout, and not all of the songs are that hot (else I'd raise the grade), and the band no longer has its blazing musicmanship at its disposal ... but when this album is good, it cooks at an unbelievably high level. Cut out the songs I don't like, and I'd happily give it a 13. Take that!!
Laurent MASSE (masse@geocean.u-bordeaux.fr)
Trevor even had strong reservations about using the name. And he was right: this is not a YES album, this was not conceived as a YES album, but is incredibly good in its own right. The controversial name resurrection did not prevent it from being a very big and highly deserved commercial success. Part of this has to do with the very 80's yet very fresh and inventive production. I think it ages very well and was an important landmark for this period. Strange it had to come from a once dead/resurrected band. A lot of things here belong to the Yes canon, namely vocal harmonies and a lot of instrumental intricacies, however you can tell they came at an early stage for what they bring to the music and not as late minute inclusions to justify the name. The songwriting is really on a high, thanks to Trevor who is a talented songwriter in his own right, more down-to-earth than Jon (who probably did not contribute much to that one anyway), and much more productive than the lazy Chris. "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" is barely a song, just a bunch of toilet riffs moulded into a repetitive brainless danceable tune. I always saw this as a thinly disguised attempt to clone the very popular Police sound at the time (Alan's snare even sounds like a sample of Copeland's). I find "City Of Love" a bit too cheesy, "Hearts" a bit too syrupy and sticky in places like a generic 80's ballad, but "Hold On", "Changes", "Cinema", "Leave It" and "Our Song" are very good, Yesmusic or not Yesmusic. My favourite cut is by far "It Can Happen", with incredibly improved verses compared to the Cinema version on Yesyears. And I'm glad you did not even mention the anecdotic "9012Live", because with one third of Fish growlings on it, I would've been rude once again.
Joel Larsson (joel.larsson@privat.utfors.se)
This is pure 80's pop. Why should anyone listen to this dumb???
Sittinger, Brian D (brian.d.sittinger@lmco.com) (7/21/01)
This is going to be a brief commentary, because I :(1) don't own this, and (2)only heard it once in its entirety late at night. In truth, this objectively is not too bad of an album.
I can't recall any true stinkers on this record. "Changes", despite its 'new-like jingle' with the keyboards at the beginning is quite decent. "It Can Happen", although simple, is okay too. "Owner of a Lonely Heart" is way too overplayed on the radio, complete with all the generic 80's trappings: guitar tone, synths. Finally, "Hearts" (I think this is the one?) annoys me due to its vocal arrangement.
Just keep in mind this is an 80's production with all of its trappings. This just is not the same Yes the we all know and love. Otherwise, its just okay. If this is the high point of Yes-West, it will be a long time before checking out Big Generator. 6 out of 10.
Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch@optusnet.com.au) (5/15/02)
Overrated! "Owner" is great, no question, but the album is dragged down by dreary nothing songs like "Hold On". Surprise surprise, the longest song is the best(Hearts)!!!
Robert Knight (Robert.Knight@mori.com) (5/14/03)
After being a fan of 70s Yes since 1978 I've just recently discovered they continued to make albums after they fell off the cliff that was TORMATO. I have started to collect later albums and I now have a much better picture of their whole career. The 90125 thru UNION period was nothing short of a tragedy. Who the hell was Trevor Rabin and how did he achieve such influence?
Of those albums, 90125 has received many good reviews so I gave it a go. The songs and production are just competent, but that's all. The principal emotion it evokes is the disappointment of a chance wasted. This sounds like a Trevor Rabin solo album with guest vocals from Jon A. It also sounds like a product aimed at the US stadium circuit, another Foreigner/Kansas/JohnBonJovi clone, devoid of (most) originality. There are moments - Hearts is passable, Changes works ok, but only really gets there when Jon takes over the lead vocals halfway. And there's the nub of the problem - it doesn't sound like Yes. A band can evolve, but it must keep its essence. Yes' sound has two main essences: Jon's voice and Steve's guitar; without either it is not Yes, it is simply a Producer's wet dream. If Jon had sung every lead vocal on 90125 even the generic Mr Rabin's US-heavy metal guitars could have been overlooked.
Thank God they have recently returned to their roots, and their most successful line-up. I'm seeing them in the Summer and I have high hopes. Now all we have to do is get Jon writing decent lyrics again - "Soft as a Dove" indeed -Yuk!
Vandermeer (bkvander@telus.net) (7/06/03)
In my opinion 90125 caps off a sequence 5 great but very different albums (starting with Relayer). In 90125, Yes gets their first pop masterpiece thanks to Trevor Rabin.
I mostly agree with your rating here. City of Love is certainly the weakest song, with its two chord riff getting tiresome after a while, but the rest is good to great. My favourite is probably the 2 minute Cinema managing to sound so alive in its short time span. I often find myself playing it again when its over-always a sign of a great song. It Can Happen is also great with its catchy chorus, sitar and robotic vocal delivery. Leave It is also great, with Anderson, Squire, Rabin, (and Horn?) showing how well they can sing together. Owner of a Lonely Heart is (obviously) very catchy and perhaps even deserving of its excessive radio play. Hold On, Changes, and Our Song are all pleasing enough. I don't like Hearts as much as you, but it's ok nonetheless.
I give this album an 8 (11) and I'm really glad Trevor Rabin brought his song writing skills to Yes. He had a bit of a let down on the next album, but would flourish after that.
Craig Thomas (Craig.W.Thomas@btinternet.com) (9/09/03)
It's such a hard piece of work to mentally process. In terms of fundamentals, this is not a Yes record, but 4 members of previous Yes incarnations made it, and it went out under the Yes moniker, so it is. It's a permanent paradox.
For me there is little more to say. With the exception of Owner Of... and Hearts, this is a woefully, hilariously inadequate piece of work, it doesn't matter who's making it. It's Yes meets Kagagoogoo with someone waving a chain saw in back. It's not just that it sounds so much of its time - i.e., that it's made out of a mixture of cheap metal and low grade plastic (and you can almost catch the smell of hair gel from this different century) - it's that the music is unadulterated crap and anyone would have to be insane to listen to it, Yes fans or no. It terms of composition, it's shoddily, amateurishly made. No amount of techno-glitz and trickery can disguise that. And in music, composition is everything.
Yet it seems that a lot of Yes fans like it. This can only be explained by the fact that our world is indeed flat and held aloft by a gigantic turtle with the assistance of four huge elephants. And that two out of three people next to you at a Yes concert are complete idiots. Though not you, dear reader, not you.
Craig Thomas
Sammy James
Hey man: I don't even know who you are, but you can help that pretty easily. Anyway, I read the great review that you wrote about Yes's 90125 Surprise! album, and I'm inclined to agree with you on every point that you made therein. I have just a couple of comments.
1. I'm a producer too, like Trevor Horn (though not LIKE Horn, because he is incredible and has been doing it for over 20 years, and I'm lucky if I've been doing this for 20 weeks, so anyway...). I bring it up because from a production standpoint, my world rocks every damned time I listen to this incredible album. I agree with you 100% on your song choices, and yeah -- I know, I know -- a lot of "generic" stuff in there. But that brings me to my second point...
2. Which is that, I believe that the reason why this album has some "generic" moments is that someone had to create all of the motifs and cliches that got used for the better part of the remaining seven years after this album came out. I credit Horn, Rabin, and Anderson for teaming up and giving people enough stuff to copy for a long, long time. I was just explaining to my parents last night how it seems to me as though, sonically and production-wise, you can't get any better than what you've got on this album. Period.
What I'm saying is as follows: You hear lots of stuff that might occasionally cause you to think, "hey -- that's kinda cool." But let's face it -- there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING new out there anymore.
For a few years now, you've heard bands like Dirty Vegas and the ubiquitous Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera wannabees all trying to create that "golden" sound. But hey -- the Back Street Boys were just emulating the kinds of harmonies that Yes clearly already did about 15 years prior. And Britney and Christina, along with Janet and even En Vogue (god rest their souls) all have tried that heavier-than-air kind of sound, with limited results. Rabin did, as you pointed out, create that incredible heavy metal sound, in a way that has been emulated by almost every hair-metal band out there.
I even really LIKE City of Love, if only because it proved that Yes, a seemingly anemic prog rock band from the 70s, could rock harder than anyone!
But enough about the songs, because as I said, you were correct in most of your assertions about their songwriting. I also happen to find that Trevor Horn is just an amazing producer. Think about the direction that he gave to these guys in the studio, and this explains a lot about what happened before and since.
I'm not sure whether HE invented that snare sound, but someone had to do it. And I do recall that Owner of a Lonely Heart was one of the first songs on which I remember hearing that "Shotgun Snare" sound. The only other songs that I can remember from that time were, well..actually, I can't remember any! It wasn't until about 1984, and Def Leppard (I think) and Quiet Riot really began employing that kind of sound. MAYBE Rupert Hine, who might have used it on The Fixx's "Reach the Beach," which might have also come out in about 1982. But anyway...
So, well...that is my brain fart for the weekend. I just like to yap indefinitely, especially about production in music. Let me know if any of this helps to order things in your brain. Meanwhile, I'm going to check out the rest of your articles on this page. Take care.
Sincerely,
Sammy James
Paul Janisch (paul@ohwell.co.za) (5/15/05)
I'm a South African who has been a huge fan of Rabin for years. I still regard Rabbitt (his South African band) as a huge influence on my own music. It's therefore quite easy to dwell on the sentimental and lose sight of the reality.
Whilst Rabin is a brilliant musician I think he sometimes suffers from inconsistency. His solo albums before "Can't look away" are peppered with fantastic songs but these can be dragged down by absolute mediocrity.
To get an idea of what 90125 would have sounded like without Jon Anderson you should listen to Rabin's demo album 90124. The basics are there but it took Anderson to fix a lot of the songs up lyrically to take it up a notch. And on 90125 Rabin seems to be in another space altogether. His guitar playing is incredible, there's elements of jazz, blues, fusion and rock - almost as diverse as Howe.
90125 was the beginning for Rabin - he grew immensely after that. Big Generator was a personal improvement for Rabin and his contributions to Union make that album palatable. And for the first time ever he produced a solo album "Can't look away" that was consistent.
Trfesok@aol.com (12/31/05)
It's ironic, with so many Yes alumni involved, that this sounds almost nothing like the Yes of yore. Everyone follows the lead of the one guy that isn't an alumnus, Rabin. Kaye might be on keys, but you can be sure that Rabin came up with the arrangements. And the rhythm section is totally anonymous. There are still some traces of the old Yes around -- White came up with the oddly syncopated intro to "Changes", and the verses of "Our Song" are trickier than they sound, too. The vocal harmonies are really the most Yessish part of the songs - I throughly enjoy them, especially on the bridge of "Hold On", and "Leave It", I must agree. The B-side of the single (now on the remaster, I think) is a mix without the backing track, and the voices are amazing. For me, the album really runs out of steam towards the end. "City of Love" is not a two chord song -- it's actually a NO CHORD song! (I've seen the sheet music). It's pretty brain dead, but again, the vocals on the chorus pump it up a bit. "Hearts", based on a very simplistic Kaye riff, strikes me a poor man's "And You and I" wannabe -- pretty boring, rather than majestic. On the whole, though, I enjoy the music, but whether it qualifies as Yes (especially without Howe) is questionable.
