Yes News

Strona Roberta Drózda: Yesomania: oficjalna-nieoficjalna strona poświęcona grupie Yes. Pierwsza, największa i bezkonkurencyjna, jeśli wolisz czytać po polsku.

Yes have begun their European tour to promote their new album, The Ladder. See Yesworld for list of dates and venues.

"The Ladder"

A strangely eclectic collection, ranging from the slightly prog-nostalgic Homeworld, through adult contemporary pop songs such as Face to Face or If Only You Knew, to New Language, a promising song whose initial power dissipates in a poppish tune and a drum track that would feel at home on Rhythm of Love. The album gathers widely disparate reviews, but overall remains perhaps the strongest Yes offering since Drama. (Beyond Music; produced by Bruce Fairbairn.)

Six months later, another review.

"Homeworld"

The opening song on The Ladder is also part of the soundtrack for a computer game Homeworld, by Sierra Studios. Homeworld, due September 1, looks to be a space strategy adventure sort of game. Gamecenter has an official announcement, as well as a two-and-a-half minute video trailer, with bits of an interview with Jon Anderson and the game creators. (The clip is a 35M mpeg file. Yesworld has a selection of several smaller versions of the same material.)

See also a recent interview with Steve Howe, where Steve talks about "Open Your Eyes" and the new album.

Igor Khoroshev, Yes' Russian-born keyboardist since 1998, has released his first solo album, Piano Works. As of this writing, the album is not available in music stores, but can be ordered (inexpensively, I might add) from Igor Khoroshev website and the online store therein. The CD arrived in my mailbox very promptly, and I highly recommend this album to yes fans, especially those who have already had a chance to appreciate Igor's performances live.

The More You Know

The album was released some time in Spring 1998 by Eagle Records.

Track list: Magic Love; Maybe; Say; The More You Know; Heaven's Love; Faithfully; Take, Take, Take; Gimme Love; Dancing Fool; Sad; Ever; Free (some would say); Some TV; Youth.

Personnel: Jon Anderson (melodies, lyrics, vocals); Jane Luttenberger Anderson (vocals); Francis Jocky (music, vocals, keyboard); Bobby Jocky (bass, keyboards)

Brief review. The album has been getting some airplay here in Poland and no wonder: it is plainm, uninspired pop down to the last groove of the CD. After several listens I haven't been able to find a single track with a staying power. As for musical style (lack of it, that is), quality of tunes (forget musicianship) and flakiness of lyrics, The More You Know falls to the very bottom of Jon's solo career, way below City of Angels and the "Celtic" Promise Ring. The few tracks that merit mention do not change the overall tepidity. The first track I ever heard off of the album was Maybe: perhaps the best of all, a pleasant summertime pop song with a hit potential and an actual atmosphere that locates it somewhere near Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints. Then you skip all the way down to Sad which is another plain-pop ballad with hope for airplay and good melancholy tune. It seems to be a sister song to In a Lifetime off of City of Angels but not nearly as trite. There's tasteful brief chorus from Jane Anderson, there's a "sweet" melody that asks to be heard again... still, the song never raises above inconsequential. The jazzy Free promises token redemption, but the jazz in it is of the tame, throwaway, streetbar quality, with keyboards and bass that sound like my SoundBlaster MIDI presets. I will now very carefully skip Some TV (as I have skipped Dancing Fool before; I only wonder if Jon is at all aware of Frank Zappa's deliciously silly song by the same title; it takes guts to release something as embarrassing with full awareness of the context it will be heard in). Finally, there's Youth, easily the nicest song on the album, akin to Jon's many earlier cosmic-power-ballads (think of a much-subdued Sundancing, if only you can ignore the lyrics ("Better to be sacred then sorry").

I don't really listen to pop at all (unless it comes from Yes members, that is) so I cannot compare this production to a typical medium-rare pop album of today. I will lsay this: The More You Know helps me appreciate In the City of Angels more, while other much-reviled albums such as Song of 7 sound actually progressive in perspective.

