Yes and their offshoots have Released a crazy amount of Live albums! Not including the 2 box sets and including ABWH and Yes feat ARW, we have these Yessongs Yesshows 9012Live House Of Yes Symphonic Live Live at Montreux Union Live In The Present - Live from Lyon Songs From Tsongas Like It Is - Bristol Like It Is - Mesa Art Centre Topographic Drama Yes 50 Live ABWH - An Evening Of Yes Music Plus ABWH - Live At The NEC Yes feat ARW - Live At The Apollo My top 10 would be 10. Yes 50 Live 9. Topographic Drama 8. Union Live 7. ABWH - An Evening Of Yes Music Plus 6. 9012Live 5. ARW - Live At The Apollo 4. Songs From Tsongas 3. House Of Yes 2. Yesshows 1. Yessongs...obviously!
Without thinking too much about it, I'd go: 1. Yessongs 2. Yesshows 3. ABWH Evening of Yes Music Plus 4. Songs from Tsongas 5. Live at QPR 6. House of YES 7. Live at Montreux 8. Topographic Drama 9. Symphonic Live 10. Union Live (If one were to include the Progeny selections disc, it would either be #1 or #2.)
Hmm... I have Live at the NEC but I can't say I've spend much time with it. In theory this should be a better show because it features Tony Levin instead of Jeff Berlin (meaning no slight to the latter, who performed great under less than ideal circumstances).
A very valid point. Were one to consider the soundtrack to the Keys to Ascension video as a live album in its own right (as I've done above with QPR), it would rank pretty highly. Like #4 or #5 on my list.
Could also have included Anderson Wakeman - Living Tree In Concert Part 1 Billy Sherwood & Tony Kaye - Live In Japan
My list: Yessongs The highlights disc from that tour Keys to Ascension Yesshows 9012Live (the video; the CD is an abortion) Not sure I care about anything after that. But I do like the box too. I'll have to look at some of the ones here that I don't know much about!
1. Yessongs 2. Yesshows 3. Keys to Ascension 4. The Word Is Live box set (yes, I am including it) 5. ABWH - Evening of Yes Music Plus 6. 9012Live (wish we would get a full release of this!) 7. Union Live 8. House of Yes 9. ARW - Live at the Apollo 10. Symphonic Live
?? HDTracks, Joe Gastwirt '94, Isao Kikuchi '98 HDCD, etc ... I do know that I like the original CD more than the '94 Gastwirt. I think I have the HDTracks version, but haven't compared yet. I don't have that Japanese mastering, although I think I heard once, that if it's decoded properly, it sounds pretty good.
Yessongs Yesshows 9012Live Symphonic Live Songs From Tsongas Union Live House Of Yes Keys To Ascension Live At The Apollo Live at Montreux I can't even rank the post-Anderson ones. I saw the band in 2014 and enjoyed it as long as Squire was there, but between not-Jon Anderson on vocals and White's greatly diminished drumming (and Howe's mediocre guitar tones), I can't imagine why I'd listen to any of them since they're almost all songs on other Yes live albums. (The Drama songs are the exception, but I have a few listenable boots from the 1980 tour...a 1980 audience recording is still better than the current band slumming their way through "Tempus Fugit" at that slow tempo) Union Live would be my #2 if it were from, say, the Denver show, or any other earlier gig when spirits were higher, the band was more inspired, and they didn't have that "last night of the tour" care-free attitude about it. Live At The Apollo would rank higher if it didn't have that dumb fake audience loop in it.
Live At Montrux 2003 just went up in my estimation, because I just listened to the truncated version included in the Essentially Yes box and noticed that it sounded much better than the download I had from the 2 disk release. The reason I discovered is that this disk's dynamic range is almost double the later 2 disk release. Its not squashed and it sounds inviting. This single disk version is excellent and the only additional song they should have included was Howe's excellent acoustic version of To Be Over from that concert. My List (I don't care for anything after 2004): Yessongs Yesshows Keys To Ascension Songs From Tsongas (I was at this show) Symphonic Live (only heard the DVD, not CDs) Live In Montreux 2003 (single disk version) The Word Is Live Highlights from the Tour (72) Live Union An Evening Of Yes Music Plus (Sorry Bill, your electric drums ruin this one for me) Live Solos
It was also included with the Yes 35 Director's Cut. Trust me, it's more listenable than anything that came after.
YES – PROGENY: SEVEN SHOWS FROM SEVENTY-TWO and then everything else. The highlight disk is also excellent for those who don't want all seven shows with the same set lists. These are the shows that were used to make up the majority of Yessongs so now you can hear them in all their glory as Brian Kehew worked miracles with the old tapes. This blows Yessongs away in terms of sound quality due to the tapes used in Yessongs have misaligned Dolby units during the recording which caused the sound to be very muddy. Here is the explanation from Kehew on all the work to fix the Dolby issue and also Chris Squire's missing bass on some of the shows. YES: PROGENY - Live from Seventy-Two Wish they had something official similar for the Tales of Topographic Ocean and Relayer albums where we get complete shows. There are several excellent Soundboard and radio show bootlegs from the Relayer band but we only have a partial radio show from Boston 1974 from the Tales tour with everything else being mediocre sounding bootleg audience recordings. The band did not play "The Revealing Science of God" at some shows and dropped "The Remembering" from the setlist early in the tour so there are not many boots that have the complete Tales album played live. Don't get me wrong I love all things live Yes but Progeny is the pinnacle of Yes at the height of their powers.
A great band whose live albums have never really excited me. I've stuck with the studio albums since the 70s. There is an awful lot of live stuff on Spotify if anybody desires to give some of it a listen.
I love Yessongs and wore out several copies in the 70's but the sound quality is mediocre and muddy at best due to misaligned Dolby units during the recording of the shows used to make it up. Yes Progeny uses the tapes from the shows that make up Yessongs but Brian Kehew was able to fix the Dolby misalignment issue so we finally get the hear the songs in all their glory. I am not talking a little improvement but a night and day improvement in sound quality. It is as if someone took a blanket off of your speaker removing the muddy sound of Yessongs. If you don;t already own it grab the highlight disk and I think you may never want to listen to Yesongs again. Brian Kehew explains the Dolby issue with Yessongs When we played these tapes for the first time, the quality was poor, muddy and strange, yet they did sound like the famous Yessongs album. Producer/engineer Eddie Offord has said the original recordings were of compromised quality, but he did a stellar job mixing the original Yessongs. (Offord was mixing the live concert sound for the audience during these shows; he did not record them.) After a day or so of trying to mix from poor sound, it became clear to us that the Dolby units (used to reduce tape hiss) had been misaligned during the original recordings, and this had resulted in a murkiness. By calibrating each track’s Dolby setting (for guitar, snare drum, vocal etc.) by ear, it was possible to clarify every recorded part. And each show needed a different setting since they had all been done incorrectly. With this adjustment, we were able to restore the tracks to their original clarity and power, something that had been lost even during the original Yessongs mixing. As a result, these recordings now sound open and immediate, giving us some of the best-sounding performances of the band during their heyday. YES: PROGENY - Live from Seventy-Two
