Best from your Worst

[soundchaser09]

A little game involving your personal least favourite Yes albums. Take your bottom 4 albums and, using songs just from those albums, design an album (or double album) from them that you would enjoy. I think this is a good way of demonstrating that every Yes album has parts that work really well.

[soundchaser09]

For me my bottom 4 are YES, Keys to Ascension, Open Your Eyes and Heaven and Earth.

Open Your Eyes
Light of the Ages
I See You
Be the One
Looking Around
The Solution
Man in the Moon
Beyond and Before
Subway Walls

[Old Frothingslosh]

My bottom 4= Time and A Word, Open Your Eyes, Heaven & Earth, The Quest

No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed
Sweet Dreams
Astral Traveler
Open Your Eyes
Universal Garden
Man In The Moon
Subway Walls
The Ice Bridge

[Soundwaveseeker]

Bottom 4 would have to be: Keys To Ascension(as Keystudio), Open Your Eyes, Heaven & Earth, but I'm hard pressed for the fourth album. So as the Quest is new and hasn't established itself yet in my hierarchy of Yes albums or placed itself yet anywhere in my Yes album ranking, it will have to be the fourth album for now.


The Ice Bridge
Open Your Eyes
Minus The Man
Footprints
Believe Again
Wonderlove
Light Of The Ages
The Western Edge
That, That Is
The Solution (without the ambient track tacked on)

hmmm, maybe I should rip all that to a CD-R, would sound great.

[Mr. Holland]

Now first off, I did a thread like this on the old forum, so I'm suing for copyright infringement...

But here goes: My least favourite albums are Open Your Eyes, Union, From a Page and ABWH

New State of Mind
Shock to the System
Order of the Universe (long Edit)
To the Moment
Open Your Eyes
Miracle of Life
Brother of Mine
Fortune Seller
Lift Me Up

[Yorkshire Square]

Yeah, well I'm struggling to make an album. A double is well out of the question:

Astral Traveller
Don't Go
Shock to the System
Almost Like Love
Dear Father
The More We Live
Can You Imagine
Holding On
Holy Lamb

[bondegezou]

Worst 4 albums for me would be... Open Your Eyes, Talk, Union and Heaven & Earth. Easy enough to make a good album!

Silent Spring ?
Open Your Eyes 5:14
Real Love 8:42
Masquerade 2:16
Lift Me Up 6:29
The Game 6:49
Miracle of Life 7:30
The More We Live - Let Go 4:53
If was All We Knew 4:11
Subway Walls 9:02

[PeterCologne]

My four worst albums are ABWH, Heaven & Earth, The Quest and From A Page, and the winners are:

Brother Of Mine
Quartet
In A World Of Our Own
Light Of The Ages
It Was All We Knew
The Gift Of Love
From The Turn Of A Card
The Western Edge
Music To My Ears

[Sharp On Attack]

Bottom four = ABWH, H&E, FaP and The Quest

Brother of Mine
Quartet
Light of the Ages
All We Knew
Subway Walls
The Gift Of Love
The Ice Bridge
The Western Edge
Music To My Ears

[Ash Armstrong]

My least-liked albums by Yes are the three Rabin albums and Heaven and Earth. I don't listen to them so I'm unable to pick out bits of them I'd want to bother with; as the context of each track is the album whence they reside, were I to assemble a compilation of the pieces I'm least put-off by, all I'd be forced to confront is the album I'm reminded of.
Life is too brief, and there is so much pleasing music to enjoy, that I've no wish to torture myself with the lesser unpleasantries of the least-liked.

You will note, I trust, my avoidance of the words 'best' and 'worst'....

[bondegezou]

I see a lot of "Subway Walls", "Open Your Eyes", "The More We Live" and "The Ice Bridge" in the thread so far.

[soundchaser09]

I see a lot of "Subway Walls", "Open Your Eyes", "The More We Live" and "The Ice Bridge" in the thread so far.

sad that the Quest is on many people's bottom 4

[Roundabob]

My bottom 4 albums are Tormato, Big Generator, Open Your Eyes, and Heaven and Earth, but there are some great songs on those albums...

On the Silent Wings of Freedom
Future Times/Rejoice
Onward
Final Eyes
Shoot High, Aim Low
Open Your Eyes
Light of the Ages
Subway Walls

[madbear]

Worst for me are 90125, Big Generator, Union and Tormato. I can't make an album, but I'll have a 12" single with a long remix of Owner of a Lonely Heart on, and On The Silent Wings of Freedom on the b-side.

[Homemade Parachute]

Yeah, I'm not fond of "worst" either, I might put "misguided" or "formative" instead — Yes and Time and a Word, for instance, I think of as so formative, enjoyable in their own right, but not at all indicative of the band they would become, like Bowie's first two self-titled albums, or From Genesis to Revelation, or Rush's debut. Some albums knock it out of the park first go, and clearly lay out a manifesto or statement of intent, like King Crimson or Marillion. Yes, less so, and so while I don't play those first two albums often, they are what they are, and are pleasant enough for what they are. But if I'd been the record exec, yeah, I'd have dropped them after a third album of that, too.

Misguided: even this, hmm, hard to describe. There are some albums where one or two members just weren't on board, for whatever reason, and it shows: Open Your Eyes, sure, but also Topographic Oceans, and maybe Tormato, where different members wanted different things (it happens). Or Heaven & Earth, where the production and tentative nature of the songs made for a less-than-ready experience…

What I do think is, given any four Yes albums at random, and I could probably pull together a solid hour of songs I'd be really happy with. Probably wouldn't work as a playlist or live experience due to different line ups and styles, but there's almost always something I enjoy.