Yes - Flight Delayed

I said last time that I had ordered the rejigged Fly From Here album - Return Trip, and that review would follow. Pledge Music managed to upload faulty files (twice at least). The mp3 files I have show at least one loud "pop" on track 3, and faults on another track that was uploaded to Soundcloud for free download. I managed to reduce the pop to manageable levels with Audacity and am happy enough. Replacements for all files have been promised and were allegedly on line on 2nd May (if so can't find them).

The music? Oh yes! Compared to the 2011 version it is a richer sound, more keyboards, and Squires bass higher in the mix. Horn says he took singing lessons before embarking on the vocals, and while he is still not the strongest singer the Buggles vibe (and these were Buggles songs first) works for me. It's more evident than ever that Benoit David (singer of 2011 album) was following a guide vocal from Horn. The main let down remains Steve Howe's guitar. On the early parts he appears to be using a Stratocaster giving a very thin reedy sound, where his ES175 or something like that would have given a much more "Yes" sound. They could have worked that over as well surely and turned this into the last great Yes album.

In the end having now heard the most recent studio album Heaven & Earth I won't be back for more. Archival live albums certainly. Repeating the 7 shows from '72 box set with possibly the Union Tour or the "Ten True Summers" tour from 1979 where plenty of high quality bootlegs exist.

Pledge Music have taken responsibility for the whole download mess, and Geoff Downes has tweeted the bands apology. But given that it takes about 5 minutes to rip a CD to a FLAC or mp3 file why all the problems?

One question has to be why did Yes go the Pledge Music route, are they not marketable enough to make the release of the new album attractive to a label? Or is it as I would suspect the usual with Yes, shooting themselves in the foot by simply being bad at business.

The march of time

Which line up of a band is the "right" one? A question of vital importance in some fans minds, especially so when it comes to Yes.

This week there are two bands calling themselves Yes. The "official" one with two long standing members, one who was there for a bit and came back, and two who came from tribute bands. Then there is Anderson, Rabin, Wakeman now also calling themselves Yes. Anderson & Wakeman have form here as they were in an off shoot in the 80s with Steve Howe and Bill Bruford called ABWH. Keeping up? Thought not, nor am I.

The legitimacy of line ups is an odd question, particularly as many of the heroes of the seventies are getting on a bit and may not always be up for too much touring. In an effort to top up the pension the few remaining "real" members recruit some new talent as band mates retire and hit the road. AC/DC lost their singer, and recruited Axl Rose to complete a tour. For me the picture to the right is all the reason you need why this shouldn't have happened.

In the end you pay your money (or not) and take your choice of continuing to follow these artists. Personally I have been to see Procol Harum (great), Robin Trower (struggling), and others over the last few years because the chance clearly won't be there soon. Others however, like Yes, Renaissance, and Steely Dan I passed on because it feels like time for them to finish as performances don't seem up to scratch or politics has got in the way.




To return to Yes there is still another version of the band that has justput out an album. This one has Downes, White and Howe from "official" Yes, the late Chris Squire on bass and Trevor Horn rubbing out the original singer on "Fly From Here", their 2011 album, and adding his own voice.  Now this one I am interested in. This lineup made my favourite Yes album "Drama" in 1980, which was at least partly written by Horn & Downes in Buggles mode. The 2011 version always sounded like the singer (called Benoit David should you care) was following a guide vocal by Horn, and I gather he was. So my order is in and we will see what the difference is. Watch this space...

My weird take on Yes

When I mentioned Yes in my post on Progressive Rock I got this tweet. I asked why weird and got no reply so here are some more weird opinions.

Yes, like Elbow and Camel, are so much better live than on record. Rick Wakeman describes their albums as "sterile" and he is often right. The Union album is quite dreadful, but the tour that went with it, eight musicians playing for the music rather than themselves, the convenient doubling of everything except Bass & singer allowed songs like 'Awaken' to expand and evolve. The current state of play is that there are two bands called Yes, with 2 or 3 "proper" members each, and some extras. The whole mess is explained in detail at Henry Potts' site. Personally I could care less.

