Yes - Going For The One and Tormato. Yes experts what say you?

I keep reading GFTO as GTFO, it's making this thread a funny read!
I will say I've never listened to Tormato all the way through, the songs I've heard just aren't interesting enough to warrant a deeper dive into the album.
I do love GFTO, especially Awaken and Turn of the Century.
I wish there were quality live recording of these songs from the GFTO tour.

 

Going For The One is my favourite Yes album, up there with Selling England By The Pound and Wish You Were Here in my top 3 prog albums, and easily in my top 10 all time favourites.

I think I've bought it 6 times. I bought it on vinyl again last year even though I don't have a turntable anymore. I just wanted to make a wall poster of the cover.

Tormato sucks.

 

Well, there are only five songs on GFTO, so 4 out of 5 ain't bad! I wonder which song you didn't care for?

 

Threads starting with a false premise never bode well for subsequent content...
Going For The One was not unloved or dismissed on release by any substantial number of fans. There will always be a few cranks who hate everything new.

 

This is where I got off the bus.

 

Going For The One is one of their very best. I love it.

And I love Tormato too, whatever anyone says.

 

Who hates GFTO?

Tornado = underrated.

 

Parallels is one of my all time fav except for the hollywood ending (but that might be on the live yesshows ver)

 

Love both, and I've only come to love them more over the years. In fact, I've sometimes listed Tormato as my favorite Yes album.

 

I like Going for the One. Nice album. Not great, but good.

 

I usually set my EQ pretty high and trebly anyway, so it works for me.

 

Yes, Hipgnosis had no success.

 

....annnnnd, now I'm listening to GFTO on Amazon Music (got 3 months for $.99), and it's freaking great. Wow, my old LP must have REALLY sucked. I need to find a new copy somewhere.

Sometimes all it takes for me to figure out how great an album is, is for me to post something here like, "Duh, I've only heard this album like three times but it never made an impression on me." Then I listen AGAIN and find out it's brilliant.

 

I love both. I wish they would have done more in that vein.

One of the things I love so much about Tormato is that it's more like a pop album--but a pop album by someone who is really f-in quirky/weird but who doesn't realize it. That resonates with me. And "Arriving UFO" and "Circus of Heaven" are important tunes on the album for that aesthetic.

 

I haven't heard Going For the One, but I've always really liked Tormato (although I remember the Rolling Stone Record Guide saying the tomato-splattered cover looked like the critics heard it before the shrinkwrap was added). 1978 was a very good year in my life and Tormato flashes me back to it. And I love the little kid's voice on "Circus of Heaven."

 

Haha--yeah, same here.

 

Not going to defend either record, but I will say that "Release Release" and "Wonderous Stories" are two of my favorite Yes songs. WS is about as beautiful as it gets.

 

It did seem to end up in cut-out bins very quickly, and most copies I've seen are cut-outs.

 

I see you are calling for Yes experts. I am definitely not an expert, but I'm several notches higher than a casual fan. I've been listening to these fellas for around 35 years, so I'll give my $.02.
Going For The One- I consider TYA, Fragile, Edge, Tales, and Relayer an incredible run of albums. They were at their peak creatively and musically, and I feel each album is special in their own way. Going For The One gets very close to the greatness of their previous 5, but not quite. There is something lacking that keeps it a 1/2 star lower. There was a 3 year hiatus between Relayer (1974) and Going For The One (1977), and the band gets very close to the magic.
Tormato- Yikes....what can I say. I have had a almost like, hate relationship with this album over the years. I desperately wanted to like it on many occasions, and I almost had myself convinced for a short time. I even found myself somewhat defending it. But I have to be honest. Someone in an earlier post stated that It's an album with no direction, and continues to meander around with no arrival. I won't say that it is unlistenable, but it gets damn close.

 

Prefer them to most of what followed, though I feel Drama is equal to Tormato and both Open Your Eyes and Magnification come close.

 

I didn't like Tormato when it came out. The keyboards where way too cheesy. Wakeman's fault. I think he played the "Birotron". I've heard a new Version of Wondrous Stories by the Anderson-Ponty-Band, and liked it very much, it's better.

 

40 years ago this week GFTO dropped. I love it. It is let down by it's thin, reverby sound but otherwise it's classic Yes to me. Live, the songs were brilliant too. They played them all in 1977.
There is a great audience recording from Long Beach that I edited down to make a wonderful live version of the album.

Tormato is the sound of a band beginning to splinter (again) but it has it's charms. Side 1 is especially strong and of course 'Silent Wings' delivers at the end. The band was still pushing forward. Madrigal and Release Release are like nothing in their canon and are worlds apart stylistically but both work for me side by side on side 1. The Yesshows version of Don't Kill The Whale shows again that they could always improve on what they laid down in the studio in this time period.

 

These two albums are very good, not great. I prefer GFTO that contains the fantastic "Awaken", a great track. Unfortunately, the problem with those albums is that the production has not been up to it. The sound of GFTO defies logic (thin bass, muffled drums, crazy high frequencies: I think of the first part of "Awaken" or the section during Howe'solo in "Turn of the century" or "Parallels" (in his entire). Better listen them on YESSHOWS. TORMATO's mix seems to be better but some electric gtrs & keyb sounds like toys ("UFO", "Don't kill"). DRAMA, the next album, sounds much more better. It rocks !

 

i put the tomato in the sauce
the bonus tracks are better than the record
going for the one goes in the disc player

 

I love Going for the One and have always found it to be fantastic, probably number 3 Yes album for me. I suppose Turn of the Century might go on a little too long, but it's still a great song, and all the others (yes, including the title track) are fantastic imo, highlights being Awaken and Parallels. I guess the production could've been a bit better. Topped off with one of my favorite Yes tours.

Tormato, on the other hand, is one of my least fvaorite Yes albums. Sure, it's better than, say, Open Your Eyes, Union, and Heaven and Earth, but that doesn't change the fact that I can barely sit through it. The sound is awful, the music is for the most part awful, though On the Silent Wings of Freedom, Future Time/Rejoice, and Don't Kill the Whale are alright. Overall, just a dreadful album in my opinion. And I don't think they were nessecarily completely out of gas during recording either, because the tour was fantastic.

Honestly, it baffles me how a band could go from one of their absolute best albums to one of their worst.