I have a bad habit of looking at people's bookshelves, music, and video collections because it gives me a good idea of where their mind has been and what interests them to the point of spending money and effort to build up their collections.
You probably can't drop by my place to see my books, CDs, and videos, so
here's the next best thing - a list of my favorite Music, Cinema,Literature,
and other Fun Stuff Links.
Music Links
My favourite band is:
The very best Yes Web Site is Notes from the Edge(NFTE) .
The wonderful folks who maintain this Site are Very Well Connected indeed to Yes, which is a decidedly dispirate, complicated, and constantly changing outfit with over 35 years of history surrounding it.
One of my few regrets about my late adolscence was that, while I had the chance to see Yes live in Brisbane's Festival Hall in March, 1973, for their 'Close to the Edge Tour', I didn't go. I've been occasionally kicking myself ever since.
Don't forget to explore the other links off this Site, which lead to all sorts of interesting places, including huge Sites loaded with information about progressive rock music artists.
The
reasons why I've liked Yes since the early 1970s have to do with Jon Anderson's
amazing use of the voice, and the superlative musicianship of all members of
the band, in its several incarnations. I'm not interested in endless debates
between "Troopers" and "Generators" because I like material all incarnations
of the band have produced, as well as music they have done as solo artists and
in collaborations with other artists like Vangelis, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine
Dream, The Moody Blues, Kitaro, and members of ELP.
The Ultimate Yes double CD spans their history, but leaves out lots of excellent Yes tracks, as any compilation does. Most importantly, it does not have any live performances, and there are quite a few live versions of many of the tracks on this CD.
Like a lot of other bands, Yes have been inspired by science fiction, and ecclectic spirituality. At times, Jon Anderson's lyrics, to paraphrase Rick Wakeman in a 1996 interview you can find in a back issue of NFTE, indicate that he writes about this universe from some other universe quite a distance away. An interview with Jon, also published in NFTE in 1996, confirmed that he's apparently an "off his head" mystic. So what? Part of the enjoyment one gets from a band like Yes is trying to figure out what the lyrics mean, where the inspirations come from, and having lively and polite arguments with other Yes fans about what it all means, and does it really matter anyway when the music sounds so powerfully awesome.
Of course, I like Roger Dean's album covers for Yes hugely. The music and the covers fit into a conceptual whole which makes the package of album art and music greater than its elements.
I have a theory about where Jon Anderson gets his sometimes strange lyrics, and how these fit in with Roger Dean's amazing album covers. I'll explain this some time, and folks who aren't Yes fans won't have a clue what I'll be on about. It very simply has to do with Anderson's first solo album, 'Olias of Sunhillow' and tracing a quite coherent internally consistent thread from songs like 'Roundabout' and 'Close to the Edge', which pre-date 'Olias', the album covers by Dean over the years, right through to what Anderson's singing about in 'Homeworld - The Ladder'. The computer game images on Homeworld aren't the same as the Moreglade Mover, that odd fish shaped space ship constructed by Olias using mystical technologies flying ahead of the ruins of Sunhillow in Dean's classic painting, 'Escape' on 'Yessongs', but Anderson has been telling us the story of Sunhillow for over 30 years as a vehicle for his own syncretistic belief system. True!
Yes had never toured Australia since the early part of 1973
on the 'Close to The Edge' Tour, though Rick Wakeman has returned twice since
then. They obviously liked Australia, as Steve Howe asserts in 'Australia' on
his first solo album (pity about the singing, but the sentiments are fine).
'Birthright' on AWBH and 'An Evening of Yes Music Plus...' is as good an attack
on British nuclear tests in South Australia in the late 1950s as you'd want
to find. Their recent albums include the double CDs 'Keys to Ascension' featuring favourite
Yes tracks from the past recorded Live in Concert in March, 1996, plus three
new studio tracks, and 'Keys to Ascension II', were released late in 1997. Both
albums feature awesome performances and equally awesome cover art by Roger Dean.
The more recent Yes album, 'The Ladder', was released on September 28, 1999,
30 years to the day after the release of their very first album . The Ladder' features video content from the first edition
of the very popular computer game (which only runs on Windows machines), 'Homeworld'.
Of course, there are Australian Outposts of Yes
Fandom, loosely based in all capital cities. You can tell who are the Inner
Circle of this crew because they all have car number plates with 'Yes' in them.
(I don't!) .
