I think you just kinda summed it all up, for me anyway. This will piss off certain people here but this does feel like a castrated band, it doesn’t have balls, like you said. I’ve heard all the refrains of, well, this is the music the band wants to make now, we can’t expect them to be what they were, yadda yadda yawn. I feel like Howe is castrating this band by being its boss. Yes at its best, had multiple bosses. Each strong in his own way and trying to pull the band in a certain direction but those multiple streams of pull created the best outcome. Now you’ve got one guy with all the pull and it really doesn’t work very well.
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I don't necessarily disagree that Howe is holding them back - but Dare To Know is very reminiscent of Tales! 😊Comment
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OK, game on! The bouncy verses would fit perfectly on The Remembering (or RSOG or Ritual for that matter.) The solo guitar that Howe calls the "droning bit" right after the orchestral "centerpiece" on DTK - sounds uncannily like the solo guitar Steve plays right after the "ritual" on Ritual. The acoustic lament at the end reminds me of a bit on RSOG, and finally, there's the main repeating figure itself - to me it's very reminiscent of instrumental melodies the band played at the time of Tales and Relayer. The overall mood, tempo, style, whatever - it could be side 2.5 of Tales 😊.Comment
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me too, I love the Yesshows versions, they really kick. It seems to me that the elements of the mix are a minor quibble, as you can hear everything and the power is there. I think it is more likely that it is just interview grumbles from people who left the band or werent involved in the mixing, but it gets to a spinal tap "you cant do metal in dobly" kind of thing, it's just talk. It's not like they were any better at mixing at the time, maybe Chris wasnt the best but they didnt really have the budget i'd expect to get a hotshot mixer in. Especially with the tech at the time, this is all before automated mixing, you couldnt just get steven wilson in to put all the multitracks into Logic and play with it. Did they even have specialist mixers then, other than the producer? (i remember rush talking about watching terry brown's fingers at the mix stage and marvelling)... eddie offord comes to mind but they'd already tried him on drama. Trevor Horn isnt really a mix engineer by his own admission, they had Hugh Padgham on board, but he wasnt really known as "Hugh Padgham" yet, if you get my drift.
On a kind note, if you check Steve Howe talking about the earlier mixing process the whole band were crowded around the desk arguing, pushing up their faders and making the mix that way. Steve says it in a fun way, and they got the result. So I imagine that same dynamic with only one of the members mixing... and you are bound to get at least half of the band disagreeing
I'd love the complete 76 tour multitrack tapes Chris used to compile yeshows to be dug up and nicely mixed by someone. Maybe a bit of pitch correction on Moraz' synths when the heat got too much!
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“Well ain’t life grand when you finally hit it?”-David Lee RothComment
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I do certainly see the points both of you are making.
However, in my opinion, Chris, howver phenomenal he was as a bass player, tends to get over romanticised. He was basically the one driving H&E in the sense he wanted it out there, quicker than Steve preferred. Chris was proud of that album, and it's not like that album is any less soft rock than The Quest. I don't think the direction when it comes to new music would have been much different to what it is now, had Chris still been with us. Nor would the live experience have been, since the band is basically still following the same pattern, that was established with Chris still in the band, around 2012; joint tours alternated with Yes only tours, album tours alternated with 'normal tours' and always with a strong focus on the seventies material.
What I also think is overlooked is that Yes turning softer, less rocking has been a gradual process that already started in the nineties. From Open Your Eyes onwards, every album has been less 'rocking' than its predecessor, turning softer and more mellow. Take Magnification for instance; Don't Go, Give Love Each Day, We Agree, Soft as a Dove, In the Presence Of, Time is Time; not exactly Head banging material. Yes, you have the title track, Spirit of Survival and Dreamtime that are more uptempo and rocking, but that's already the minority of the album. Heaven & Earth and The Quest are in my opinion a continuation of a journey that was already started almost thirty years ago, with all the major players, Jon, Chris, Steve, Alan still very much present with the band.
