While Yes was in a state of limbo, somewhat, they still owed the label some product. This conundrum was addressed in the usual way, first with their second live album. Yesshows was taken from recordings at five locations over the last three tours with Jon Anderson, yet still works as an entity to itself. The finale from Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite is the opening fanfare as the band takes the stage for “Parallels”. Steve Howe does an awful lot of noodling through “Time And A Word”, the only earlier song here, having been revived in the wake of Yesterdays as part of a medley of earlier songs, not included here. Instead there’s a sharp but effective edit into “Going For The One”. Side two was devoted to “The Gates Of Delirium”, when Patrick Moraz was still in the band and Rick Wakeman wasn’t, and it translates well to the stage, particularly the transition from the solos into “Soon”.
Jon helpfully explains the impetus for “Don’t Kill The Whale”, after which he thanks various crew members over an against-type band jam and actually says “Don’t put that funk in mah face.” “Ritual” (again with Moraz) had to be split between sides on vinyl, and is now all one track. Chris Squire gets a decent bass solo, but the Tuvan-style throat singing during the percussion freakout is almost laughable, making the final “Nous Sommes Du Soleil” section a big relief. There’s a sloppy edit before “Wonderous Stories”, but Chris adds nice harmonies.
Outside of the devoted, Yesshows was always something of a stepsibling to Yessongs, and didn’t make it to CD outside of Japan until the ‘90s. Also, it was only a double album, as a triple album wasn’t going to fly in 1980, but it least it didn’t repeat selections.
Two such candidates for the album did appear a little over a year later, kind of. Some editions of the Classic Yes compilation included a bonus 45 consisting of live 1978 recordings of “Roundabout” and “All Good People”. (The cassette added a song to the end of each side, while the eventual CD had both at the end of the disc.) The album itself was sufficient as an overview of a now-defunct band, concentrating on some of their longer yet popular pieces, most of which were established radio staples. “Heart Of The Sunrise” is a surprising opener, jumping ahead to “Wondrous Stories” then back to “Yours Is No Disgrace”. “Starship Trooper” feeds into “Long Distance Runaround” and “The Fish”, and “And You And I” sums up the final Bruford trilogy. Plus it had another Roger Dean cover to underscore its place in the canon. And with that, the band’s label contract was fulfilled.
Yes Yesshows (1980)—3
Yes Classic Yes (1981)—3½
"Yesshows" is a somewhat random sampler that was supposed to come out the previous year. I heard it broadcast fully on radio after it was intitally scrapped, as a treat from Atlantic Records. They assumed that a new studio album from Paris was shortly on the way. They were so wrong. I imagine that another impetus for releasing it was to combat bootlegs of the radio brodcaast that might have appeared.
ReplyDeleteThe two live tracks from "Classic Yes" were eventually included as bonus tracks on "Yesshows". One was even from the same show as "Don't Kill the Whale". They made more sense there. Although "CY" sold well over time, it really didn't give newbies a good overall sense of the the group's music. Instead, it defined what would become a good chunk of the band's concert repetoire from here on out. Other anthologies serve the band and the listener better.
For a good while Classic Yes was their only "hits" collection. I already knew most of it from FM radio, so it was something of a gateway for me.
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