h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is Billy Sherwood not still a member?

Not only is BS out the band (for quite a long time now), but IK got the boot a while ago, and there's only 4 of them left (JA, CS, AW, SH).

New album ("Magnification") out soon - recorded with an orchestra (first time in 30 years, since T&aW).

To be honest, I have been quite dissapointed with all the albums since Trevor Rabin left. Talk was the last album I really enjoyed.

Oh, well.

Just out of interest, which recent albums have you listened to? They do vary quite a bit from year to year.

The release date for the new album has just been announced - September 11th 2001.

"The Ladder" was the last one I got. I got the two "Keys to Ascension" jobs and "Open Your Eyes". I've probably missed something as I don't keep up with Yes news any more, preferring as I do to wallow in the nostalgia of "Fragile", "Close to the Edge", and "Tales from Topographic Oceans".

I have to confess to being a little puzzled.

I like the "glory days" stuff myself - although it was decades old by the time I came across it (1989 on the back of ABWH).

I'm puzzled because I thought that The Ladder was one of the most 'Old Fashioned' Yes albums I'd heard for years.

It seems that you've got them all if you have KTA 1 & 2, OYE and Ladder. Personally I think that OYE is about the worst Yes record ever without exception - it even scores lower in my estimation that certain dubious solo disks and side projects.

"certain dubious solo disks and side projects"

Pray, what can you mean? I love some of the solo stuff...

I hereby challenge you (or anyone else) to name a selection of records as painfull as (in no special order):

Rhapsodies (Wakeman)
Ramshackled (White)
The Gospels (Wakeman again)
3 Ships (Anderson)
Conspiracy (Squire & Sherwood)
Flags (Moraz/Bruford)
Deseo (Anderson)
The More you Know (Anderson)
No Earthly Connection (Wakeman)

but worst of all.

RETURN TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH (Wakeman) - An unforgivable slur on an otherwise reasonable original recording.

etc. etc.

However...

I also personally would count amongst some of my favourite records:
Olias (Anderson)
6 Wives (Wakeman)
the story of i (Moraz)
Fish out of Water (Squire).

It just goes to show that the name on the top is NO indication of quality.

He he, thankfully I haven't tortured myself with most of those - except "Ramshackled" - I still have it but have only listened to it once!

Bizarrely, I found "The Story of I", "Ramshackled", and "Fish Out Of Water" all together in a second hand record shop opposite the flat where I used to live - and they were in very good nick indeed. Some Yes fan had obviously had a clear out. I had been looking for them for ages - who would have thought they'd turn up so close to home?

Yep, I love Olias, and I often listen to "Fish..." which I really do like a lot. Steve Howe's singing is something I can live without, however, although I like some of the songs on his solo albums - he just should have got someone else to sing them.

On a different note, on the "Yes Years" video, there is a clip of a live performance of "Long Distance Runaround", with Howe, Squire and Anderson all playing acoustic guitars. It's absolutely wonderful. My dream is to find it on a recording somewhere. It's nagged at me for years. Do you know of any such recording? The clip is only of about 30-40 seconds of the song.

I wrote a beautiful piece in reply to this question, and then Bill Gates killed my computer.



Simple answer.

If Squire is in a floaty lilac shirt the recordiong you want is the YesSongs film. It came out at the same time as the 3xLP but is a concert that doesn't feature in the records - therefore it is a differnt set etc.

It's available on VHS (PAL or NTSC) and DVD (reg 1 only I think).

Humourous Anderson guitar footage:
A video in the 80s (Rythym of Love?) with Jon 'playing' a perspex flying-V. Funniest thing ever (he's trying to rock out with the band)...

That said Jon can play the guitar (try EarthMotherEarth, a 90s solo CD - it's nice, basically a home recorded acoustic thing).

You should have seen the original post.

Best thing I've ever written, and now it's gone ...

Nah, I'm pretty sure from what they are wearing and the stage set that it is around Topographic Oceans time, though I don't think you get to see the drummer which I guess would confirm it.

I've seen Jon's transparent fying vee guitar - daft as a brush.

I'm not aware of any official video from that period, but there may be bootlegs

Here's a new thought:

What is the daftest thing any member of Yes has officially appeared wearing/doing?

My votes go as follows:

Wakeman - sequinned cape (most of the 70s)
Anderson - as previously mentioned - see-through guitar
Squire - Probably the doctor outfit in the 9012-Live video

Any more ideas?

Yep, I was thinking of Squire's outfit before I got to the bit where you mentioned it - wearing a pretty daft outfit in video for "Hold Out Your Hand" as well. Actually ALL the outfits in the 9012 live video pretty ghastly.

Jon's outfit and Alan White's jumper on the "Going for the One" sleeve pretty daft, too.

Trevor Horn's silly glasses?

Steve Howe wears some pretty idiotic facial expressions when playing "Clap" on the YesSongs video..ba-dum tish!

What about Geoff Downes silver suit?

the one record sleeve shot that always puzzled me was on Drama.

Theres Squire, Howe and White looking like 'rock-musicians' and Horn & Downes looking (and sounding) like a firm of accountants on their christmas outing.

I actually very much like the music on Drama - although it was at least a decade old by the time I first heard it - but I never understood how anyone in the 80s thought that a suit jacket with the sleeves pushed up to the elbow looked good; and let's not mention the ultra-thin leather ties.



Sorry about that. Being a teenager in the 80s left me with deep emotional scars where fashion is concerned.