Millersville 1984 - Bootleg
9 (12)
Best song: Nah
See, now this is the kind of bootleg that makes bootlegs worth reviewing. This is a recording of the very first show of the Rabin era, and while it's EXTREMELY difficult to locate, it is so very much worth the effort. While the group's shows would eventually stagnate badly (before making a big comeback on the Talk tour), this show shows nothing but rosey promise for the group ahead.
What really stands out in this show is that the band is extremely on edge, extremely anxious in its performance. Unquestionably, resurrecting the group the way they had was a very bold move, and the band had to be uneasy about how their new sound would be received. As a result, everybody is working their asses off to show that this version of Yes could be just as entertaining as the 70's version. For instance, Rabin's playing is more generic than Howe's, sure, but the feel of it is very much more "I'm adding modern stylistics to the older works" than "look at me, I'm a rock star!" Hence, while later versions of Yours Is No Disgrace would be made virtually unlistenable, here Rabin's Van-Halenesque shredding stands out and adds a seriously interesting dimension to the sound. But the same can be said for the band as a whole - they're trying to keep respect for the past while advancing into the unknown all at once, and they do all they can to keep everything sounding novel and interesting and energetic.
The setlist also makes me smile - the band performs 90125 in its entirety, and everything is helped by the live vibe and accompanying energy. Leave It might be slightly sloppier, due to the lack of exacting studio precision in the vocal harmonies, but that's forgivable. Cinema is a GREAT way to start the show, and all of the other tracks from the album come across as well or better than before (except for City of Love, which still hasn't been graced with the hilariously "tough" vocals that would benefit the Talk-tour rendition). Even Hold On suddenly becomes interesting, generically crowd-pleasing it may be.
The other interesting aspect is that the band uses Tony Kaye's return as an excuse to resurrect all four big epics from The Yes Album. The aforementioned YIND goes off well, ISAGP is as great as usual, Starship Trooper is an utter BLAST (especially the wank-a-licious approach to Würm), and even Perpetual Change shows up! The latter is noteworthy especially, as the band soon decided that it wasn't meeting their expectations (sheez, what did they want exactly? This version RULES) and therefore dropped it, so you need to bum an mp3 of this rendition off me or whatever. It's more geared towards RAWK than virtuosity, but in this context it works amazingly well.
The only place the show sags a bit is in one unfortunate holdover from the older days - the solo spots. But within the context of the show, they sound ok - after all, the point of them was to give each band member a brief spotlight and introduction, and they each sound alright. So within context, they're nice breathers from the rest of the material (even if Squire does go a little overboard, entertaining as Whitefish may be).
Overall, then, this is just exquisite. Unfortunately, this bootleg is EXCEPTIONALLY hard to find, so I have in fact just wasted your time. Unless, of course, you ask nicely for mp3's from me ...
David C. Hails (dhails@ecologicalrestorationinc.com) (5/15/05)
I was in front row at YES concert at Millersville, 1984. Great show. I recall they were at least an hour late starting and had some technical difficulty early on, but awesome concert, worth the wait.
9012live - The Solos - Atlantic 1984
3 (6)
Best song: Changes
An incoherent, useless mess. The solos work just fine within the show itself, but what a BORE when taken on their own. Tony Kaye's piece is a worthless 2-minute rendition of Tocatta And Fugue (and some other random wanking), Trevor Rabin's piece is pleasant but rambling, and Soon sounds utterly stupid in this context. Only the Squire/White showcases, the first a two-minute by-the-book rendition of Amazing Grace and the latter a medley of The Fish, Sound Chaser and Tempus Fugit (with Anderson singing "Yes yes" in the right places) are at all interesting, but they're not exactly the most musically substantial thing I've ever heard.
The only saving grace of the album is that it bothers to put on a pair of actual songs from the tour, both performed adequately. Hold On is slightly weaker here than in the Millersville gig, but Changes is a bit more polished, so whatever. The album is still practically useless.
Trfesok@aol.com (12/31/05)
This "mini-album" came about as a result of a really dumb marketing move by Atlantic Records. Released at the same time was the 9012Live video. It contained excerpts from the Edmonton show, but NOT the solos. The album contains the versions of "Hold On" and "Changes" from the video, but no other actual songs!! What was the point of all that? I filled out my tape with a couple of live B-sides, "It Can Happen" and an edited "City of Love" (that one also from the video), but the CD itself only was released in Japan, and is definitely NOT worth the import price. It would be nice if Rhino/Atlantic would release instead an archive release of the complete concert, but fat chance of that!
Big Generator - Atco 1987
6 (9)
Best song: The Rhythm Of Love
If you're looking for a single figure or fact to summarize everything wrong with this album, look no further than above. 90125 was by FAR Yes' best-selling album ever, naturally buoyed by the world-wide smash success of the #1 hit Owner of a Lonely Heart. It showed a successful reinvention of the band, one that could both be mainstream and clever all at once. With another well-timed album to keep them in the public eye, the music world would be theirs (and everybody knew it) .... so why in the HELL would it take FOUR YEARS to follow up on such a huge success? Was the band just stupid or what?
Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Such a long layoff could only mean one thing - SERIOUS confusion among the ranks of the band and those associated with it (which at least partially shows itself in the liner notes, where we see just how many places the band used in recording - one should also note that some of the material on the album was recorded as early as 1984, which should say something). On the one hand - the success of Owner had brought with it the unfortunate expectation of future hit singles, and Trevor really had no choice but to somewhat comply with management's requests. On the other hand - while Jon had been perfectly happy to come sing the poppier stuff when the band was Cinema, this time around found the band going into the studio as Yes. Not Cinema, Yes. Jon had at least somewhat regained his desire for "artistic integrity" over the past decade or so, and while he'd been gracious enough to not demand a complete overhaul of the Rabin numbers of 90125, he was not about to yield all artistic control this time around. Add in the fact that neither were as formidable in their song-creation as before - Rabin's playing and singing had only gotten more generic, to say nothing about his songwriting, while Anderson's "artistry" had started a journey towards new-age shlock - and add in that both Squire and White had basically given up any pretense of uniqueness in their playing and approach (you would NEVER guess that this was the rhythm section of Gates or even Machine Messiah), and you have MAJOR problems.
What's amazing, then, is that the album turns out as well as it does. For all the complaining so far, only one of the eight songs is really truly bad. Then again, the band managed to go for all-out crapulence on that one song. This of course is the title track, which is everything a bad mid-80's corporate-driven Owner-redux should be. The verse melody is more or less ok, though not particularly inventive, and I almost enjoy the brief bridge that comes up here and there, but the rest ... wow. The rhythm guitar work (I refuse to call anything in there a riff - random "tough" sounding chords do NOT constitute a riff) is astoundingly stupid, the synth horns that pop up will drop your jaw with their inappropriatness, the chorus is enough to singlehandedly drop the rating of any album three points minimum, and the obligatory guitar solo doesn't come close to matching the one in Owner.
Now the rest of the material can't help BUT be substantially better than that piece of garbage, but that doesn't mean we're looking at genius here. Almost Like Love is an improvement over BG, sure, as there's an actual melodic groove going on thanks to White's generic pounding drums and Kaye's synths in the beginning, with Jon "preaching" some lyrics before the band goes back into the groove in the chorus. On the other hand, though, the song is as generic as generic can be - the lyrics are stupidly cliche, and basically the whole thing has the same corporate-feel that occupies BG (not to mention the AWFUL guitar solos).
Three of the others find a way to bug me significantly as well, though to lesser degrees. Love Will Find a Way is pretty, and more or less deserved to be a hit single, but eGADS the genericism here just oozes out. That said, I'm pretty impressed with the bridge, predictable as it may be and as dumb the lyrics may be ("I eat at Chez Nous" is the favorite to point out), so I'll save it total condemnation. Even if it's TOTALLY by-the-numbers. As for the other two songs which bug me - Final Eyes probably SHOULD be pretty, but if I can't remember ANYTHING about a song after six or seven listens, I'm gonna start shifting blame for that from myself to the song (ehn, I vaguely remember a pretty "If ever I needed someone" vocal from Anderson somewhere in there, but that might be my imagination). And finally, Anderson gets to close out the album with Holy Lamb (Song for Harmonic Convergence), which is full of Eastern mysticism (fine) but has a melody (or lack thereof) suited for a non-Brian-Eno new-age album. Grr.
Fortunately, the other three songs help things substantially - an EP of just those three tracks (and hey, it'd be 20 minutes or so, not bad) could probably squeeze out an 8 (out of 10) from me. The album gets off to a solid start thanks to The Rhythm of Love - the opening harmonies over a synth layering give a good vibe to the beginning of the album, and the poppy guitar-riff works terrifically in its simplicity. Meanwhile, Anderson sings an effective melody that more-or-less mirrors the main riff, the backing harmonies harken back to Hearts in their effectiveness, Rabin gets in a decent guitar solo, and even KAYE has a couple of energetic moments. Great!
After we follow this beauty with the horror of the title track, we come across the strange 7-minute Shoot High, Aim Low. A few things really jumped out at me after a few listens, and really make the track worth it. First of all - this is one of the most effective uses of *space* that the band would ever pull off. The overall sound and feel of the track is HUGE, yet this is pulled off by a surprisingly minimalistic arrangement - the synths are very low-key, Squire is (as usual) subdued, Rabin only uses a few effective solos here and there, and only a slightly monotonous drum track deep in the background sticks around throughout. This minimalism in the instrumental track, however, only serves to augment the quality of the vocals on the track. The vocals in the chorus are utterly MAJESTIC, and during his part of the verses, Anderson belts out his vocals with a passion not found in a long long time.
The third interesting aspect comes from the lyrics. On first glance, they seem incredibly stupid, but further examination shows that that is only a half-truth. Pay attention seperately to the parts that Jon sings and the parts that Trevor sings, and you will realize that they are singing two DIFFERENT songs. Jon is singing an anti-war diatribe while Trevor uses his by-now ULTRA-generic vocals to sing something about a simple pleasure of life, sitting in a car on a beach with a girl. These two topics are united only by a common chorus for the first portion of the song, suggesting in some way (I guess) that both the actively passionate and the passively unaware share a common point in the outcome of universal affairs. This is also partially reinforced when Anderson unexpectedly belts out Rabin's line of "Someone shouted "OPEN THE DOOR!" LOOKOUT!", suggesting that the horrors of war have managed after all to reach the blissfully ignorant Rabin. Of course, maybe this is one of those cases of hallucinating that which isn't there, but whatever.
Finally, coming right before Holy Lamb, we have the 8-minute I'm Running. The opening bass riff probably isn't as intelligently crafted as some would like to think (one person on alt.music.yes said something to the effect that he's randomly plucked keys in a similar rhythm and come up with something cooler), but it still provides a neat latin feel not commonly found on Yes albums to this point. The song gradually becomes darker, with marimbas and then subtle electric guitar replacing the opening latin jam, and Anderson gets a neat little vocal memory before the band soars into the "I'm Running" chorus. Anderson continues to get his chance to rant over some surprisingly nice piano and overall fresh-sounding instrumentation (humorous too - Rabin's guitar QUACKS at about the 2:50 mark), varying the melody here and there in such a way as to make the general feel more anthemic and epic. Eventually, the song builds from this into a vocal-harmony extravaganza, with Rabin given a chance to briefly go nuts on guitar, and after a while there can be no doubt that Anderson NAILED this when coming up with the main ideas.
Unfortunately, that's basically the exception rather than the rule. Needless to say, this album (and the whole situation, for that matter) got Anderson frustrated, and things got shaken up in the Yes world once more.