There's even a Yes Bootleg CD production factory, which has produced several
outings, including a marvellous double CD bootleg of Yes' only Brisbane concert,
on March 19, 1973. A bargain at $45. E-mail
me if you'd like a copy and I'll arrange it (and I don't get commission!).
Having heard many Yes bootlegs, this CD, and its original tape, stands out
as one of the best. Given that it was originally recorded on reel to reel or
early compact cassette format, from an audience position using a shitty cardioid
mic and not off a split from the concert mixing desk, the quality is genuinely
astonishing. You can actually hear Eddie Offord's mixing, flinging discrete
signals around Festival Hall. Amazing Listening.
Through the Yes Fan network, strong rumours began circulating in 2001 of a
possible Yes tour of Australia in 2003. Promoter Michael Chubb, himself a Yes
Fan, and an almost fanatical group of Fans around Robert Forbes in Sydney, politely
hassled Yes and their management, even in person during tours of the US and
Europe.
Then the Time had come and the Word went out (can't entirely avoid using 'Yes-speak';
'Time and a Word' being the title of Yes' second studio album from 1970).
Yes were touring Australia in March, 2003, but with concerts only in Melbourne
and Sydney, as part of their 2003 Full Circle Tour. Hardly a genuine full circle
with Brisbane left off the list, but, Hey! how often have Yes toured Australia?
Much damage was done to credit cards as tickets were bought, airline flights
and accommodation booked for March 1, 2003.
Here was my first time (aside from joining one of the Brisbane YesHeads' periodic
and fearsomely expensive pilgrimages to the USA; my fandom doesn't run that
far) to actually see Yes Live in Concert, and exorcise my nagging late adolescent
regret at not seeing the Close to the Edge tour in Brisbane so long ago.
Then, just before Christmas, 2002, Jon Anderson hurt his back falling off a
ladder while putting up Christmas decorations, and the tour was postponed until
September, 2003. The Official as well as rumour mongering fan Web Sites were
all silent about whether or not Jon was actually practising levitation, or whether
or not he thought he was a character in the Homeworld computer game Yes had
co-promoted with their studio album, The Ladder.
The debates about an Ideal Set List for the concerts began. Polite debates,
as Yes Fans are a very polite lot. I hoped Steve Howe would not do 'Australia',
'cos he's awful as a solo singer, and Rick Wakeman's solo would not include
bars from 'Waltzing Matilda' like he did in Brisbane in 1973.
What I really hoped Yes would add to their Australian set list was the AWBH
song, 'Birthright', but there was even less chance of this than Steve Howe doing
'Owner of a Lonely Heart'. During the Yes East (White & Squire, who own
the rights to the Yes name and logo) versus Yes West (Anderson, Wakeman and
Howe) fight, Chris Squire thought AWBH was a very bad move indeed, and refuses
to play any AWBH period tunes. So 'Birthright' never gets played by Yes. Steve
Howe would almost rather have his fingernails pulled out than play any Trevor
Rabin guitar licks, such as open 'Owner', though he slums it on 'House of Yes'
'cos 'Owner' was such a huge hit in the USA.
And so it finally was that I, and some 7,000 ageing, and not so old Yes fans,
and some of Sydney's curious who weren't at some AFL game, gathered at the Sydney
Entertainment Centre on Saturday night, September 20, 2003, for the Full Circle
Tour with Yes Live in Concert for the first time Down Under in over 30 years.
You can read various fan reviews at Forgotten
Yesterdays, and these are universally effusive.
For my part, while I've seen all the movies, DVDs, heard all the report from
my travelling fan mates and live official and bootleg CDs, and I've seen bands
like U2 and Pink Floyd live in concert, so I know what a great concert sounds
like -
I had absolutely no idea that five musicians could play like that, no matter
how experienced, gifted, or no matter how long or how often they'd played the
same songs together over 30 years. From the moment Yes segued out of the Firebird
Suite intro into Siberian Khatru, almost drowned out by the estatic crowd, myself
included, all on our feet cheering and Yes hadn't played a note, yet, right
to Steve Howe's careful last accoustic chord of Roundabout which ended the concert,
this gig was simply and utterly astonishingly sensational. Unless I'd been there,
and seen and heard it by myself, I would not have believed that five musicians
could actually play like that.
My nagging adolescent regret at not seeing Yes in Brisbane in March, 1973,
has been completely remedied.
Check out the Yes Sites, see what you
think about their music if you haven't heard it, or forgotten it, or haven't
heard it lately.
More Cinema, Literature and Weirdness coming soon...