It sounds as though, like me, you arrived late on the Yes scene. I first heard Yes when I heard (and loved) "Wonderous Stories" on the radio as a kid. But they kind of slipped out of my consciousness after that, though I loved the Jon and Vangelis thing (and didn't know who Jon was then). I actually didn't own a Yes record until about 1985, when I found "Close to the Edge" and "Classic Yes" on cassette in the bargain bucket at Woolies. Until then my musical tastes had been somewhat narrow. "CTTE" utterly blew me away, since I'd never heard anything like it, nor even suspected that such incredible music could exist. I was hooked!

I actually spent all my wages for one month (luckily I still lived at home) on hi-fi so that I could buy "Fragile" on CD - it was the first CD I ever bought.

I still remember...the dream there..no, I still remember hearing "Love Will Find a Way" on the radio at work and saying "that's Yes!" (I hadn't heard the intro), and my colleagues saying "who the f*** are Yes?".

So, I bought all their back catalogue, and then Genesis, and Pink Floyd, and King Crimson, and Led Zeppelin, etc etc. Wish I had been older in the early 70's...I was born in 1964..

Well you got there some years before I did (I was born in the 70s).

I knew about Wakeman in a "that bloke off the telly" sort of way for years, but always liked Jarre as a kid - my dad had all of his records (and the classic Meddle/Dark Side/WishYouWereHere PF 'trilogy'). I remember that some people said Wakeman could have been an "English Jarre" if he'd just stuck to instrumental formula, and when I eventually heard them I recall 'recognising' Wonderous Stories and Owner of a LH.

The first time I made a purchase, was when I saw ABWH in the shops in '89 - because I was dead impressed by the artwork ...

Some time later (a few weeks), I happened to mention to a mate (who was an avid reader of the music trade papers) that I liked the record (LP!) very much and he told me about the whole court case thing that was going on at the time - over who could use the name.

When I looked a bit blank, he also told me that they used to be in a band together called Yes.

At that time I was a university student living in west london - an area that has the highest population of second hand record shops anywhere in the world (I've been told). My flatmates and I used to go out bargain hunting most weekends (it takes 4 guys all day to go through all the racks of all the west london branches of the Record and Tape Exchanges). We all looked out for each other's wish list stuff, and in very short order I got a nearly new copy of Yessongs (for 1 pound!) - on the same day I bought myself a new copy of Meddle (my tape was worn out through overuse).

I got home slapped side A on the turntable and spent the next couple of hours wondering how come I'd never heard any of this before.

After getting to side F, I ran through it all again to put it on tape and spent the next few weeks with it in my walkman constantly. Over the following month or two I managed to get the entire back catalogue on vinyl, and most of the solo albums too. I don't remember spending any more than 2 pounds on any single title, and all of them were in A/A+ condition...

Luckily I already had a pretty superior stereo system that I bought bit by bit over the previous 5 years.

The thing that really extended my collection was the 12" Single release of ABWH's Brother of Mine (50p!). Inside that it had the Pete Frame family tree for ABWH - it's the same one that eventually got used (with some editing) in the Rock Family Trees book for Asia's entry, and in the YesYears boxed set for Yes (version 11 by then - about 15 by now!).

I tracked down another 40 or so LP's (King Crimson, Asia, Genesis, GTR, ELP) over the next few months.

Eventually I got a CD player and bought the catalouge again.

Recently I bought most of the catalogue on the remastered CD's (there IS a diference if your stereo's good enough to hear it - mine is).

I suppose I have now bought everything by everyone (except Wakeman - there's too much and it's too variable) at least once, and possiably 3 times.

I have (with the aforementioned exception of Open Your Eyes) yet to regret any of the purchases.

I also enjoy Pink Floyd (the middle bit best, but there simply isn't a bad record), King Crimson (Red --> Three of a Perfect Pair mostly; there are several totally unlistenable records), and lots of other stuff. In all I probably have several hundred CD's and a similar amount of LP's - right from early blues recordings through to Dr Dre and Fatboy Slim.

If listening to Yes has shown me anything it's that ultiamtely in any genre the thing that makes a record worth the effort is musicianship, imagination and tallent.

Did you get the "symphonic music of Yes" thing? I have it somewhere, but didn't rate it much.

The thing I am dissappointed about (though it could never have been any different) is not being born in around 1950. If I had been, I'm sure I would have seen all the bands I like in concert in their early days - Floyd, Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Led Zep, etc etc. I did get to see Genesis and Pink Floyd in the late eighties, when their best years were behind them. Having said that, both shows were superb, though of course no Peter Gabriel or Roger Waters (or Syd Barrett, for that matter).

I also like The Doors, Love, Radiohead, Travis, Oasis, Coldplay, Manic Street Preachers, blah blah blah.

Hmm.

The symphonic music of Yes.

Yeah, I bought that (another second hand shop bargain). I quite liked the choral version of 'Survival', but overall thought that the record could have been better.

It's not aweful, but it's also far from briliant.

Did you get the Symphonic Music of PF? Also got a RogDean cover, but this time has NO involvement of the band (and probably benefits from it).

Not got it myself, but heard bits - it's pretty good (as these things go).

There are two Orchestral tributes to Pink Floyd. One, featuring Steve Hackett on guitar, was put together by David Palmer (ex-Tull) who has also done similar ones for Tull, Genesis, and Queen. The other was by Youth, which I believe is the one you mentioned. Both have their strong and weak points. The David Palmer disc has a nice version of "When the Tigers Broke Free."