Laurent MASSE (masse@geocean.u-bordeaux.fr)
Seen from France in the middle of the 80's and after the success of 90125, Yes were part of what we called "American Rock FM" at the time, along with BonJovi, Van Halen, etc... Needless to say this did not convey a very good image, and is the likely reason why BG had good reviews in the french musical press at the time, because obviously they were much more ambitious musically. Hearing the incredibly catchy "Rhythm Of Love" on the radio and reading some of these reviews prompted me to buy the album at the time. It didn't convert me, but I found it quite enjoyable, apart from the horrible "Big Generator" and "Love Will Find A Way" which were (and still are) absolute american cliches to european ears. But honestly, I think the songwriting on this album is very good, even if not as convincing as on the previous one. "Almost Like Love", "Final Eyes" and "Holy Lamb" are anecdotic but no less than pleasant, while "Shoot High Aim Low" and "I'm Running" are really high points. This material is generally badly served by an awful production, not aging well at all, something like the worst of the 80's. The main problem with this album is that, on one hand Jon was there in the conception stage, wanted to come back to the 70s Yes canon and Trevor felt the pressure of the name as well, and on the other hand they had to capitalise on the success of 90125. The result is a difficult compromise approach and a totally schizophrenic album, as none option is fully acted upon. I really believe "Love Will Find A Way" and "I'm Running" do not belong on the same album.
Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch@optusnet.com.au) (5/29/02)
Not as directionless (or as woeful) as Union, but not far off. This record bears no resemblance to Yes as I know or love them. That is not to say that there is not some good - indeed very good - music on this album, just don't go calling it Yes! And no, I am not a Rabin-hater, see my review of Talk which I feel is one of their finest. "Love Will Find A Way" and "Rhythm Of Love" are really good songs but compare them with anything from the 70s Yes or, indeed, anything off "The Ladder" or "Magnification" and you'll see what I mean.
Vandermeer (bkvander@telus.net) (8/10/03)
Definitely below average by Yes standards, but still an ok album. My biggest problem is that no song really stands out as being a Yes classic.
Having said that, no song is really that bad either. Even the title song, which seems to be commonly loathed, isn't too bad-just a pale imitation of Owner. My favourite is probably Love Will Find a Way. Rabin's guitar sound is really crisp on this track. The only other two songs that I really enjoy are Almost Like Love and I'm Running. I really get a kick out of Anderson's vocals on the former--I find it reminiscent of Circus of Heaven which I also liked. The latter also has a nice groove to it that I really enjoy. The rest is kind of mediocre. Rhythm of Love and Shoot High Aim Low seem to be most people's favourites, but I just find them ok. Same with Final Eyes and Holy Lamb.
I give Big Generator a 6 (9). It's probably the most mediocre album in their catalogue. I sort of feel about it like you felt about Rush's Hold Your Fire (although I obviously like BGmore than you liked HYF). None of the songs are bad, but presented all back to back on one album-I just don't get as much out of listening to it as most other albums. I suppose it's even more disappointing when you realize it took them four years to get it out.
Eric Benac (ebenac@nmu.edu) (1/17/05)
actually, i'd disagree and say that this album is as good as 90125. there is some creative orchestral arrangements, and vocal intros. and these songs, while mostly being pop songs, still have quite good melodies and interesting riffs. and shoot high aim low is one of the best songs trevor contributed to the group. not a high point, not a low point. simply a continuation of ideas and styles from 90125. so basically, an 8.
and i'd give talk an 8 too, even if it's better. it somehow seems wrong to give any of these albums a 9.
Trfesok@aol.com (12/31/05)
You hit the nail on the head about the length of time it took between studio albums this time around. The initial sessions in Italy were spent with Trevor Horn trying to reconcile the warring factions of Anderson, Rabin and Squire. Somehow, Horn got the blame for all of this and got fired (according to Kaye, he "wasn't the right producer" for them -- but no one would have been at that point). This resulted in the band, basically, scrapping what they had done and starting from scratch in L.A. with Rabin in charge (although they had to keep Horn listed in the credits in order to avoid lawsuits from him).
For all this turmoil, the album isn't all that bad. I don't dislike it quite as much as you do. Not a major departure from 90125, of course, except, that they seem to be more willing to work on more extended pieces. I also like "Shoot High, Aim Low" a lot, too. "Love Will Find a Way" shows the Beatles/Byrds influence in Yes resurfacing after a long absence. (It actually wasn't originally intended for Yes, but for Stevie Nicks (!), which might explain that) "Holy Lamb" has Jon trying to do a "Soon" for the 80's, but sounds rather out of place here. The title track is indeed the weakest song, showing Rabin's propensity for generic hard rock at its worst. Overall, though, it's not an uninteresting album, but, again, it still looked like a Rabin-centered sound was not totally compatible with Yes.
Louisville '87 - Bootleg
5 (8)
Best song: Mediocrity abounds
Ugh. UGH!! Regardless of all the nice things I have to say about this Yes lineup in my Endless Dream review, this bootleg is mediocre to the point of driving me nuts. This is a recording from the Big Generator tour, with seven of the eight songs of that album showing up here (Final Eyes apparently didn't make the cut). Needless to say, this does not make me jump up and down with glee. I'm Running is done pretty well, and Jon at least has passion in his voice when singing Holy Lamb, but that still doesn't make it a very good song. Throw in that the only 90125 cuts found here are Hold On (which sounds like a ridiculous crowd pleaser in this context), and Owner of a Lonely Heart, and you pretty much have a display of the bad sides of YesWest with few of the good.
Even the classics sound mediocre here. Yours is no Disgrace is made unbearable with Trevor's generic guitar parts, Heart of the Sunrise is extremely sloppy, and Würm (coming out of And You and I) is, for the first time in the history of mankind, completely BORING. You do realize what an accomplishment that is, right? They took possibly the greatest "let's jam over this" chord sequence of all time and made the jam BORING. It doesn't help that it goes for nine minutes, either.
The saddest thing on the album, though, is Jon. Not that he sounds bad; his voice may have actually been at its peak here - higher, more angelic and more emotional than ever. But the only times that Jon sounds happy to be on stage are when he's singing the older stuff (as well as I'm Running and Holy Lamb). You can just tell that he's not putting his all into these modern songs, unlike on the Endless Dream album seven years later.
Overall, this is an interesting recording only from a historical perspective. It's interesting to hear what Yes concerts had denigrated into by that point, and helps the listener understand what precipitated the next move in Yes history ...
Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe - Arista 1989
7 (10)
Best song: Birthright
This entry in my page requires a bit of explaining, as technically it is not a Yes album. You see (NOTE: I once again must point out that I'm only presenting information as I've been able to gather and piece together - if the history as presented here is incorrect, my sincerest apologies are in order), when the Cinema gang decided to fish the Yes moniker out of the dumpster back in '83, they figured that nobody would care. The logic behind this was that since Anderson and Squire had officially founded the group, the name was theirs to use as they pleased. Alas, this was not so. You see, the former members of Yes, who were quite numerous by now, felt that they had as much say in whether the Yes name could be revived or not as did the current members. And, for some reason or another, they felt the name should stay dead; why, I do not know for sure. Maybe there was some provision that kept them from getting their fair share of royalties in the current setup, or maybe they were just jerks. Either way, the issue of the name "Yes" began to bubble up in the early 80's, culminating in a late 80's lawsuit related to this album.
Fast forward to 1988. Anderson decided he'd pretty much had it with this incarnation of Yes, and he decided to leave the group and let it sully its reputation without him. Rumors circulated about the fate of the band, with some accounts saying the band dissolved while others said the band considered Billy Sherwood and even ex-Supertramp singer Roger Hodgson as a potential replacement. But no matter - our story now focuses on the fate of Jon Anderson.
I can only speculate, of course, but I'd imagine that Anderson badly wanted to stick it to his former Cinemates. Meanwhile, there was a bunch of disgruntled ex-Yessers, some of whom were regarded by fans as the "true" Yes. The course of action was now clear - Anderson would surround himself with as many elements of "classic" Yes as he could to drive home the point that Cinema had no business calling itself Yes. Hence, he wrote some songs himself and brought in good ole Steve Howe, Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman to arrange his vision.
Now, the thing is that while this may (as the album makes sure to point out) be the group that brought us Close to the Edge, this album does not truly fulfil the desires many fans had for a "rebirth" of 70's Yes. Honestly, though, that is a fallacious desire in the first place - this quartet may have been 80% of the greatest Yes lineup, but the fact remained that each one of them had changed substantially since the early 70's. Put another way, assuming this group would produce CTTE II would be a lot like meeting your old friends at your 20th high school reunion and expecting your group to go partying until 5am like in the old days. People change over time, and that's a fact.
Indeed, Steve's playing didn't change THAT much (though it had certainly received an infusion of AOR during his time in Asia), but the other three had changed substantially. Anderson had begun to establish an alternate persona as a New-age solo artist, albeit with some of his former ambition. His songwriting and lyrical style had changed quite a bit from the 70's - his lyrics were less mystic and cryptic (though still not exactly straightforward) and more blatant in their attitude of hippie idealism, while musically his focus was now soft and flowing acoustic balladry (interspersed with elements of, let's face it, AOR-laced prog). Wakeman of course had established his own prolific solo career, replete with synthesizer patches that often dwarved his Yes tones in cheeziness. Finally, Bruford had undergone an almost complete revolution, mostly courtesy of his involvement with the last two incarnations of King Crimson. In particular, he had become utterly enamored with electronic percussion and creating tricky, "ethnic" polyrhythms with them. In other words, this isn't the Bruford of Siberian Khatru - this is the Bruford of, er, Sleepless. One should also note that the band brought in Bruford's old KC-mate (and world-renowned session bassist) Tony Levin, but unfortunately he doesn't get to make much of a substantial mark on the material.
What's fascinating, then, is that despite this TOTAL lack of artistic "unity" (Anderson basically wrote the songs himself and left the others to try and make their now-disparate styles work in cohesive arrangements), this album turns out remarkably well. So well, in fact, that if weren't for a pair of utter suckjobs, I'd spend this review gushing over what a wonderful mix of (some) traditional Yes values with the updated approaches of the band this album represents. Instead, I end up assessing this album as good, not great, but very very good.
Unfortunately, the two suckjobs are pretty much abominable. Quartet starts out reasonably pretty, but along with some useless female background vocals (useless because Anderson still sounds so good), it's basically annhilated by the corniness of section two, She Gives Me Love. As if Anderson felt they somehow had to prove they were the real Yes, he decides to incorporate the names of various 70's Yes songs into the lyrics whether they actually belong or not. It's corny beyond words, and destroys the song for me. As for Teakbois, well, it might be reasonably catchy, but Wakeman's synths basically annhilate what is Yes making a vague attempt at a piece with Jamaican rhythms. Gehn.
But elsewhere, everything works surprisingly well. The songwriting (besides the two previously mentioned tracks) is surprisingly effective (Anderson had some good songs up his sleeve after all), and the arrangements work out much better than they should in theory. They're mostly dominated by Wakeman's synths, but that's ok - while his tone choices are very arguably cheezier than anything on Tormato, he puts so much energy and verve into his playing that I can EASILY forgive any lapses in taste in sound-quality. Seriously, one could legitimately make the argument that Wakeman's playing peak with Yes came HERE, and while I wouldn't really agree, I'd definitely see the merit of such a claim. As for Steve and Bill, well, they "pick their spots" - in the moments when they're given a chance to strut their stuff without being covered by Rick, they pull out some INCREDIBLY entertaining parts, while the rest of the time they just kinda exist in the background. But again, that's ok, since Rick is just king here.
