Lets talk about "Talk"

[Ilios]

I agree with the people out here that say Talk is underated. I think it could be the best Yes album since Relayer. Uh-Oh , I'll be kicked off this site in no time.

Talk was the first album I heard by the band. The album that sold me on Yes.

Originally posted by Ilios
Uh-Oh , I'll be kicked off this site in no time.

Don't even think it Ilios. You'd be surprised how many will agree with you. I don't happen to be one of them, but there are a lot of folks who will.

[Q]

I don't think Talk is the best Yes since Relayer. But I do think it's the best Yes from GFT1 thru the end of the Rabin era.

I think it's the most compositionally mature work of the YesWest period. I think it's Trevor Rabin's high mark as a composer, instrumentalist and producer. And I think it fulfills a destiny that only a select handful of Yes albums fulfilled: it synthesized a new Yes sound from Yes's rich musical history in combination with new influences (these albums are universally loved or hated, especially in this forum).

I have a lot more to say about the album, but this will do for a start.

neverthirst! jack! joedude! speak up!

Q

[nightliner]

Talk is the best album featuring trevor Rabin.

Endless Dream is as good as any of the classic Yes epics, and I would love to hear it live just one more time.

[BrianD]

Can't agree with you Nightliner about Endless Dream - I find it to be a 'forced epic', in other words it seems as if Rabin was trying too hard to match the work of 70s Yes - and fails by a mile. His talents were best seen in the catchy shorter songs - and I quite enjoyed a lot of them.

Talk was a bitter disappointment to me - much worse than Union or the earlier YesWest efforts - if only because the earlier albums didn't try to be like 70s Yes. Talk did and failed dismally.

[Jackaranda]

I'll speak up. First--yessiree--how much have you listened to Endless Dream? You know I've heard Tales hundreds of times and still love it (save for you know what). People may think this crazy, but I always thought that if they did Tales II Endless Dream would be a great fit. And what about Where Will You Be? That's practically a Jon solo song(and a good one at that). And I Am Waiting is a GREAT vocal by Jon.

I love Talk. It took listening about a week to get used to it, it was very different at the time, but it was moving forward with a vengance, I thought. It seems to be a love-hate record for Yes fans. Personally, I love it. It's in my top 3 Yes albums ever...Jack..

[Q]

Nightliner, I am envious ... I never saw "Endless Dream" live, but boy, would I love to ...

I can understand BrianD's reticence. When I first heard Talk I was somewhat puzzled. It differed greatly not only from past Yes in general but was a specific diversion from what YesWest had done on the previous 2.5 albums.

Repeated listenings at the time opened the album up for me and it took deep root. I remember listening to it at work throughout the day, for months, in 1994. All the classic elements were there - the metric anomalies, the marvelous harmonies, the structural innovations, the burgeoning diversity, the hybridization of styles (Rabin's brilliant nod to a certain country guitarist shocked and then thrilled me). ("Walls" is an exception for me - it is ordinary and undistinguished and it seems a "Tormato" moment in an otherwise splendid album ...)

My feeling is that "Endless Dream" ended an era, in the same way that "Awaken" did 17 years earlier, with a triumphant cry. Jon said at the time (and waffled later) that it was as good as anything Yes had done, and I agree. (I'd be up for a Yes Epics thread, where the Long Form YesWorks are compared musically, if anyone thinks it can be done with minimal bruising and lacerations ...)

Love to all,
Q

I'm glad you were able to leave that "life" behind i-and-i, and come and play here with us.

[Jackaranda]

Jon DID say at the time that Endless Dream and Talk were the best music Yes had ever done, and later he did, rather severly, contridict himself about that. He certainly seemed sincere at the time, on a couple of TV shows and on a NY radio interview I saw a video of. He was VERY sincere about the album at the time.

And the concert was great, even if the crowd was small. I saw them in Dayton that year.

Wish we had a CD and/or a video of it!!! Jack....

[Jackaranda]

Glad to hear things are going well. That was some pretty heavy stuff, to say the least. You've got my undying respect...Jack..

[Ilios]

I'm glad people out here like Talk. It was the first Yes album I heard and I remember being left speechless by it. I would eventually , Because of that album , go on to become a major Yes head. Endless Dream is an incredible vision of our possible world. That whole album is a glorious expression of love.

Originally posted by i-and-i
I'm glad to have survived that self-inflicted agony. Now I have only one weekness. I free base orange scented air fresheners.

i-and-i, I think you need some rest. Between this pix and that post of yours on the "words not on Yes music" thread.... I'm starting to wonder about the state of your mental health. hahaha

[RobAdams]

Don't worry. There's absolutely nothing wrong with me. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
Who said that? Shhhh! Quiet...........Okay. It's all right. Where was I? I wish my hair would stop laughing.