So why write about them? I joined in with the Drama album in 1980, and only dabbled with their music until the Internet came along. Drama was and is a great album, top drawer songwriting, crisp production, and the best ever examples of Chris Squire's bass as lead instrument style in 'Does It Really Happen' and 'Tempus Fugit'. The new boys brought new vigour to the music. Geoff Downes simpler sound pallette feels more integrated with the rest of the band, particularly Steve Howe's guitar, than Wakeman did on either of the previous two albums. They were unafraid to innovate, Trevor Horn playing bass on Run Through The Light for instance.

So with the advent of the interwebs (in my world) about 1999, I started looking backward, and catching up with what bands were doing. This was the heyday of the email newsletter and information and opinion about new releases and band activities was filtering through as never before. Yes had one and I subscribed, just in time for "The Ladder", another album with a fair bit of innovation, while remaining undeniably Yes. It's the best songs 'Homeworld (The Ladder)', and 'The Messenger' that work best and Bruce Fairbairn's production doesn't pander to their more noodly tendancies. The Ladder songs come properly alive on "House of Yes: Live from House of Blues" the album resulting from the following year's worth of touring. Some of the old stuff is given a makeover and Steve Howe manages to play on Trevor Rabin era songs, although he is far from happy about it.

After the orchestral "Magnification" album which failed mainly due to lack of good material and being released on 10th September 2001, innovation and progress stopped in Yes-World. They retreated to the formula pioneered at the Keys To Ascension shows in 1996, largely ignoring anything after 1979 (ok they did play the title song of Magnification in 2002 and a couple more newer songs in 2004). Innovation having died, and unwilling to wait on Jon Anderson's health the band fractured recruited a couple of Jon-alike singers and set off on tour in 2008. None of the resulting music or numerous live albums sound like anything other than going through the motions. With Chris Squire gone and Alan White using a sub/back up drummer in recent years they increasingly sound like their own tribute band. The "other" band Yes Featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman spreads its net wider, talking in material from all eras (except Drama which none of them played on)

So my weird conclusions are that Yes work best when a producer has a firm hand on the tiller. They thrived on innovation, particularly live. The best Yes music is song based and not about awesome musical technique. They were and probably still are a band ruled by their business decisions, rather than musical ones. Oh and Chris Squire is God's own Bass Player.

This being true I would suggest listening to

Yes (1969) A good bridge between the sixties and seventies, with a few cracking songs
Going For The One (1977) The return to songs after the noodling years
Drama (1980) Something new and different
Talk (1994) The best Rabin years album, with a good balance between his & Jon Anderson's influence
Keys To Ascension (1996) The best look back at the seventies, technology had caught up and the material was fresh after being set aside for a while.
House of Yes (2000) A contrasting look at old material and some new songs

I have to say I'm looking forward to Fly From Here - Return Trip in March 2018, same album with Trevor Horn taking lead vocals, the follow up to both Drama and The Buggles Adventures in Modern Recording which Yes fans should certainly hear. The best Yes album of the last 15 years is Anderson/Stolt's Invention of Knowledge, 

With the blue touch paper lit I'm now retiring to a safe distance. Feel free to disagree with me...

Labelled with Prog

My audiobook recently has been "The Show That Never Ends - The Rise and Fall Of Prog Rock" by David Weigel. While it focuses on the stories of the 70's heavyweights there are also diversions into other parts of Progworld which have pointed me towards yet more overlooked music.

Looking through the genre tab of the iPod it turns out I have quite a bit of stuff labelled "Progressive Rock". Seems strange for someone whose music tastes formed at the end of the 70's and the early 80's. Then there's the Prog Magazine Readers group on Facebook which spends most of its time arguing about what is or isn't "Prog". So what's it all about (Alfie)?