Dates and venues:

(links lead to reviews within)

Please see also my introduction to the reviews, below, and the annotated setlist.

YesWorld has a convenient list of all the European tour dates. For more reviews, see NFTE reviews index, Matt Putzel's Concert Review Page, and the Forgotten Yesterdays page.

Introduction to the reviews

I have seen all three Polish shows. There is a separate review for each, and a few general comments here. This was the first time Yes (or any of the Yes members) have played in Poland. Not many progressive bands had performed in Poland before, though two months ago the reformed Genesis gave one show, and Emerson, lake and Palmer played last year. None of those had generated as much publicity as Yes did. The fact that there were as many as three shows gave the Yes' "tour" of Poland additional weight, and one could see lots of fans and ex-fans coming out of the woodwork.

An interview with Jon Anderson taken the day Yes were playing in Hammersmith Apollo in London was broadcast on Channel 3 radio, in chunks, over three days before the first Polish show. (See the AUDIO section below for excerpts.) That interview itself provided a lot of additional excitement, as Jon promised ("officially", as it were) to sing Polonaise (the Jon & Vangelis song off Private Collection) and the epic song Awaken, which Yes had not been playing on the current tour so far. Only one half of the promise was delivered: we did hear a charming version of Polonaise, but no Awaken. Finally, the first of the three shows was broadcast live on the Polish radio (FM, Channel 3) and was available, via satellite, to listeners outside of the country.

For all three shows, the best word to describe the audience is ecstatic. At times the cheers drowned the music, and often the applause would burst out in the middle of songs, several times. This is probably not something an average concert-goer is happy about: we want to hear the music, not the applause. But I was sincerely happy to see the warm reception Polish audiences were welcoming Yes with. In fact, I felt proud. The audience recognized every song by the first few notes (with the sole exception of Howe's second solo piece, Diary of the Vanished, a track I wasn't familiar with myself).

In the reviews of the three Polish shows I am concentrating more on all sorts of "impressions" than the music itself. The reason for this is also the reason why the Yes concerts were so very special to me, and, I am sure, to the several thousands people in the audiences. I have loved Yes since 1982, that's 16 years now - and many others have for much longer. In all those years there was never a question of whether Yes would perform in Poland. There was hardly room for hope or expectation. We knew it wasn't going to happen, not ever. Even as late as two years ago it was still in the realm of wishful thinking. I had never expected to see Yes live, except maybe hoping for a lucky break, if one of my infrequent travels abroad coincided with their tour. And suddenly, here they are, and I did not quite believe this until I actually entered the concert hall in Warsaw, ticket in hand, and heard the ambient track trickle from the speakers. This, I suppose, is very different from the feelings o most Yes fans around the world, who do welcome Yes with excitement and delight, but many of whom have seen the band several times before and for whom the question is not if but simply when Yes will come near them. here in Poland, ever since Yes existed, there was not even an if.

I saw all three shows and I would certainly have seen more if there had been more. Each show was different, in terms of the venue of course, but also clearly in terms of the band's performance. Of all, Katowice saw what was probably the best performance of the three: energetic, focused and flawless. In Warsaw the band seemed tense, almost stage-shy at the beginning, while in Poznan... well, Poznan was a whole different show. See the reviews...

Audio

You can hear Jon say hello to Poland on the Polish radio. (Zipped mp3 file; you will need an mpeg layer 3 decoder to play it. WinAmp for Windows95 is highly recommended.)