As for the songs themselves (except for, again, the two wastes mentioned earlier), they can basically be divided into three parts; pretty acoustic/piano-driven ballads a la Time and a Word, epic pop-songs-made-into-prog pieces, and bombastic anthems. The first and third categories are represented impeccably - from the first, The Meeting and Let's Pretend each have cleverly constructed hooks that help pound Anderson's endless optimism into your head that much further.
The third also more than pulls its weight, even making sure to contribute the best track of the album, the incredibly powerful Birthright. In this, Anderson travels back to the mid-50's, protesting nuclear testing by the British government in a remote area called Woomera. Without contacting the aboriginal people first. Doh. The lyrics work fabulously, not just for this specific context, but rather as a reminder to the listener that the suffering of one group of people is the suffering of humanity as a whole ("we are them and they are we"), and that having political power gives one no universal right to the ill-treatment or negligence towards "lesser" people. But lyrics aside, the music is benefited by a "primitive" rhythm from Bruford, some subtle acoustic from Howe (with an occasional interjection of a growling riff in the chorus), and most of all by an utterly majestic Wakeman-led onslaught during the last two minutes. Ye gawrsh, it's good. As for the other, Fist of Fire, it's not quite as good, but it's still at least a minor highlight of the album. Anderson's vocal melody and lyrics are aggressive in a goofy, elvish sort of way, but what distinguishes the album most is the seemingly endless bursts of infinite aggressive energy coming from Wakeman's hands. Indeed, his first synth "explosion" in the song may be the most powerful highlight of the entire album.
Now, the second category can throw people a bit. Most people at least somewhat enjoy Brother of Mine, if only because for coming so close to adult-contemporary in its feel, it still manages to have several enjoyable melody lines thrown in. In particular, the line, "Nothing can come between us, you're a brother of mine" pops into my head all the time. Yes, I do think the song is needlessly stretched out, but the overall effect is such that I can definitely tolerate it more than something like, say, Driving the Last Spike.
As for the other two, I agree with critics that these tracks are needlessly complex and "progressive," in that they take relatively normal pop songs and sandwich them with instrumental whatever. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy them. The opening piano tinklings in Themes are a beautiful way to start the album, the alternation between Wakeman and Howe in Soul Warrior (part iii of Themes) is enthralling, and dang it I enjoy the middle section (even if the "I don't believe in demons, I don't believe in devils" line bugs me, if only because I can't help but think of it as a stupid filking of John Lennon's declamation in God) if only because of the drumming. Yes, the Bill Bruford of Absent Lovers fame comes alive in that section, and that's enough to pull me in. Likewise, Order of the Universe is kinda overblown and cheezy, with everybody going for a BIG BOMBASTIC 80'S sound, but man I like the drumming. Polyrhythmic and varied in electronic tone, with powerful *BAAAM*'s knocking you off-kilter when you aren't exactly expecting it. Bless you Bill Bruford.
And there's your album - not a comeback to the Yes of the 70's, but rather an unexpectedly enjoyable integration of the 80's should've-been-Yes members. And, unfortunately, one that couldn't exist for an extended period of time, good as the album and their live shows were.
Norbert Becker (n.k.becker@worldnet.att.net)
On your otherwise well-written, concise review of ABWH I noticed
an
error. After BG, Yes ceased to exist (until Union). They did not continue
to tour as a 4 (3-1/2 counting Tony) piece, although were tensions in the
group less they might have.
(author's note): Correction has been made.
Laurent MASSE (masse@geocean.u-bordeaux.fr)
I really doubt this was a real group effort. I've always seen it as "Classic Yes updated for the 80's through the eyes of Jon Anderson". Indeed Jon initiated the project with almost all of the songs in mind. Rick's input was apparently important, although I really have problems with his sticky greasy 80's synths (the way he totally destroys "Teakbois", now that's what I call synth-vomit!). But I always thought Steve and Bill only got to overdub the backing tracks. Anyway, the songwriting is on a high, except for the childish melodies of "Teakbois" and the ridiculously cliche mediterranean sounding "Quartet". But "Brother Of Mine", "Birthright", "The Meeting" and the b-side "Vultures In The City" are very good, while "Themes", "Fist Of Fire", "Order Of The Universe" and "Let's Pretend" are a step lower but never falling on the boring side. I remember reading a Bruford interview in which he stated that a window opened for this group somewhere in the middle of "Birthright", but that the business diktat of the time did not allow them to act upon it. Anyway, his electronic drums may not be as inventive as on the 80s King Crimson trilogy, but his onslaughts in "Second Attention" and "Order Of The Universe" really kill me everytime. How could White (as much as I like him) come up with such wicked rhythmic punctuations? Oh, and I almost forgot the high point for me: a Squireless album! Last point: although you did not mention it, "An Evening Of Yes Music Plus" is one of the most satisfying live albums to date. Highlights are the funny acoustic "Time And A Word" medley, an incredibly improved, powerful and emotional "Birthright", and the best version of "Close To The Edge" ever. I truly believe all the other Brufordless recordings of that "tune" suck.
Nick Karn (mjareviews@yahoo.com)
It's crap that Chris Squire wouldn't let the other four members of the classic lineup involved in this album use the Yes name. I mean, Floyd continued on using their name without Roger Waters, didn't they? That's A LOT more drastic of a change than this. Strange.
This album certainly isn't any less Yes-sounding than, say, Drama, but I don't really think it can be called too progressive either. Sure, "Themes" gives off that false impression as two out of three of its' sections are instrumental, but some of this stuff musically seems a lot more in the vein of an extended Genesis' epic from their late pop period ala Invisible Touch (especially "Brother Of Mine", my favorite on the album - it's nice). "Quartet" and "Order Of The Universe" just combine four short pop songs in each one into 9 minute epics (the former in a quite corny and dull fashion).
It's kinda hard to figure my overall rating here, because the best stuff is only pretty good (though in the case of "The Meeting" quite pretty if not too memorable), but other than parts of "Quartet" and most of "Teakbois", there isn't much overly lame here. A really low 6, probably.
"Sittinger, Brian D" (brian.d.sittinger@lmco.com) (8/02/01)
Well, you took just about everything I had to say out of my mouth. This album does not seem to be truly progressive at all. Even the "multisectioned" songs lack the substance to deserve those breakdowns. However, the music is mostly fine, although it is very clear that this album is deeply rooted in the 1980's. "Order of the Universe" and "Brother of Mine", though not up to the classic standards of Yes, still are quite good. All the players here have shown they have not lost anything yet, depite this being during the 1980's. But, where is Steve Howe and Bill Bruford half of the time? I'd still prefer to listen to this over 90125 any day. Finally, so what if Chris Squire was not on here anyway? Tony Levin was low in the mix!! Low 7 out of 10.
TheRubberCow@aol.com (4/19/02)
Well, I picked this album up used for $2 (on cd!), and I've only listened to it once, but you seemed to think the exact same thing I did. The title-quoting in "She Gives Me Love" is embarressingly stupid, and "Teakbois" is cheezy (I don't remember there really being bad synths, but some Jamaican guy shouting out "Teakbois!".....reminded me of an early 90's Kool-Aid commercial). But I do like what I heard this first time, and I have a feeling the album will visit my player relatively often.
Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch@optusnet.com.au) (5/29/02)
The lost Yes album! Forget the name, this is more Yes than 90125, Big Generator or Union could ever be. Extended tracks, silly lyrics, Wakeman in your face - very cool! OK, "Teakbois" doesn't work, the history quoting in "She Gives Me Love" is annoying (not to mention obvious, basically saying "we really are Yes"!) but most of the reast of the album is great. Hard to pick a favourite - no, too hard!!
Vandermeer (bkvander@telus.net) (8/10/03)
This is the only Yes album that I like less now, after multiple listens, than I did when I heard it the first time. I really liked everything on this album when I first heard it, but I don't enjoy it as much anymore, and I'm not exactly sure why. I think it's mostly because the two long productions, Brother of Mine and Order of the Universe seem too long and overblown. They both have good moments of beauty especially BoM but I just don't really enjoy them all the way through. Too bad.
I will call you out for saying that Quartet and Teakbois are "utter suckjobs". Quartet is my favourite on the album with the four pieces of music blending together perfectly to make an enjoyable 9 minute song. The only real complaint about Quartet you and others seem to have is the song quoting. I don't see what the big deal is-Anderson was just making some humorous references to Yes' past. The Beatles did the same thing in Glass Onion and I didn't see any complaints about that. As for Teakbois, I enjoy the simple lyrics and feel of the song and also consider it a highlight of the album. Also very good are the opening Themes with its lovely piano at the beginning, and The Meeting with Anderson coming up with another memorable short melody. The rest of the album I can take or leave. Lots of people seem to like Birthright, but it always passes me by as being overlong and boring. Fist of Fire and Let's Pretend are also not too memorable.
I give this one a 6 (9). I feel a little guilty for not going higher, since some music is just great and nothing is horrible, but I just find it one of the hardest Yes albums to listen to from beginning to end.
Tom Burrichter (tburrichter@austin.rr.com) (4/07/04)
One thing I have noticed is that this album seems to have aged well. When it came out, the friend who turned me on to Yes back in the mid 80's ripped it apart with a long list of jabs. I was on the fence about it (comparing it to what these 4 had done in the past), but this is a really cool album and I only wish there could have been a couple more.
Tom Burrichter
Trfesok@aol.com (12/31/05)
Actually, the reason that this bunch couldn't call themselves Yes was that Squire, being the only guy who had been in all incarnations of the group, had legal control of the name. The lawsuit arose around the the billing of this tour as "An Evening of Yes Music, Plus", which Squire, surprisingly, lost.
Although this is really more Jon's A Momentary Lack of Reason than an album by another version of Yes. As with the "Pink Floyd" album, a creative force in the old group, with the help of some former members and session men, creates a solo album disguised as a group effort. While the best Yes albums had group members taking whatever raw material the guys brought in and built it up together in the studio, this time Jon took what few contributions the others made (Bruford contributed a chunk of "Birthright," for instance, and the "Long Lost Brother of Mine" section was a GTR leftover from Howe) and reshaped it according to his vision. Howe didn't even go along with the rest of the band to Montserrat for the initial sessions -- he actually overdubbed his parts later in London! It helped to have Chris Kimsey along (who had produced the two best Marillion albums with Fish, Misplaced Childhood and Clutching at Straws) to craft a pseudo-prog album. I enjoy it, but it's clear after a few listens that somewhat overdone production disguised some relatively simple music, by Yes standards, anyway. The only outright disaster is the idiotic "Teakbois," a really stupid attempt to be "ethnic." The rest of the songs are at least catchy and accessible, and the guys do get to shine once in a while. The most annoying thing about the album is that Jon did not take advantage of Tony Levin's presence -- he is basically inaudible in the mix. Still, this material really came to life on stage. However, as you know, Jon's trying to repeat this approach only could lead to disaster.