[Neverthirst]

I find this actually a bit difficult. TALK holds so many memories for me ... and isn't it exhilarating how music can do that.

I suppose more than others, I never thought much about why I love TALK, I just felt it. Hehehe, I guess I won't be up for arguing this one rationally ...

For me, TALK holds a kinesthetic quality like no other. I feel physically embraced by it.

That's not to say that I don't often feel physically bound to music that I love ... I do. But with TALK its extremely personal.

For example ...

I Am Waiting ... the dynamics ... the guitar that sounds like breathtaking tears of joy for all things good.

The soft and beautiful moments followed by glorious and powerful ones ... and the climactic moment ... "all my life my world is you" ... it consumes me.

That song - Its how I feel when I'm in Love.

[Neverthirst]

I feel like I killed the thread because my last post was romantically inclined ...

Don't let me be the one to kill the Talk thread ...

Jack, Q, somebody bail me out ...

[Q]

perhaps that will invigorate the discussion.

"Endless Dream" has been acknowledged by all (in Yes and in the rock press that gave the album notice, and by most of the fans who have discussed the album on this site) as being an "epic" in the Yes mode. This is not just true because of the length, it's true from a structural and arrangement standpoint. We can go into depth on that if anyone cares to.

However ...

In response to the Bashers, who love to maintain that Rabin is un-Yessish and not a musician in the Yes mold, I would point out that with "Endless Dream," Rabin has OUT-YESSED all his predecessors; for Rabin's contribution on that track far exceeded the contributions of any individual on prior "epics," with the possible exception of Jon's compositional effort (not to say performance) on GOD.

Put simply, no Yes musician ever contributed so much musically to a Yes epic as Rabin contributed to "Endless Dream" ...

Now, this doesn't mean "Endless Dream" is better or worse than "Awaken" or "CTTE" or anything like that - I am simply saying that "Endless Dream" fully vindicates Rabin as a composer and performer worthy of membership in the second-most exclusive musical boys' club in history ...

Love to all,
Q

[Neverthirst]

Originally posted by Quantum
... Rabin has OUT-YESSED all his predecessors; for Rabin's contribution on that track far exceeded the contributions of any individual on prior "epics," with the possible exception of Jon's compositional effort (not to say performance) on GOD.

Put simply, no Yes musician ever contributed so much musically to a Yes epic as Rabin contributed to "Endless Dream" ...

.... "Endless Dream" fully vindicates Rabin as a composer and performer worthy of membership in the second-most exclusive musical boys' club in history ...

That was awesome, Q!!! I would love to see someone take on. Has anyone seen a basher? How about just a Trooper who vigorously disagrees?

[Joedude]

I can't agree more with Quantum! Unlike many Yes epics, its seems that Trevor had an idea on how it should go from start to end.

[Udo Pampel]

Originally posted by jack gowen
Jon DID say at the time that Endless Dream and Talk were the best music Yes had ever done, and later he did, rather severly, contridict himself about that. He certainly seemed sincere at the time, on a couple of TV shows and on a NY radio interview I saw a video of. He was VERY sincere about the album at the time.


I remember reading Jon saying something like "we are working on the new album (the best yet!)" during the time they were making "Big Generator", so I think he just likes to sell the latest.

I was very disappointed that Yes did not play in the UK during the Talk era, as I love the record.

[Q]

From what I have read about the circumstances at the time of the Talk tour, it is probably best that Yes did not tour the UK at that time. The entire world was receptive to Trevor Rabin at the time of the mammoth 90125 tour, owing to the fact that the band had been wonderfully re-born after its announced death a few years earlier. However, a decade later, factionalization had occurred in the fan base, particularly after Union, and we all remember the reception Trevor Horn was given in the UK on the Drama tour, despite his having been accepted by U.S. crowds.

The bottom line is, as unfortunate as it seems, it is probably a good thing that the Talk tour missed the UK. And that's a shame, when you think of those UK fans who would have loved it ...

[Q]

Bill Martin comments in his book MUSIC OF YES that Talk has a "sci-fi" quality to it. He went on to call Talk "cyberYes" ... and to me, that makes a lot of sense.

What Rabin did with "Endless Dream" was prove once and for all, to Rolling Stone's critics and beyond, that the spirit of Yes music is not confined to the early 70s but can be brought forward into music's future ...

Q

[PeterCologne]

Now, as Magnification grows and grows and reveals more and more of beeing real new music, I'm getting a little unshure. But before, I always thought, that Talk was the last real masterwork of Yes. It is indeed a very tough step into the future of music.