To set my stall out I don't like ELP, not too fussed about Pink Floyd (for me the Collection of Great Dance Songs compilation is all the Floyd you need) and I can take or leave most Genesis. I've nothing against the early/mid 70s, I just wasn't there...

King Crimson: My interest in Crimson starts in 1981, in fact I saw the band while it was still called Discipline at Moles Club in Bath on their first gig. The inventiveness of the trio of 80s albums still amazes me. Live they were constantly challenging, listen to any of the downloads at DGM Live, better, listen to them all. From there right up to the current 8 man band revisiting and rewriting earlier incarnations it's the sound of boundaries and envelopes being pushed. Nothing has ever got close to King Crimson. They are the musical equivalent of flicking away a lit cigarette without looking to see where it lands.

 

Camel: Much gentler stuff, and a different kind of inventive. If you like Gilmour's guitar but not Waters' polemics then try Camel. A much sparkier prospect live where the Jazz & Blues inflections that can sound twee on record catch fire and Andy Latimer's guitar work has space to stretch out.

Renaissance: I know, not very radical whats with the orchestras and all. Forget Northern Lights, it's Betty Thatcher-Newsinger's lyrics sung by Annie Haslam and earlier by Jane Relf that make Renaissance's best albums worth your attention.

Procol Harum: Again ignore the hit and go for the live stuff. I got properly interested when BBC4 showed their Live at Union Chapel, and it's a good place to start.


David Weigel's definition of Prog drifts towards Jazz Rock, Electronic and AOR. Consequently people like Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield and John Wetton get a fair covering. His look at 80s "Neo Prog" doesn't go much further than Marillion, and the more recent revival, or perhaps that should be reappraisal, concentrates on Porcupine Tree, which is fair enough given Steven Wilson's ubiquity. It stops short of his recent chart shaking "To the Bone" album, which itself has generated some "is it Prog?" debate. Personally I think the place to start with Wilson's work is "Hand Cannot Erase".


John Mitchell, the other name to conjure with in modern Prog circles, has a very definite sound that he brings to his albums with Frost*, Lonely Robot and his production work, particularly Kim Seviour's excellent "Recovery Is Learning" album. Kim was previously singer with Touchstone, who highlight much of the problem with current Prog leaning music. Talented musicians, decent production, but hit and miss material, making most albums a struggle. Mitchell and Wilson have the songwriting skills to move beyond the banal to something with some lyrical bite and most importantly a tune. You see why I'm not keen on ELP now.

A few recommendations some from slightly outside the Prog box, that I think are "progressive" within a fairly traditional rock music format.

Elbow. As I suggested in my live review in March, Elbow have many of the qualifications for Progressive-ness, better live than on record, songs that can be the stuff of epics, and a comfort with the fact that they are good at what they do.
Try: "Live at Jodrell Bank", "Build a Rocket Boys" and "Little Fictions"


Steeleye Span "Wintersmith" with Terry Pratchett. I'm not a massive Pratchett fan (although try The Long Earth written with Stephen Baxter), but this rendering of his stories hits the spot. Chris Tsangrides production toughens up the sound without losing the organic, folk based feel. Get the deluxe edition with extra tracks and live material.
Try "The Dark Morris Song" "Crown of Ice" and "The Good Witch" for a flavour of the album

Robert Fripp / Andrew Keeling / David Singleton: The Wine of Silence. Fripp's soundscapes orchestrated by Andrew Keeling and produced by David Singleton are a thing of beauty. Probably more accurately seen as modern classical music, nevertheless meets the definition of progressive as something challenging and involving. Don't try it, just buy it.

Yes: The best of the "proper" Prog bands for me. Rick Wakeman describes their studio albums as "sterile" and by and large he's right. Despite a tendency (mostly Steve Howe I gather) to repeat the recorded works the same every night, right down to the solos, Yes can be a great live band, or at least before they turned into their own tribute band.
Try Keys To Ascension, very close to the best of live from a time when they were playing at their best. The only song missing is Southside of The Sky. Also try Live from the House of Blues, and the best studio album Going For The One.