An Evening Of Yes Music Plus - Caroline 1994
8 (11)
Best song: The solo spots, especially Anderson's
An official release of a typical ABWH concert in 1989, roughly split between good-but-by-the-book renditions of Yes and ABWH numbers and beautiful-and-clever 'solo spots' and rearrangments of songs. Ironically enough, it was the presence of the latter that kept me from buying the album for so long - I could never get myself to buy a live album that had so much 'solo wanking' occupying disc 1 - but of course, they turn out to be the best part. First of all - you have GOT to hear the Time and a Word/Owner of a Lonely Heart/Teakbois medley at some point in your life. The way Anderson's voice and Howe's (or Anderson's? You tell me) acoustic move through the three songs and make them flow seamlessly into each other, even placing the lyrics to one in the melody of another, is a royal treat to listen to, and makes the album worth while by itself.
The other spots are certainly not bad themselves, not by any means. Wakeman's pieces are entertaining as hell (remember what I said earlier about solo Wakeman being absolutely thrilling in small quantities), and one of them is even an instrumental version of Madrigal! Meanwhile, Howe's runthroughs of The Clap and Mood for a Day are slightly routine, but before and between them, he messes with some other pieces to alleviate any semblance of boredom. And finally, Bruford's spot, coming out of an acoustic Long Distance Runaround, is an actually entertaining solo on his electronic drums, where he bashes around so furiously that it seems (if you've ever listened to Absent Lovers, that is) like the band's going to suddenly break into Indiscipline at any given moment. That's a big compliment, by the way.
After that, the band launches into a great version of Birthright, with Rick's keyboards taking on an even more entertainingly epic character than before, and this is one of the few instances on the album where the "live energy vibe" pops out and shows its head. Same goes for And You and I, which returns to the structure of the original. And then, although it was originally at the very end of the show, CD 1 closes with a wonderful Starship Trooper that boasts plenty of twists and turns from previous versions.
But on CD 2, aside from the fabulous Close to the Edge performance (the only official live recording of Bruford playing the song, btw), which has Bruford's awesome percussion brought even higher in the mix than in the studio version, thanks to the electronic drums, the vibe of "were doing something different" disappears and the vibe "we need obligatory live versions of these songs" comes in. None of the ABWH songs on this disc are bad, and Roundabout is Roundabout, but then, none of the ABWH songs on here really surpass their studio counterparts, and I've heard so many versions of Roundabout in my life that it's hard to feel a lot of attachment to more than a couple of them. And as for Heart of the Sunrise, well, Jeff Berlin does his best (Tony Levin was unable to play this show, so Berlin filled in), and he doesn't actually flub any notes, but he's just playing notes as opposed to messing with the rhythms slightly and throwing in random stacattos and legattos like Squire does. As a result, the rest of the band is mixed much higher than normal, and quite honestly, Heart of the Sunrise sounds friggin' weird with the bass as the lowest instrument in the mix.
So all in all, this is a good album. If it weren't for the fact that it has neither The Meeting nor Let's Pretend, I'd say to ignore ABWH and just get this, but alas, those are good songs, so I can't say that. But as much as I'd like to give this a higher grade, I just can't. Sorry.
"Riley, Matt" (matt_riley@saleslink.com) (5/31/03)
The acoustic guitar that accompanied Jon's solo medley in the beginning of the show was played by one of the 2 sidemen that played on the tour (1 keyboardist, 1 guitarist), either Milton McDonald or Julian Cobeck I believe.
Trfesok@aol.com (12/31/04)
I had front row seats to a show on this tour, so I'm a bit biased, but out of the four lineups of Yes that I've seen, this was the best. Even without Squire. On the album, Jeff Berlin fills in adequately. But, visually, the show was probably lacking a bit without Tony Levin, who was quite a performer.
The solo bits were indeed a bit surprising, with guitarist Milt McDonald and Julian Colbeck on keyboards accompanying Anderson on the opening medley -- which lead to a bit of confusion until Howe and Wakeman came out later! The song lineup accurately reflects the show, except Anderson and Wakeman also played "The Meeting" at the show I saw. (Jon said that the song was actually "about us all getting back together," even though only the two of them played it!). The material from the ABWH studio album actually sounds better to me here, more stripped down and energetic and less contrived. "Close to the Edge" and "Starship Trooper" are superb performances. Yessongs may have the edge over this in terms of raw energy, but for solid, highly professional musicianship and excellent live sound quality, this is the place to go for live Yes.
Bob
Can't Look Away (Trevor Rabin) - Elektra 1989
4 (7)
Best song: Can't Look Away
Ever wonder what happened to Trevor during the ABWH era? Well, instead of putting out an album with remaining Yessers (though Alan White drums on one of the tracks), Rabin decided that the best way to compete with ABWH was through a solo album.
And do you know what? It's really not that bad - it's almost as good as its predecessor, and while that's not really saying much, given the fact that I bought this mostly as a joke, that says something. The only things that really mar it are (a) Trevor's unbelievably generic singing voice and (b) the fact that, being generic 80's rock, a lot of these songs are really dull. But only a couple of songs on here are offensive in the manner of the BG title track - like the appropriately-titled Sludge, and Cover Up. But the rest, though, sounds a lot like a prototype for Talk (which helps explains why everybody refers to Talk as a Rabin solo album). See, Trevor is trying really hard on this album to show that he's not just a braindead generic-metal guitarist, and there are some nice artistic touches throughout.
The album kicks off with some of the beautiful, shiny guitar work that would pop up on I Am Waiting before going into the title track which, while not awesome, is still definitely good. And there's some nice pseudo-acoustic playing a la I'm Running in Cover Up (though the song itself kinda blows).
As for the rest ... well, the album only got a 4. It's generic as hell, after all, and goodness knows how I feel about genericism. But few of the songs are truly annoying, and who knows, the rating might rise.
Then again, I might get the girl someday. Hmm.
Yesyears - Atco 1991
7 (10)
Best song: Oh bite me...
I really don't like reviewing boxsets like this. This is a classic example of a "schizophrenic" boxset - on the one hand, it's packed with songs that fans already have on regular studio albums (which sorta makes it a compilation, I guess), which can in theory make it alright for newcomers. On the other hand, it has several tracks that can't be found elsewhere, making much of it interesting for band historians but only marginally relevant for the inexperienced fan. This very conflict makes coming up with an accurate rating for the set as a whole utterly impossible, and the 7 above may just as well be a 5 or a 10.
First of all - as a compilation, I would not even consider recommending this boxset. Not just for reasons of spite, mind you, but rather the fact that the two disc Yesstory, released a year later, fills the multi-disc compilation void for the band rather nicely. It leaves out any whiff of Drama, but considering that it manages to fit on Close to the Edge AND Ritual and three epics from TYA, it's a pretty decent buy. Plus, it has the two rarities that are REALLY worth everybody's time and money (but that's for later). Plus, it doesn't have such a whackily distorted allocation of tracks as on here - FIVE tracks from Time and a Word but only two from the debut??? Wow ...
So that leaves the unreleased stuff (and quite frankly, my advice is to somehow compile yourself a two-CD "rarities" collection from this collection and then sell the rest). It disappoints me heavily to say this, but the unreleased material, particularly in the last couple of discs, almost uniformly stinks. There are three Rabin-era live cuts, which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that they're from the BG tour. Changes is done decently enough, but Heart of the Sunrise and And You And I ... words fail me. Heart of the Sunrise is marred just by being sloppy, while AYAI is utterly massacred thanks to unnecessarily cheezily generic synths, GENERIC AS HELL "heavenly" guitar soloing and a pounding drum beat that utterly does not belong. A jaw-dropping failure this is, and I can only be grateful that the reinvention on the Talk tour came across so much better.
The other outtakes from around this time don't do much to impress either. Some of them come from the Rabin years; one of them, Love Conquers All, is boringly generic, but it's still an interesting historical footnote in that it's the only officially available track from the post-Anderson post-BG time period. On the other hand, we get a glimpse at the pre-Anderson Cinema, and if what we have here is any indication, it might not have been that great a success without Anderson coming on board. Make it Easy has a neat intro (which would make it into many concerts as the prelude to Owner), but the actual song can go to hell as far as I'm concerned (well, sort of - the verses suck mightily, but the chorus grew on me plenty). One also gets an early version of It Can Happen, with Chris on lead vocals, that lacks the electric sitar and halfway decent lyrics that would make the later version so captivating. The cool chorus is already in place, though, so that makes it somewhat bearable.
Now what comes on disc three, the ending days of the "glory days," is what really disappoints the hell out of me. First of all, I am utterly perplexed that the band didn't see fit to include studio versions of Go Through This and We Can Fly From Here, outtakes from the Drama sessions that made it into their live set. And yet, the band included Run With the Fox, an alright "Christmas" single that wasn't even released under the banner of Yes - it was a Squire/White independent collaboration after the band's breakup.
But never mind that - why are there so many outtakes from the TORMATO sessions????!!! I enjoy the band's live cover of I'm Down from around this time, sure, but the studio stuff is just time taken from my life I wish I had back. Money is funny in its own right, with the BBC broadcast voice in the background, and it would have actually been a highlight on Tormato, but that's not exactly saying much. The band includes a nice instrumental piece from the GFTO sessions (Montreaux's Theme), that's nice and atmospheric with some subtle yet still trademark Howe soloing, but they bookend it with the two-part Vevey, which has no thematic development whatsoever and sounds like an outtake from a Wakeman solo album (though it could have worked well as the midsection of another piece, I'll give it that). And, er, aren't ballads like Abilene supposed to actually be MEMORABLE??
On the plus side - aside from the dispensable single version of Soon and Squire's two-minute rendition of Amazing Grace, the rest is quite enjoyable. The main attractions are (a) a four minute single version of the band's ten-minute cover of Paul Simon's America (one can actually tell this is a bit of a hack job, but it's still funny), (b) a studio version of the band's HILARIOUS cover of Something's Coming (only available otherwise on the BBC Sessions) and (c) cleaned-up, well-produced renditions of Then and Everydays from those same BBC Sessions. If the sound quality of that collection gave you a headache, then this is your best bet to catch the early version of the band in its live glory.
Gah, and that's it. What a bloated behemoth this is (though I guess some would argue that that matches up with the character of the band, blah blah blah).
Trfesok@aol.com (12/02/07)
This thing has gone out of print (replaced with another boxset with a different set of rarities), and it's probably just as well. I agree, for a hardcore fan, it was pretty much a disappointment as far as rarities were concerned. Most of the studio rarities have now been added as bonus tracks to the remastered albums, with the exception of "Love Conquers All". By, the way, this is not "the only officially available track from the post-Anderson post-BG time period" -- it was actually recorded at the same time as the YesWest tracks on Union, but never made it to the stage where Anderson overdubbed vocals. Rabin's voice sounds too strained here -- the version on the Squire/Sherwood album Conspiracy sounds better, with Billy Sherwood's lead vocal fitting more comfortably in the song's key. The Cinema tracks are a letdown, too -- the recording quality makes it clear that these are demos. "Make it Easy" sounds like typical 80's rock, and "It Can Happen" proves that Anderson's vocal and lyrical quirks (Squire's verse lyrics are quite trite) were needed to make 90125 work as Yes album.
As for the live stuff, I would have preferred another BBC cut than "Everydays", but "Then" definitely proves that the orchestra was quite unnecessary on the second album. "I'm Down" is not from the Tormato tour -- it has Moraz on keyboards. Fun, and lightweight, especially considering that the band was performing its heaviest material during this period. Anderson's voice is surprisingly gruff, here, for him. As for the last three songs, looks like I didn't miss much. "Changes" feels like a ripoff, since an almost identical version appears on 9012Live. As for the classic songs -- I agree that "generic" is the word. In particular. I remember "And You and I" being a big highlight on the 90125 tour, but here, it sound like a Yes cover band fronted by Anderson.