Yes/Trevor Rabin managed again to create a music, that is free from beeing stylistic. I mean, you can't say what it is. Listen to The Calling for example. I don't know much music that has such a free-form-attitude. There are no boundaries. The music seems to come from a place, where genres like rock, pop, country, folk, world-music play no role. The Calling rocks, but is no real rock-music, it is a never heard mixture of what we call rock, country, electronic, even Jazz, made by people on a different planet, who don't know about those styles, but just mix equal feelings. More or less the same with State of Play or Real Love.

Or take I'm Waiting. At the first listening, you could be remembered on Dire Straits. But from every further listening on, it takes you to a journey to unknown terretories of melody and rhythm and arrangement. And that journey still goes on.

Endless Dream too, in sounds - notably the keyboard-section - and structure is totally new for me. It doesn't have as much notes as Close to the Edge for instance. But every note you hear on the different layers, sounds like a piece in a perfect puzzle, created maybe by a genius like Da Vinci.

And let's don't forget Where Will You be, which appears to me, as if Yes had invented world-music, as natural as they put in exotic influences.

And yes, I agree with Quantum on Bill Martin, Talk has something, you could call "cyber-Yes", but then it is the second cyber-creation in music, that breathes and has a soul. The first one is Big Generator, which, IMO, is equally strong as Talk.


There are some moments on Open your Eyes that come close - although this album has for shure not the high standard of Talk, but is very underrated.

Let's see/hear how Magnification developes. This use of strings is really tough.

Greetings
Peter

[RobAdams]

I listened to TALK today. I still like 90125 a little bit more, but TALK is certainly a very concise effort from the Westies. Would it be a stretch to consider it the Yes West 90's cousin of RELAYER?

[Q]

I've said a number of times that there were recorded Yes tracks that didn't knock me out on CD, but took on new and wonderful life when I heard them live (In The Presence Of is the most prominent example)

But when I'm knocked out by a CD track, and then hear it live, I am just over-the-top delirious; and that was my experience with "Endless Dream." I've always loved the track, and appreciate the comparison of Talk to Relayer ... could "Endless Dream" be considered a sonic "answer" to GoD?

In any case, I recently saw a foreign video of "Endless Dream" being performed on the Talk Tour --- and was overwhelmed with the power of the track in live performance ...

The very Talkative Q

[1yesfan]

I wouldn't mind a VIDEO from the Talk Tour!

[yes_angel]

"Talk" a very excellent CD,very well produced and had some radio play also.The Talk Tour was amazing with so much energy,but then again all YES concerts are.

[Kevin Still]

Boy, you know I go back and forth on the Rabin era of Yes. If you haven't guessed I am a Howe devotee. With that said Talk was a hard cd at first for me to digest.

The first thing I was a little suprised at was the absence of Tony Kaye except for a few Hammond parts he played on. I guess Rabin spent the most time in the creation process.

I always felt that Talk was EXTREMELY WELL PRODUCED. My first introduction to computer recording. I now use computers exclusively to record projects in my studio although I do use a bunch of rack mounted outboard processers, preamps, and the like. My band is recording here and it is going to be done on Pro Tools. Just like Magnification.

The songs were not initially impressive to me. I don't know why but they just did not "turn me on" at first. I always did like "the Calling". As I gave the cd a few more chances it did grow on me.
I now find Talk an enjoyable listen and a valuable snapshot of Yes in the 90's just before another evolutionary step in the last years of the 20th century.

Just remember folks, it's 2003 and we still have them.

[Martin Riley]

For me TALK was the very best of The Rabin era, seeming to my ears an almost perfect combination of what the band(i.e. Rabin and Anderson) wanted to do and what the record company wanted from them, a distillation of progression with pop sensibilities where necessary.

[Q]

The only way it could have been better, I think, would been for Wakeman to have been aboard at the time ... imagine what Talk would have been like then ...

Q

[yessongs72]

Let's not Talk, about Talk. Let's talk about hopefully that Yes will get into the studio and give us the best albums since Magnification, The Ladder, Tormato,GFTO, Relayer,Tales,CTTE, Fragile, The Yes Album, Time and A Word and Yes, geezzzzzz, I belive that covers it. Oh, 90125 and Big Generator weren't to bad, for Rabin albums. You know what's strange is Steve doesn't play ort want to play any Rabin material, but he will play Time and A Word,go figure. I think if Steve really put his mind to it, he could really blow away Rabin, maybe one day he will get that chip off his shoulder. Now for you Rabin fans, i do admit he's a good guitarist, but I don't see him and Steve together. I do wish that Sherwood would come back, he added some nice backing vocals, alongs with playing Rabin songs, which would help appeal to all Yes fans.

[arrel]

As I play through my Yes collection in order, there are a few CDs that, if I'm really honest with myself, don't exactly fill me with anticipation (though most of them do).

TALK is one CD that I always look forward to when its turn in the rotation comes around.

That's as good a recommendation as I can imagine. :D

But, hey, the nice thing is we don't have to defend what we like, we can just like it.