Collecting Live Yes

I taped the King Biscuit broadcast that's advertised in the link. It was recorded in LA if I remember correctly.

 

Fountains of Lamneth...!

War Paint was a highlight of the Presto show I saw, too bad they never gave that one any more love.

 

You mentioned improvisation, which is what I was emphasizing. Actual "arrangements" would be pretty hard to change from night to night within one tour even for the best jazz musicians. Off the top of my head And You and I and Roundabout were changed from the original recordings for many years until they reverted back maybe in the 90's.

 

It seems to me there were a couple spots for soloist improvisation each night, and certainly a few fills might change, but the bulk of their show followed the same script every time. That doesn't mean that to a close student they weren't different...not only were some nights more "on" but I'm sure the individual and collective moods of the musicians had some subtle impact. And fans of classical music would certainly attest that following the same score doesn't result in carbon copies. These are human beings playing.

That said, collecting this particular band is just not appealing to me precisely because there is very little overt improvisation, and I just don't have the patience to develop that level of empathy and understanding via 40 year old audience recordings.

 

Yessongs is a classic and a must-have.

Yesshows & 9012Live are excellent and very underrated.

Those three are all I need.

 

Years ago, I lived near a super Yes fan who went by "The Mad Elf." This was a really cool guy, very kind, and he literally had hundreds and hundreds of Yes shows - stuff from every tour. It was remarkable.

 

There used to be an archive online called "Yesoteric" which had all the exotic rarities. My favorite was a one-off on the Union tour when Close to the Edge was played for the only time by the band that recorded it.

 

Yep. He had that one, plus we (and a few others) went to a couple of Union shows together. I remember they had a pre-release version of the album which had significantly different mixes of some of the songs, most notably Shock To The System and Take the Water To the Mountain. To this day, I vastly prefer that version of Take the Water. (They were non-plussed by Union, though. I like parts of it).

 

For some newer live Yes, if you haven't checked out Songs from Tsongas, it's a good set. I also like Topographic Drama, the most recent live album.

And Symphonic Yes, and the Live in Montreux 2003 set are both decent as well.

I would actually really like the House of Yes live album too, if the sound was better.

 

I have a Yesoteric set, which had some great gems in there I loved, though it doesn't include what you mention.

As far as the topic, I think, as with any other band, the interest one has in live tapes is dependent on...one's interest in the band. I went through a period of finding as much Yes as possible, and I was always interested to hear the differences, differences in Howe solos, in tempos, in the accuracy (or lack thereof) of keyboard parts played, of subtle vocal inflections, of whether Jon Anderson was sounding just good or whether he was sounding amazing, the in-between banter, this is fan stuff, not really for the casual.

The Progeny set is probably not a great example for all this, because we are talking about a band that has played for decades, while weighing live tape interest against a set of seven shows from a very brief period. Even so, Howe is definitely the standout in terms of improvising differently from night to night.

It would be great to get more stuff from the Fragile tour officially released, because Bruford would be great to hear changing things up night after night.

 

Close To The Edge is one odd-sounding record to me. I don't think Yes ever really replicated the sound of that album, even if the arrangements didn't change. I don't think they could sound like that album onstage if they tried.

Anyway, Khatru and Trooper changed quite a bit over the years, the solos got much longer and more dynamic. And You And I was played throughout the '70's with the studio intro chopped off. Later on, the intro got reinstated, with Squire adding harmonica during the middle section, and the whole song slowed down and got very dramatic, much moreso than in the studio.

However, the biggest difference in a live setting for all those tunes was the drummer. White and Bruford had nothing in common - sound, touch, concept, time feel - you name it.

Yes was far more improvisational live than Genesis ever was, but not as daring as Zeppelin from '68-'73. I don't really know live Crimson enough to speak with any authority.

 

Are there any good sounding shows with Bruford on drums? Preferably around the Fragile era. My favorite songs on Yessongs are the ones Bruford played on (I just rather his style). It would be nice to have Bruford recordings that sound as good as the songs on Yessongs.

 

Yeah. I was thinking more of 80's/90's tours, since I know excellent quality recordings exist for those, and we already have the late 70's pretty well covered. I don't know what exists from the Fly By Night/Caress Of Steel era, but obviously I'd love to hear any of those songs that haven't already been on period-appropriate live releases. I doubt they'll ever do this kind of release, but I can dream.

 

Somewhere, the complete show they used for "Long Distance" and "Perpetual Change" on Yessongs have to exist somewhere. I hope we hear it someday.

 

Newhaven, Connecticut, 1971 is probably the best of them...

 

YES are a lot more interesting then say collecting Bruce era Iron Maiden Shows or other Metal bands.

 

Regrettably short, and chopped up, but this is one of the only films (perhaps the only?) I know of the Fragile tour period.

 

Regarding the band shaking arrangements up from night to night: This is most apparent in the band's first four years. The Progeny box really opened my eyes as to how much they really did improvise within the context of these highly "composed" pieces. They gradually toned this down in the years following the CTTE tour and were keeping arrangements/performances pretty consistent by the GftO tour, minus minor variations in guitar and keyboard solos.