The booklet is nicely packaged, but you'd never know there were any conflicts within the group from the lovey-dovey essay. Overall though, it's not now worth paying collector prices for this set just to get the booklet and a few lost tracks of less than stellar quality.
Union - Arista 1991
2 (5)
Best song: Masquerade
Absolutely awful, that's what this one is. The thing is, though, while the band should certainly receive a good portion of the blame for allowing themselves to be pushed around and snookered into this, the degree to which this album sucks is really not their fault. I'm not saying that this album would have been a masterpiece otherwise, but I'm quite sure it would've been much better than what we got.
Let me explain. ABWH was deemed sufficiently successful to warrant a sequel, and so the quartet went into the studio to try and hack out some new material. Now, supposedly, the band actually did have quality material at its ready - the demos for this second ABWH album are often found in the collections of Yes-collectors (though not in mine, alas), and supposedly they're not half-bad (if you more or less liked ABWH, that is). But for some reason, almost none of the songs from this demo made it onto the album ...
But I digress. As the band assembled its songs, it realized that they had one problem - none of the songs were going to in any way function as potential radio-friendly hits. Given that even ABWH had had Brother of Mine as a minor hit, this was not something that Yes/whatever was really used to in recent years, and they panicked. Well, YesWest and Trevor Rabin were currently out of work, so ABWH accurately deduced that Rabin would be willing to write them something catchy to help them out (yeah, ABWH had kinda screwed Rabin out of work, but I'm somehow doubting that sales from Rabin's solo album were putting food on his table). So he sent three demos to ABWH's record company, Arista, and said to pick one. Well, Arista liked them all - a fact that is innoccuous on its own but set off a catastrophic chain of events that led to, well, this album.
See, the record executives noticed that there were currently two "factions" of the same band, and instead of seeing this in terms of the artistic separation that it really was, they only saw this as potential Yes-related profits getting sucked down the drain. So they took the course of action that seemed most logical to them, since songs from YesWest were going to be on the ABWH album anyway - combine the two factions into one 8-man Yes. Not that all eight members play on any one of the tracks, of course - Anderson sings on the YesWest tracks, and Squire contributes backing vocals to some of the ABWH tracks, but that's as much "unity" as one can find here.
But that in itself is not responsible for the utter disaster that is this album. On the one hand, the four YesWest tracks - as good or as bad as they may be - at least represent the honest product of YesWest. Not so with ABWH, and for that we can thank company-appointed producer Jonathan Elias. To say that he singehandedly butchered this album would be the understatement of the millenium - it is OBVIOUS that he hadn't the slightest idea of what any Yes album sounded like (barring maybe 90125 and BG, though even that's doubtful), and his cluelessness messed things up to a degree that could only be matched by Dilbert's boss. If you examine the liner notes, you will notice that (except for the concluding Take The Water To The Mountain, and the Levin/Bruford collaboration Evensong), Elias gets writing credits for all the ABWH tracks. By all accounts, this was not some act of gratitude on the part of the band members. On the contrary, Elias took complete liberty to take the ideas submitted by the band and rework and "modernize" them into oblivion. Within a very short period of time, all creative freedom within the band had been extinguished - Steve and Bill would come in when Jonathan told them to, play what he wanted them to, and leave disgruntled.
And even worse, if Jonathan wasn't satisfied with what he heard from the players, he freely brought in session musicians - his friends, and in some cases himself - to replace the parts. Most of the guitar parts are supposedly played by Steve (though only a scant few bear the stylistic markings indicating they were conceived by him), except for on Dangerous (starring some talentless wanker named Jimmy Haun), but Bill Bruford is supplemented by studio drummers (BILL FREAKING BRUFORD REPLACED BY STUDIO DRUMMERS), and Rick ... Jonathan must have REALLY hated the "non-commerical" sounds of Rick, because there are - brace yourself - ELEVEN SESSION KEYBOARDISTS on this album. There's a reason that Rick Wakeman has freely referred to this album as Onion - he says he cannot hear ANY of his parts on the album, and I believe him.
So what do we get out of all this carnage? Some decency in a sea of corporate-driven BS. The highlight of the album ultimately turns out to be a pleasant acoustic instrumental chipped in by Steve, entitled Masquerade. It hardly stands up to Clap or Mood for a Day, and actually sounds a bit like John Denver in bits, but it's still an incredible breath of fresh air from the rest of the album. On a related note, the aforementioned Bruford/Levin collaboration Evensong is unfortunately brief, but still shows a semblance of actual music, which differentiates it from most of the rest of the album.
Elsewhere, the only complete song that ends up pleasing me is, naturally, a Rabin number. Lift Me Up is generic, of course, but so help me it's actually catchy and uplifting and makes me want to keep it singing it after it's done. Just a good ole' fashioned pop-single (with some stupid obligatory heaviness that doesn't actually mar the song after all) that would've been a highlight on 90125. But to be fair, there are bits and pieces of other songs that I can almost enjoy. The first part of Without Hope You Cannot Start The Day (before it becomes stupidly generic after a minute-and-a-half) is pretty, and the closing Take the Water to the Mountain is cute and harmless (it would've been filler on any other Yes album, but it seems ok here). And ... er, ok, I like the introduction to Miracle of Life, and the Squire/Billy Sherwood collaboration (The More We Live - Let Go) manages to have a surprising amount of power in its overly mellow, slightly directionless delivery. And .... ..... ok, the opening I Would Have Waited Forever has its moments, even though the mid-section really seems like an inferior rewrite of Order of the Universe.
But the negatives ... oy. OY. This album contains the three worst songs in the Yes catalogue, and several others are jockeying for the other positions in the list. Angkor Wat is brain-sucking, melodyless MUSH that accomplishes nothing but making you long for the sweet release of death, but instead it brings further pain with some woman reciting Cambodian poetry at the end. But even that seems like a masterpiece compared to what follows, the beyond abominable Dangerous (Look in the Light of blah blah blah). The one good thing I can say about it is that it features the most distinctively Levin-esque bass of his tenure with ABWH, but it's still hardly one of his best bass performances. Going so far as to feature a generic hip-hop beat in the middle, it's a sort of generic heavy-metal piece that has nothing to do with Yes and basically encapsulates every bad aspect of early 90's corporate songwriting.
Oh, and the third bad song is a generic reggae piece, the Rabin-penned Saving My Heart. Yes would try reggae again later in their career to better effect, but for now this is just a head-smashing disaster. And before I go, let me remind you that Shock to the System is a LAME generic hard-rock tune, and if Steve wrote that riff I'll eat my keyboard. The others aren't even worth mentioning.
So basically, this is an encapsulation of everything that can possibly go wrong when record executives become overly involved in the music side of things. I almost considered giving the album a 3, but the fact is that this album just sucks out your will to live. In other words, I may put this CD in my player to hear Lift Me Up and Masquerade (and maybe The More We Live) again, but there is NO WAY IN HELL that I will ever listen to this straight through again. What a shame.
Laurent MASSE (masse@geocean.u-bordeaux.fr)
"Masquerade" should have been the title as it is an accurate description of the content. Not as lame as "Open Your Eyes", but very close. Both albums have a lot of things in common: underinspired, overproduced contractual obligations to support a "back to classics" tour. All those who participated were not interested at all and let the management decide how to finish it because they were contractually locked. Bruford's interviews are particularly telling. During the sessions, he was told when to come, what to play, and did not have the choice. He knew before the tour he would leave as soon as possible. I suspect Steve felt the same. And that ridiculous story in the booklet! The material is indeed incredibly lame. The opening chorus to "I Would Have Waited Forever" is decent, but the song quickly drowns in a swamp of lame melodies on pointless greasy arrangements which are the norm all along. "Shock To The System", Without Hope", "Miracle Of Life", "Silent Talking", "Dangerous", "Holding On", "Take The Water" and "Give And Take" give you the impression they just rearranged the same lame song as many times as needed to fill an album. Actually, "Shock To The System" reminds me of Scorpions more than anything else! In the middle of this, the ridiculous "Angkor Wat" even manages to sound like an interesting diversion! The other songs? Even the ones which sound decent and acceptable ("Lift Me Up", "Saving My Heart", "The More We Live") are not particularly uplifting or convincing. The best part of the album is by far the small interludes "Masquerade" and "Evensong". If you liked the latter, it appears in a much longer and satisfying form under the title "Jewels" on Levin's 1995 solo album "World Diary".
Robert Grazer (xeernoflax@jack-the-ripper.com)
Oh boy. This is not the worst album ever made. It is probably Yes's worst though. A few points to consider.
1. This is not Yes. Yeah It's got the members, the cover and the name, but it doesn't sound a thing like them. I mean "Shock to the System" is done by the same band that did "Starship Trooper?" I don't think so.
2. It's OK for a band to make an album that isn't their normal style...sometimes. I mean, I can think of several metal bands that released non-metal albums just for the fun of it and get bashed by close-minded fans when the music on the rather experimental releases is not really all that bad.
3. This album isn't THAT bad. Yeah no song on here could even fream of holding a candle to a song even half as good as "The Ancient," but it is passable, espescially compared to other 1991 "classics" like Nirvana's Nevermind.
BEST TRACK: "Masquerade" is a nice guitar instrumental that is the only track on this album that has a hint of the old stuff in it. I still prefer "Mood for a Day" and "The Clap" anyday.
RATING: My Scale: *** John McFerrin's Scale: 6(9)
Terry Shea (sheaterry@earthlink.net)
As bad as this album is by Yes standards, it's still probably better than almost anything else that came out in the 80's or 90's. I think it starts off allright, but the album pretty much dies after Lift Me Up. I don't care for any of the other Yeswest tunes on Union and Howe and Wakeman played very little if at all on this album. The record company wanted it done immediately and used session musicians when Howe and Wakeman were'nt available.
Philip Maddox (slurmsmckenzie@hotmail.com)
Ah, Union, everybody's least favorite Yes album, including mine. More Yes members, more songs, and yet less actual Yes than on any other Yes album. I don't think it's quite as bad as a 2, though - if we ignore the politcal BS that plagued the album, the studio musicians, and the totally completely misleading packaging and hype, what we're left with is... a boring AOR album with a couple of good tunes on it.
I actually like 2 songs here a lot - "Lift Me Up" and "Miracle Of Life" are both great songs - very pretty and uplifting. The chorus to the former is breathtaking - unbelievably pretty. Worth buying this album for a dollar if you see it for those 2 songs alone. Steve's guitar solo is nice, too. It would be filler anywhere else, but here it blows most of the competition clean out of the water. A couple of the other songs aren't too bad, either - "I Would Have Waited Forever" and "Without Hope You Cannot Start The Day" aren't all that good, but they're at least decent, and I get the desire to hear them every now and then.
Most of the rest absolutely sucks, though, especially the vomit-inducing pseudo-reggae adult contemporary of "Saving My Heart". "Angkor Wat" might be even worse, though - no melody at all, just aimless boring pretentiousness. It's painfully obvious that no one was interested - there's a lot of studio musicians, and the parts that ARE played by the actual Yes don't sound any different (I can't even tell the difference!). Where's Bruford's tricky drumming? Where's Squires booming bass? Where's the good music? This could have been a nifty little EP, but at 65 minutes, it's about 45 minutes too long. I'd give it a VERY, VERY low 4. I'd give it a 3, but I'm boosting it a bit for the fact that most of this album is listenable, if not exactly good. I'm glad that YesWest was able to pull an album as strong as Talk out of this mess.