So one can argue that it's 'the current lineup', but to me the history of the past thirty years (also taking into account the solo work Anderson has released) and looking at how things progressed (or regressed given ones stance) doesn’t give any indication that musically things would have been much different if those major players were still part of the line up.Last edited by Mr. Holland; 11-04-2022, 06:08 AM.Comment
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I listened to Yesshows a lot more before I got heavily into the bootlegs. When I try to play it more recently the difference in style between the two keyboardists is a little jarring and disruptive to me. I’d love a Yesshows: Ultimate Edition box that includes the complete concerts from which the album was compiled.
me too, I love the Yesshows versions, they really kick. It seems to me that the elements of the mix are a minor quibble, as you can hear everything and the power is there. I think it is more likely that it is just interview grumbles from people who left the band or werent involved in the mixing, but it gets to a spinal tap "you cant do metal in dobly" kind of thing, it's just talk. It's not like they were any better at mixing at the time, maybe Chris wasnt the best but they didnt really have the budget i'd expect to get a hotshot mixer in. Especially with the tech at the time, this is all before automated mixing, you couldnt just get steven wilson in to put all the multitracks into Logic and play with it. Did they even have specialist mixers then, other than the producer? (i remember rush talking about watching terry brown's fingers at the mix stage and marvelling)... eddie offord comes to mind but they'd already tried him on drama. Trevor Horn isnt really a mix engineer by his own admission, they had Hugh Padgham on board, but he wasnt really known as "Hugh Padgham" yet, if you get my drift.
On a kind note, if you check Steve Howe talking about the earlier mixing process the whole band were crowded around the desk arguing, pushing up their faders and making the mix that way. Steve says it in a fun way, and they got the result. So I imagine that same dynamic with only one of the members mixing... and you are bound to get at least half of the band disagreeing
I'd love the complete 76 tour multitrack tapes Chris used to compile yeshows to be dug up and nicely mixed by someone. Maybe a bit of pitch correction on Moraz' synths when the heat got too much!
“Well ain’t life grand when you finally hit it?”-David Lee RothComment
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You're not wrong, but I also think that's a natural side of the band growing older — but also, The Ladder rocked pretty hard, and Magnification, being the orchestral album, less so, whether by design ("we should slow this down to allow the strings some room") or just inclination ("we're slowing down, we should add some strings to fill in the spaces").
At any rate, it's not the slowing down or softer side that disengages me, it's that more rather than less, the songs just aren't as interesting. Some of the "softer" songs from the history of Yes I really enjoy and would rank quite highly:
A Venture
Leaves of Green
To Be Over
Wondrous Stories
Madrigal
Onward
Holy Lamb
The Meeting
Let's Pretend
Take the Water to the Mountain
Where Will You Be
From the Balcony
It Will Be a Good Day
The Man You Always Wanted Me to Be
Hour of Need
Would I take a whole album of these? I sure would! (Obviously concerts would be a different story, but that's as much on me and my increasingly early bedtimes as it would be on them…) But nothing on H&E to me measured up, although a couple on The Quest got closer, so that was a move in the right direction. Sometimes the lyric can carry the song, and sometimes the details an intricacies of the song can carry up and (almost) make up for a dodgy lyric.
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I don't think Rabin would ever sack Chris. But, he nearly sacked himself from partying too hard before the tour. I was watching it last night. Trevor and Chris owned that show., together. True musical brothers. Watching it, you can sort of feel Anderson is the odd man out of the bromance. They regulated him up to his little keyboard percussion zone away from them.... But certainly they all 3, well actually all 4, sang excellent together!Comment
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That lineup certainly had its share of vocal fire power. Alan was in top form as well. I know that a lot of folks aren’t crazy about the dynamic range on the Talk album but I’ll take that big sound any day over the twee, soft rock pablum that Yes are serving up these days. My biggest gripe with the 90125 line up was that they didn’t stretch themselves musically. They chose instead to be a pop prog band, with very little of the prog element. If they had taken more of a Jacaranda type turn they would have been stupendous.Comment
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