For audience/unofficial stuff, my suggestion would be to get the "best" from each tour and if you still feel you're not satisfied with a particular era, keep digging. Good places to start would be:

• Pete Banks era: The official "Something's Coming" BBC sessions compilation. Throw in the pre-FM 1970/04/03 Koln recording if you want something in front of a real audience beyond the few tracks from the Playhouse Theater on the BBC disc.
• The Yes Album tour: TheTooleMan's remaster of the soundboard Yale Bowl 1971.07.24 show. Some versions include bonus tracks from the Gothenburg 1971.01.24 SBD, which are entirely different songs from The Yale Bowl and totally essential.
• Fragile tour: For completeness, Newcastle 1971.10.16. For sound quality, Amsterdam 1972.01.21. Amsterdam is one of the best sounding audience tapes of the era (for any band, not just Yes), but it's incomplete and Heart of the Sunrise is edited for length (probably to fit it on the early-70s vinyl boot "The White Yes Album," the sole known source for this recording). Newcastle is more or less complete and a great performance but a distant second in terms of sound quality.
• CTTE: Progeny, either the box set or the 2 CD highlights disc. No question about this one, don't even bother with the boots at this point. You should also have Yessongs in your collection already
• Tales: Madison Square Garden 1974.02.18, the "Yessongs 2.1" remaster by TooleMan.
• Relayer: Boston 1974.12.11 (KBFH pre-FM). Stunning performance.
• Solo albums tour: This tour is very similar setlist-wise to Relayer but has some interesting solo spots and a great acoustic version of Long Distance Runaround. I'd recommend Jersey City 1976.06.17, the "Roosevelt Stadium Again" remaster by TheTooleMan, which also has a cover of the Beatles' "I'm Down" as an encore!
• GftO: This is where you start having several great-sounding audience tapes to pick from. The best intersection of performance and quality for me is Dan Lampinski's recording of Boston Garden 1977.08.12. They didn't play the title track that night, but it's on Yesshows so it's not really a deal breaker. Mike Millard also captured three West Coast shows that rival Dan's Boston tape in quality (they definitely have a wider frequency spectrum), but Boston is such a great performance it gets the edge.
• Tormato: Wembley 1978.10.28... Perhaps the most legendary Yes boot of all time. There are lots and lots of other soundboard and excellent-sounding audience tapes from this era. They added and removed a few songs from Tormato throughout the course of the tour ("Release Release" was only played a handful of times in 1979) so keep that in mind if you need to have a live version of every Tormato track.
• Drama: Most people will tell you the Madison Square Garden FM recording is the best, but I have not found a version that satisfies me yet. I don't think this was very well recorded to begin with. I much prefer Barry Rogoff's excellent-sounding Boston 1980.09.09 tape. The version from the master is called "Singular Eye."
• 90125: Holmdel 1984.09.04 (soundboard) is the gold standard. The pre-FM "Captured Live!" vinyl rip from Dortmund 1984.06.24 is also essential since Holmdel lacks "Yours Is No Disgrace," which totally kills on this tour. The official 9012Live DVD is also great, though you'll have to track down a Laserdisc rip if you want it in stereo instead of mono.

I'll stop it there. Let me know if you're interested in later tours and I'd be happy to give you a similar rundown.

 

Wow! What a post. This is fantastic, and greatly appreciated. Many many thanks for sharing. The sad part is, I'm pretty sure I had close to 75 to 90 percent of these recordings in my collection at one point or another but they didn't survive "The Great Purge" of a few years back. No worries - they all went to good/grateful homes, but now I regret giving them away. The search is on!

Love,
Billy

 

Great post, thank you. To me the holy grail would be a good recording of the "solo albums tour" when it really was that, before most of the solo material was dropped a couple nights in. As I'm sure you know, the one circulating tape is bad audience.

 

That was excellent. Thanks.

I have a great Barry Rogoff recording with "Arriving UFO" in the set. So it must be from '79, not the year before.

-->Scratch what I said about "Release Release" in Boston '79. Must be a different gig from the previous year. It didn't stay in the set very long.

 

Thanks

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but to me, Yes music kind of works the same way my attraction to Led Zeppelin works, and a few other bands are also in this realm as well. Namely, to most collectors, to most people, the studio albums are what most people associate with the band -- the familiar songs/versions. And for most people, the occasional live album, live bootleg or live DVD is what would be considered the gem, the special item, or the cherry on the top of the cake -- for most people, that live album, live bootleg or stray BBC recording or concert film or whatnot, might be considered the rare or special item in their collection, next to the familiar major label studio works. To me, the live stuff is the body of work, the live stuff IS the band's history and legacy, no matter how it was recorded, and the studio albums are the rare and special things, to pull out infrequently and really savor them on special rare occasions. For me, it's completely reversed from how most people might tend to think about it. The live stuff IS the band's work, the studio albums are just snapshots or brief, special moments in time along the larger timeline, like formal picture day in school. It was an author named Robert Godwin, who wrote about this, in the preface of one of his collector's guides about Led Zeppelin, and the idea really stuck with me.

 

I saw Yes back in 72 or 73. At one point (sabotage?) their amps went out, and you could hear the record playing through the PA. They were playing along with the record, so it's no wonder there was little variation from night to night.

 

I taped it too, and I was at the LA show (10/75/78). I do remember at the show they announced it was being taped for King Biscuit, and I think on the radio show, they said the show was from L.A. I had that tape for years, but later heard the Wembley show, and was pretty sure that was the show that was actually on the tape I had all those years.