"Poschmann, Steve" (Steve.Poschmann@fmr.com) (11/25/01)
Thanks for you interesting web site with Yes album reviews. Just some background on my Yes experience before I comment on your review of Union. Back around 1980 when I was 15, I bought the Yessongs record because I liked the cover, having never heard anything from it. I grew to love the album. (By the way I never noticed the muddy production...but as a rule I don't care for live albums very much due to the production value that live albums typically lack.) (Also, the drum solo, by Bruford, to me shows why he is considered the best Yes drummer.) I also bought Drama soon after because it was in the cut-out bin and I appreciated the "new wave" take on Yes (influenced by Downes and Horn). Later, I liked the 90215 radio tracks for reasons different than why I liked their earlier stuff, but I never owned any of the YesWest albums (until Union). Just wanted to let you know where I'm coming from.
Now, regarding Union. First, I kind of liked many of the songs on the album. Maybe it was because I bought it used on a whim and had very low expectations. I feel that two of the YesWest contributions -- 'Lift Me Up' and 'Saving My Heart' -- have nice melodies and are comparable to the better songs from 90215 or Big Generator...and I thought a couple of the ABWH lineup's songs were very good at best. Apparently, I'm in a minority. That's fine...I can deal with that. Its not a big deal.
Here are some questions that arose to me in listening to the cd recently and reading the liner notes: (some you touched on)
- Sometimes, I could not tell who played what instruments at what times. There so are MANY session musicians listed! I could tell Rabin and Howe's guitars usually, but how much did Wakeman actually play on the album?
- Why isn't Levin considered a member of the band? I guess they were pushing for the ABWH + YesWest theme, but Levin's name deserved to be in there as much as the others. Other short-lived memberships have been listed as members earlier and subsequent albums.
- Why do the liner notes make such a big deal about Chris Squire's vocals being added to the ABWH tracks of Union? I didn't realize Squire had such distinctive vocals. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to have added Rabin's vocals to the ABWH tracks? His backing vocals contrast Anderson's in a nice way...and he is known to be a decent backing vocalist, no? And it doesn't even say "backing vocals" of Squires were added. It says "vocals". Is Squire a lead vocalist at all? Very confusing.
Daniel and Corine Bosch (dcbosch@optusnet.com.au) (5/15/02)
How horrid! To call this disorganised, overproduced, under-written mismatch "Union" - they should be sued for false advertising!! I can't think of one major redeeming feature of this album, even so the worst thing Yes may record is better than many bands' brightest moments
bsitting@mail.math.ucsb.edu (8/20/02)
Aargh! Where do I start? Well, when I was still at SCU, for some reason a friend gave this to me for free (Supposedly, she had an extra copy). I listened to a small portion of it. That was over a year ago. Finally, I brought it out again yesterday night, vowing to listen to it all. Needless to say, after I had enough with some of the songs (esp., the second half), I skipped on into the next ones.
Why? First, the songs themselves are not inherently the worst things I've heard in my life. BUT, after "Lift Me Up" or so, the songs just numb the living daylights out of me! It has to be the genericism. I can't explain it any other way. "I Could Have Waited Forever" is the 'catchiest' out of the bunch, but even this one rambles a bit unnecessarily (repetition/solo breaks). And, of course, "Masquerade" is the most pleasant song present. I can hardly remember how the others go... . This album can get no more than 4 out of 10 from me.
Vandermeer (bkvander@telus.net) (8/10/03)
Ok, here's where I'm going to have to disagree with just about everyone. I love Union! Since you and almost everyone else take great pleasure in dumping crap all over the album, it's time someone comes out to defend it.
The person most responsible for my love of the album would be Trevor Rabin. The three songs he contributed are all fantastic, definitely the best he had written for Yes up to that point, and the three best on the album. My favourite is Miracle of Life with its killer intro and boisterous, catchy chorus always putting a smile on my face. The oft maligned Saving My Heart has an infectious opening riff and beautiful sing-a-long chorus-I don't know why you and so many others hate it. And of course Lift Me Up is one song even the Union bashers seem to like. It's also full of energy and catchy hooks. The last YesWest contribution The More We Live is ok, but is one of the weaker tracks on the album.
As for the ABWH stuff, well there is some good stuff and some unmemorable tracks. Angkor Wat might be my least favourite Yes song, going over five minutes with no discernable melody. Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day is also kind of blah-I can never really remember anything about it. The others are ok to good. Masquerade is a nice interlude from Howe, but certainly less memorable than his other solo Yes pieces. I Would Have Waited Forever has a nice groove and is probably the best of the ABWH tracks here. Shock to the System rocks pretty good and has a nice middle interlude. Silent Talking is kind of boring to start but has a nice melodic finish. Holding On is enjoyable as well, although certainly no classic. Finally Dangerous, Evensong, and Take the Water are all short and fun, even if they don't stick with you afterwards. The weakness in some of the ABWH stuff brings down the album a bit, but the Rabin stuff is so good, I can't help but give it an overall 8 (11).
Believe it or not, after I read some of the scathing reviews you and some others wrote about Union, I actually tried to hate it! Since this was the first new Yes album I heard after getting into them, I thought maybe I was slightly biased towards it. After all, everyone loathed it so much, I figured there must be something wrong with me for liking it. But I've listened to it repeatedly and I still love it! I know all the back history about the production woes and the forced union of the two factions, but that just makes me think how much better this album might have been. It doesn't take away from how good it is.
Trfesok@aol.com (12/31/05)
As with all things, there are two sides of the story of this debacle. According to Elias, by this point Howe and Wakeman were so burned out that it was like pulling teeth to get them to write or play anything useable. Which is why his name appears so much in the credits -- he and Anderson had to take whatever scraps they could get and turn them into songs. To make matters worse, Howe's parts were so bland that that Arista demanded that they be redone. That's when Anderson and Elias absconded with the tapes to California to begin the work with session men. According to Jimmy Haun, (excluding the pretty "Masquerade"), Howe plays for a grand total of less than 5 minutes on the album when you add it all up -- he replaced everything else. Finally, Arista told him that he had to somehow sound like Howe and Rabin at the same time, which explains the hard rock horror of "Shock to the System" (even Rabin hated playing that one live) and another "Owner of a Lonely Heart" clone, "Dangerous."
While the ABWH album was a reasonable facsimile of a Yes album, "their" stuff here sounds like a pale shadow of Yes. It's like (and effectively is, I guess) an album played by a band of ghosts -- no power or oomph at all. The songwriting is either really dull ("Take the Water to the Mountain," "Angkor Wat," "Without Hope..") or melodically disorganized ("I Would Have Waited Forever," "Dangerous"). The catchiest and most coherent of the "ABWH" tunes, a simple rocker called "Give and Take," was actually relegated to the B-side of "Lift Me Up." This stuff actually sounds worse the more times that you play it (especially "Shock to the System" -- that is just a really stupid song).
It's amazing that the YesWest stuff sounds so much better. The multipart "Miracle of Life" actually sounds more like classic Yes than the ABWH mess, and the complex intro and outro to "Lift Me Up" is a very Yessish touch bracketing a nice folk-rock tune. Although simple, "The More We Live" also captures the meditative feel of some of early Yes. Although Rabin later regretted letting Anderson talk him into including "Saving My Heart," it's at least not as dumb as "Teakbois." However, it's telling that none of the songs (nor "Love Conquers All," retained from these sessions by Atlantic as part of the deal getting YesWest out of its contract and on to Arista) sound like each other in the least. This indicates YesWest was as confused and directionless as ABWH, if more competent. It's a good thing the tour happened, or Yes probably would have not survived this jumbled fiasco.
Close To VIII Progressors - Bootleg
7 (11)
Best song: Awaken
Wow, what a horrible bootleg name ... Union may have been an abominable album, but the ensuing tour was surprisingly successful. This recording of the final show of the US leg of the tour doesn't completely demonstrate this fact, but it still contains enough firey performances to give at least some creedence to this suggestion. The recording can't help but be hampered by the fact that it's in support of such weak material (Lift Me Up is good, but including both Shock to the System AND Saving My Heart doesn't make me smile), which in turn caused much of the rest to take on the nature of a "greatest hits" tour (augmented by a lot of solos), but it's still a decent listen.
That it's decent, though, doesn't necessarily make it a cohesive listen. The biggest issue throughout, as you might imagine, is the way Howe and Rabin often make the concert into a sort of territorial pissing match. No track better illustrates this, in my opinion, than the opening Yours is no Disgrace, where the mid-song 'jam' section reminds me of two little kids fighting each other for a fire truck on Christmas day (like my brother and I once upon a time, hehe). Howe does his thing, throwing in a nice jazzy solo with prog leanings (as he is wont to do), but when he finishes his part and you expect the midsection jam to end, it starts again with Rabin doing HIS thing! Of course, I simply do not care for what Rabin does here - he plays fast and loud and all that, but I really CANNOT tell what would make this better than some average hair-metal guitarist's speedwankery. The overall effect might have been nice if I saw it live, but here it just seems kinda silly.
Anyway, speaking of solos, it's my opinion that they really take too much time out of the concert with these solos. BOTH guitarists get to have their solo spots, and while Clap is still as great as ever, Solly's Beard still rambles like nothing else, and it would have been nice to stick in another song here. Also, both Squire and Wakeman get lengthy solo spots, and they really don't do anything here that they hadn't shown in years past. I DO find it a nice touch that Anderson sings the lyrics over Chris' rendition of Amazing Grace, but other than that, ehn. This said, though, I will give the band credit - they could have given Tony solo time, and that would have made the peformance that much more tedious, but they didn't, so whatever.
Not all the solos, though, make things worse. The band takes the opportunity to do Rhythm of Love and Owner of a Lonely Heart, and both are made into fine renditions courtesy of GREAT Wakeman solos at the end. Seriously, it might surprise you at first that Wakeman would have such fun playing Yeswest material, but for all his pomp and pretense, Rick has always demonstrated a preference for playing more energetic and upbeat and rawkin' material, so the surprise is tempered at least somewhat. Oh sure, his keyboard tone is kinda cheezy, but it's a fun kind of cheese, and the energy level is enough to make things extremely engaging.
The utter pinnacle of the show, though, comes when the band comes together, puts its collective egos away, and pulls off a stunning 8-man rendition of Awaken. Rabin mostly uses his guitar for atmospheric effect, not as a competitor of Steve, Tony provides low-key ballast for Rick's parts (though with some of the solos handed to him), and Bill and Alan give a subtle boost in the activity of the percussion without making the piece turn cacophonous. Indeed, Bill's electronic drums give the piece an interesting mood and extra dose of intensity, and while he might not really make a sizable impact in the rest of the concert, he certainly does here.
Otherwise, though, the concert is pretty much what you'd expect. I would say, though, that it highly disappoints me to hear Bill do so little overall - perhaps he'd cared at the beginning of the tour, but it was obvious by this time that he just wanted his paycheck so he could afford to do jazz. Oh well. 'Tis pretty enjoyable anyway.