Yes hits among Polish listeners

Just prior to the shows, Channel 3 listeners were asked to vote for their favorite Yes songs of all time. Votes were taken via postal mail, e-mail and phone calls, and on Saturday, March 21, the results were announced. Here are the top twelve songs, of about a hundred tracks submitted by voters:

(Visitors from outside of Poland, please note and envy us lucky guys the fact that the above twelve tracks were broadcast on Channel 3 in their entirety, as was the whole Warsaw concert. Within the last week, I myself have heard The Revealing on the radio no fewer than three times: the original TfTO version, the live KtA track and the Warsaw take... All in all, looking at the radio and the press, Yes shows have generated much more favorable publicity than the recent performances by Genesis, Page and Plant or Emerson, Lake and Palmer last year.)

Three new Yes albums released in November 1997 (much to the confusion of store clerks everywhere):

Keys to Ascension 2 (the one with gorgeous lilac Roger Dean artwork on the cover jacket) is a double-CD album. Disk 1 contains the remainder of live tracks from the March '96 San Luis Obispo shows; disk 2 contains five studio tracks recorded early in 1997 (formerly to be released as a single-CD album Know). In Europe KTA2 was released on November 3 (Castle Communications) and seems to be widely available; US release came weeks later (Cleopatra) and availability reportedly varies. (KTA2 may be ordered online from cdnow.) The studio tracks, recorded by Anderson, Howe, Squire, Wakeman and White, may well be the most satisfying Yes since late seventies; fan reviews are, for the most part, enthusiastic. More details at YesMag.

Open Your Eyes (the one with the huge Dean Yes logo on black background) is the latest studio CD, recorded in summer/fall 1997 by the new lineup that is currently touring the US and Canada: Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Alan White, Billy Sherwood and Ivan "Igor" Khoroshev. Release date was November 24/25 (Europe and the US) although early copies had been sighted in places. The album contains eleven tracks, of which the song Open Your Eyes can be heard on some US radio and is included in the live performances. Yescography page has a review of the album and a current photo of the band. YesMag has detailed information about the tracks as well as several sound clips.

Something's Coming (with the retro-style cover in greens, picture of the band in the park and the original 1969 Yes logo) is another double CD. Released only in Europe (around Nov 20, New Millennium Records, Pilot 25CD) it is available in the rest of the world as import. This album is known as "BBC sessions" and is not a bootleg (despite rumors). It contains eighteen tracks recorded live for the BBC studios in 1969-1970; liner notes were written by Yes' original guitarist, Peter Banks. The current band was not involved in the album's release. More at YesMag.

Yesstuff

• Polish radio interview with Jon Anderson (1994), transcribed and edited by General Frenetics. The interview was conducted over the phone, and only selections were aired. Jon talks about his then-latest album, Deseo and then-recent Yes release, Talk. (This, BTW, is the original English version of course, laboriously fished out from under the overlaid Polish translation...)
• Atlanta Z-93 interview with Jon Anderson, April 1997 (transcribed by Yours Truly, for those among you without sound cards. You can listen to the whole interview directly from southside.org.)
• This Yesfan's story, originally posted to NFTE
• YesKu, the Moorglade Haiku Spewer...
• A (lengthy) analysis of "Mind Drive", the epic song off KTA2 (originally posted to alt.music.yes)

YES on the Web

Try Yeshoo for many dozen links to fan zines, lyrics, reviews, discographies, articles, bootleg information, photographs... all about Yes and Yes band members. The most up-to-date sources (also closest to the band) are the Notes from the Edge newsletter and the YesWorld website.

Where are they now? is a page maintained by Henry Potts that tracks the careers of all the current and past members of Yes. Always up to date, it is the best place to look for most recent information about the band. (There are pages tracking yes members and others associated with Yes. Henry Potts is also the keeper of the Yes FAQ

For the largest and possibly best-organized repository of lyrics, pictures, reviews, press clippings and other materials, visit the Yesman's Museum of Yes.

Or, if you want access to alt.music.yes but your newsserver does not carry it, you may always read and post to the group via DejaNews.

In Polish (O Yes po polsku):

• Strona Roberta Drózda: http://yes.iq.pl/
• Strona Bartka Knapika i Marcina Dudziaka: http://www.yes.w.pl/