Some initial thoughts about the Yes show I saw two days ago with Henry Warwick, a fount of knowledge and well connected fellow.
-Steve Howe was shredding his guitars. Far more than on recent live albums.
-There was a genuinely massive turnout.
-The guy two rows in front of me to the left looked like Philip Larkin. That would have been weird on acid.
-Roger Dean et al. had produced a beautiful series of projections. They underscored the cosmic Shelleyan quality of Yes. I had not quite reckoned on “Starship Trooper,” for instance, being quite so explicitly space-journey-like, despite its title, bamboozled as I had been by Anderson's strange, pastoral lyrics (“Speak to me of summer...”).
-“Tempus Fugit” is a great opener.
-The surrealist montage of Anderson's lyrics is one element that keeps this band totally fresh.
-Geoff Downes is a very nice guy and a very good keyboard player, beautifully complementary with the others in the band.
-The Yes Album is a goldmine of live-worthy material.
-OMG I saw Yes at the Shoreline Amphitheatre!
1 comment:
I agree with your points.
I would also add:
- It was The Chris Squire Show. He just dominated the stage. Besides the fact that he's as big as I am (6 ft 3 in) his personality and presence was huge.
- Alan White was amazingly mellow for such rigorous music
- The singer sounded just like Jon Anderson, but wasn't Jon Anderson, which is neither good nor bad.
- Howe was brilliant. He had a lot to say with his guitar and he said as much as he could, and "spoke well"
- I was also struck by Downes's demeanour. He was just very cool - very competent, fun, good natured. A nice counterpoint to Squire.
- The Yes Album (1971) was the last album for some years to feature "arena-ready" music that had built-in room for jams. After Yes Album was Fragile, Close to the Edge, Tales from Topographic Oceans, and Relayer: four albums of (mostly) hard core note-for-note set pieces. So it is not surprising that a lot of it was on the set list.
- The new album sounds WAY better in concert than on record.
- At the end of the show, Squire held his Rickenbacker aloft. Not his other bass, an Electra. The new material he played with his Rick. The material from 90210 and Drama he used the Electra. His sound is tied to the Rickenbacker and that bass made his career. So he holds the Rickenbacker above his head...
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