Trfesok@aol.com (04/29/08)
I actually don't have this particular bootleg, but I do have excerpts from the tour. Parts of the second show at Wembley in London were broadcast on a US radio special, while songs from two German shows show up on a pretty good bootleg called Around the World in 80 Dates. From what I've been told, the show was very exciting to actually see, but seems to lose something in translation to audio only. It sounds like the full eight man lineup doesn't appear on all the "group" numbers, such as "Changes" or "And You and I", even if they do. The solos are pretty much a waste of time, except I do think that Rabin (?) adding those countryish electric licks to Rick's ..Six Wives.. solo is amusing. The "Owner.." and "Rhythm of Love", I agree, are also highlights, thanks to Rick, even if his choice of synth tones on his solos is disturbingly Tormato-esque. Also in agreement about "Awaken". I'm not a huge fan of the song, but this version is definitely the best sounding and performed of the versions that I have. Still, it seems to me that the tour could have been better. Guess I'll have to hunt down a DVD to make sure.
Symphonic Music of Yes - BMG 1993
7 (10)
Best song: Close To The Edge
A good idea executed poorly, but enjoyable nonetheless. This is not a true Yes album, but rather a 3/4 of ABWH (well, half, as Jon only sings on the opening Roundabout) album with David Palmer (of Jethro Tull fame) arranging the orchestral parts and a London gospel choir chipping in some vocals. Howe and Bruford are mostly in top form throughout, and while the arrangments are sometimes a little tacky, the album turns out mostly enjoyable. The major highlight is the 7-minute condensed Close to the Edge, which really magnifies the quality of the themes from a "classical" standpoint, but both Mood for a Day and Soon receive a solid treatment as well. The rest (except for Survival, which is very entertaining when sung by a choir) is much less inventive, often saturated with schmaltz, but the songs are all mostly classics after all. It's also very much worth it to hear Steve Howe wreak havoc on Owner of a Lonely Heart, purposely making it into a ridiculous caricature of its original form (Yes mythology says this was revenge for Rabin destroying Yours is No Disgrace during the 80's, and I believe it). An intriguing listen, nonethless.
Laurent MASSE (masse@geocean.u-bordeaux.fr)
This concept is a little bit strange: instead of focussing on the ones which are really symphonic in scope and making it entirely symphonic, they go for a bitchy mass-appeal middle-of-the-road approach. We could have had a killer complete "Gates", and instead we get to hear the ridiculous "Owner" with Howe and Bruford lifelessly pumping along and the violins trying to reproduce those silly synth blurbs! Some of the material really is symphonic in nature and works, like the main theme of "Close To The Edge", "Mood For A Day" and "Soon", but "Wonderous Stories", "Starship Trooper", "Roundabout" and "Heart Of The Sunrise" really sound like "Abba plays the European TV song contest", and it's a shame.
Robert Grazer (xeernoflax@jack-the-ripper.com)
I've heard some of the symphonic Pink Floyd album "Us and Them," and if you ever post that one up here, I'll listen to the rest, by it still comes down to the concept that some songs work symphonic and some don't. (You should hear symphonic "Brick in the Wall Part 2" UGH!) "Close to the Edge" comes out excellently. "Soon" almost seems like it was meant for a symphony, but I miss Anderson's singing there. I do love the way "Roundabout" turnes out, although the absence of the middle segent is disappointing; that would have sounded great on the horns. "Heart of the Sunrise" comes out very nicely. Plus "Survival" turns out pretty good too.
BEST TRACK: "Mood for a Day" is better than it has ever been before.
COMPLAINTS: I never liked "Owner of a Lonely Heart" in the first place, and despite some great guitar work and the fact that it beats the original, it doesn't quite match up to what I would have liked it to be. The other complaint is "Starship Trooper." I love the song. Even not being a big fan of live albums I enjoy listening to Wurm jams. But this song was NOT meant to be symphonic. It's still passable, but wouldn't you have loved hearing "To Be Over" or "And You And I" in its place?
RATING: My Scale: ***1/2 John McFerrin's Scale: 8(11)
Talk - Victory 1994
7 (11)
Best song: The Calling
After the complete and utter disaster of Union, it's understandable that the band took a couple of years off to try and regain some semblance of direction in its sound. Bill Bruford took his paycheck and bolted, never to return, while Steve Howe (supposedly) was becoming enough of an irritant to other band members that he was paid to go away and leave Yes alone. Rabin and Wakeman actually became good friends on the Union tour (it's obvious that Wakeman enjoyed playing YesWest material, as evidenced by recordings from that tour), and there were rumors of both Rabin and Wakeman working together on the next Yes album. But alas, it was not to be. A new record label, Victory, had recently opened for business under the ownership of an associate of Yes, and offered Yes a recording contract on certain grounds. These grounds were (a) that they use the 90125 lineup (so no Wakeman) and that (b) Trevor Rabin produce. It might not have been the direction fans wanted, but it was a direction, and that was good enough for the band.
Now, as a result of this condition, many fans automatically dismiss this album as a Rabin solo-project with only marginal input from Anderson. I fell into this trap once, but actual historical fact shows something substantially different. Fact is, with Rabin in control, he was free from any outside pressures to produce Owner-like hit singles, and this meant he could freely collaborate with Anderson without looking over his shoulder for the disapproval of record executives. The result, then, is that Anderson has FAR more input on this album than on any other YesWest record, and the focused vision of Jon and Trevor produced results that proved that Union was merely an unfortunate fluke. For the first time, Rabin was free to try and help create a Yes album, and in many ways he succeeded. The songwriting is very strong, the instrumental parts are powerful without sounding stupidly generic (like on much of BG), there's a good dose of atmospherics, and the harmonies are nice.
So why only a seven? Well, for a couple of reasons. The first is the production. It's very good from a technical standpoint, but the problem is it's too good. The sound has obviously been processed again and again to remove any blemishes, and the result is that the final product is sterile like nothing else in the Yes catalogue. It's squeaky clean and completely anti-septic, but at the price of sucking the very life out of the songs at times. It's no wonder then, that when placed in a live environment (see the Endless Dream review below), these songs suddenly kick like few other things can, whereas here I'm somewhat left scratching my head.
The other problem is that there are a couple of cheeseball moments so severe that I can't help but lower the rating out of good conscience. One of these happens in the otherwise gorgeous I Am Waiting, where the swaying anthemically beautiful melody is interrupted by a stupid hard-rock break with Trevor's generic screams making me ashamed to play an otherwise wonderful track in front of my friends. The other of these happens in Endless Dream, during a section that honestly sounds like the guitars are belching and vomiting (even though it's just Trevor processing his guitar sound into oblivion. Bleh). A shame, since the piece is pretty damn much perfect otherwise.
But other than those the problems, the songs are pretty much fine. The Calling is an incredible anthemic opening, a jaw-droppingly ecstatic way to resume your Yes listening-experience after suffering through Onion. There's a neat wall-of-sound effect to the vocal harmonies, while Anderson serenades us with some of his usual metaphysical jibberish/goodness over a terrific vocal melody, and the instrumental parts are just fun to listen to. Tony Kaye gets a wonderfully energetic Hammond Organ solo in the middle (a side note: Trevor is credited with all the keyboard parts on this album except for Hammond Organ, which may seem egomaniacal at first but is actually an admission of how it'd been all along in YesWest. Where's Geoff Downes when you need him?), Trevor messes with a weird chord sequence that's incredibly engaging, and in the end it all fades out with a plaintive "In the beginning is the future ..." Wow.
Nothing else on the album ends up as start-to-finish entertaining as the opener, but that doesn't mean that parts of other songs don't exceed much of that one. I Am Waiting has some incredibly pretty, emotion-seeped guitar work from Trevor, and the actual song successfully weaves together enough solid balladeering ideas to make three good songs. Again, chop out the "It happened in the water" break in the middle, and you have a pretty much flawless track. In the pop vein, we have the terrific single (actually written originally by Trevor with Roger Hodgson, during the ABWH era) Walls, with a chorus that will drive many "traditional" Yes fans up the wall but that makes the well-done-pop-lover in me smile with glee. And I'm not about to deny the goodness of the verse melody, even if it is sung exclusively by Trevor.
A few others don't grab me quite as much, but they're still good in the end. Where Will You Be doesn't really jump out at me in this version, as it seems to just kinda simmer at a sleepy level, but as a live version shows, it's a neat atmospheric piece after all. And besides, the lyrics are cute in their spirituality, a pondering of where current friends will be when you and they are reincarnated elsewhere. Elsewhere, State of Play is a little too "dancey" in places for me, but the main verse melody and the middle eight are just incredible in their catchiness and beauty - the only thing that ends up seriously bugging me is the excessive "sterilization" of Jon's voice when he sings "It's just a state of play" right before a generic hard riff in the middle of the track. And of course, there's Real Love, the piece that suffers the most from the mellow production. It has a nice riff, a good melody, and I don't even mind the extended ending anymore, but the intensity is sucked out of it as if by a vacuum cleaner thanks to the production. This would especially become GREAT in live performance, with the percussion becoming deep and booming and giving it a drive the piece so desperately needs.
Closing things out, we have YesWest's stab at a Yes epic, entitled Endless Dream. Jon and Trevor cowrote it, as with the rest of the material, and it should be no surprise that both expressed great love for the piece. It is somewhat derivative from a strictly prog perspective, but nobody here is claiming it exceeds Gates or anything like that. The opening is a powerful blast back to progressive days past, with thunderous drumming from Alan and powerful playing from Trevor, while the rest of the piece (except for the stupid guitar sounds in the "Tin Jesus" part) alternates between ethereal ambience and pretty vocal melodies graced with gorgeous harmonies. It is said by Anderson that the vocal harmonies literally brought him to tears while singing, and knowing Jon, I can believe it, because they really are so very very pretty (especially when it seems the voices are just melting around me during the climactic "We call this surrender slowly towards the north AND THIS ENDLESS DREEEEEAM"). And hey, the overall construction is very clever - there are thematic reprisals at just the right time, with effective alternations in intensity and beauty, and a wonderful coda that fades things out. Not to mention that Trevor pulls out some more of his pretty guitar work (a la in the end of Hearts or in the best parts of I Am Waiting), which makes the sound that much fuller and more powerful. The piece has its flaws, sure, and I was only able to really appreciate the magnificence of this version after sampling a live version, but it still deserves its place among the modern classics of the band.
Unfortunately, the album sold horridly, mainly because Victory forgot to, you know, PUBLICIZE the album at all. Victory ended up going bankrupt fairly quickly, and unfortunately this has resulted in the album currently being out of print. Too bad - for all the (unwarranted) abuse Trevor has gotten from hardcore fans (and Steve Howe) for this album, it's really quite good.
Kristie Biro (kbmsu10@hotmail.com)
You know, it is quite funny to me that you would have such a bad review for this album. I mean...it may sound weird to you, but this is the 2nd Yes album that I heard....and honestly, this is the album that turned me on to Yes. It is true that it is a bit different from there other records...but which two are alike? Isn't that the beauty of music?!? I think Trevor Rabin did a great job on this album...I mean, not everything can be put into it. Sure Chris Squire is a GREAT bass player and I am sure he had a lot of high points in the studio, but you can only incorporate so much of it onto the actual record. The first time I heard this album I fell in love with it. The strange thing is that I was only 17 the time....a year ago. I am now 18, and Talk is still high up there on my list of Yes Albums. I am still a premie to the music....but I know what I and others like. Tales is one of my favorite albums....the music is just spectacular, but I wouldn't short change any of there albums. Especially Talk. Liste