I'd Love to Turn You On #249: Yes - The Yes Album (1971)

The Yes Album is a very hard one for me to start reviewing because there are so many things I can talk about with it. This album has not only been something I’ve been listening to since I first started playing guitar and bass; it’s not just an album that has started conversations with people who would become some of my best friends; it’s not just a weird album cover that you can stare at forever and still not understand it. This album is all that and more than I ever thought it could be. I don’t remember the first time I listened to this - it got lost in the brains of 14 year-old me - but I haven’t forgotten a note of it, and I still try to sing along to it even though I know I will never get close to Jon Anderson’s voice.

Starting an album with “Yours Is No Disgrace” seems so obvious - the opening hits trick you into thinking you know what’s coming on this album. Rarely do you hear all the instruments so crazily defined in the mix, with them all acting as one giant, speeding bus that they call a chord progression; but once you’re in for the ride they don’t let go because this song is just shy of ten minutes long and barely feels like it. It moves so freely that you don’t even feel exhausted by the end of it. The next song feels like it’s the complete opposite of what you’d hear on a classic prog rock album - solo acoustic guitar, courtesy of Steve Howe, with “The Clap.” It’s a piece that is just about three minutes of straight fire coming out of Steve’s fingers, a blend of classical, jazz, and traditional blues guitar styles all put in the stew of a kinda rock song - an odd choice for the second song on an album but it’s a very nice comedown from the extravagance that is “Yours Is No Disgrace.” “Starship Trooper” is really where this album takes off - that little bass part that kicks in when this song hits means as much to me as any two seconds of music ever has. Everything they were doing on the first track is executed perfectly here - the various melodies of the vocals, guitar, and bass all get stuck in your head as separate parts but you can’t have one without the others. It helps that the lyrics are inspired by the 1959 book of the same name, which was also the basis for the amazing movie of the same name (I’m still mad they never used the song in the movie). For as tight a band as Yes is, this song sometimes feels like it’s about to fall apart, but right when that moment comes they tighten up and become a much more cohesive unit, one that went on to take on the world.

Flipping the record over and dropping the needle on “I’ve Seen All Good People” is always going to be a therapeutic moment for me. It’s very clearly the first time I heard a musical Easter egg - the background choir singing “All we are saying, is give peace a chance” - that I haven’t been able to unhear since. My dad brought me up on The Beatles and Lennon, so I already knew that phrase and melodic line, but even just the simple line “Send an instant karma to me” was something I didn’t know you could do in music; it was so revelatory, and subconsciously made me interested in knowing what the bands I liked listened to. References like that make the music so much more personal, especially when some of the extreme metal bands I listen to now will have long extended solos and for a moment - blink and you’ll miss it - you’ll hear these bands do Yes riffs, ripped straight from this album, in their crazy distorted madness. It’s a moment that makes you feel connected to the band on a personal level and oddly makes some of these people more approachable, both in skill and personality. 

Outside of the music, this album has been a beacon in my life; it’s an album that my dad always said was one of his favorites ever, by one of his favorite bands ever. He took me to see what remained of Yes in 2012, far from the prime of this band, and most diehard fans wouldn’t want to see this version, but it was still so magical. This is the album that I had the cover of hanging next to my bed throughout middle school and high school - not a poster, the actual sleeve of the album with record still in it. It’s an album that I've been lucky enough to not only be able to share with the people I love, but use as jumping off points for things that some of my best friends and I first talked about, still talk about, and will always talk about.

- Max Kaufman

I'd Love to Turn You On #90 - Rick Wakeman - The Six Wives of Henry The VIII

In the world of music appreciation there is the silly, pointless and irresistible game of: “who is best?” If you are a lover of an instrument you are drawn to those who have given themselves over to its mastery. Right?  Ahem, I, of course, am above such petty squabbling. I understand that different players excel and innovate in different areas of musical accomplishment whether it be composition, precision, speed, improvisation, accuracy or any one of the dozens of other variables that qualify as greatness, but secretly, we all, even I, have “our guy.” For rock music, and especially the sub-genre known as progressive rock, I must admit, I have no other guy: Rick Wakeman is it! No other player comes close or is even in the same arena for my money. I have to go to jazz or classical to find any other player with Wakeman’s chops and intellect. When he is great, he is magnificent. When he is not, he is um, er, kind of an embarrassment. Like all my favorite guys, I can think of major parts of the careers of Coltrane, Miles, Dylan, Zappa, Lennon, Hemingway, Kerouac, Crumb, etc., etc. that are just plain bad. That is part of reaching for the stars: sometimes you bump into the moon. Rick Wakeman has had plenty of absurd moments in his long career, but when he finds the right context, he is sublime. He found the right context on the first three or four Yes albums he appeared on (Close To The Edge, Fragile, Tales From Topographic Oceans, Going For The One) but perhaps showed his greatness as a player most efficiently on his 1973 solo debut The Six Wives Of Henry The VIII.

It came as a shock to many Yes fans upon its release, being an entirely instrumental album. A highbrow, Anglophile, concept album about the unfortunate women who married the bloody Tudor, the music on this album is a heady mix of rock, jazz, classical and funk loaded with guest musicians from Yes, The Strawbs and other corners of England’s musical geography. But the star is Wakeman’s unbelievable manual dexterity and battery of keyboards (at least 15 are specified in the liner notes). Each piece is driven not only by Wakeman’s proficiency and expertise on this fortress of instruments but, more importantly, by his genuinely wonderful sense of melody and composition.

A classically trained musician, Rick Wakeman proved with the Strawbs, Yes and on countless other historic sessions that he had the greatest understanding of the entire history of keyboard music of any musician of his generation, and he takes it a step further on Six Wives. His regal pipe organ playing on “Jane Seymour” or his jazzy piano on “Anne Of Cleves” or “Anne Boleyn,” and his crazed synth, moog and mellotron work on “Catherine Of Aragon” and “Catherine Howard” provide satisfaction for fans of his work with Yes as well as those who yearn for something even more focused and accomplished. Much of the music on the album will be familiar to fans of Yes because Wakeman incorporated many of the most memorable bits into his solo segments of their live shows over the years, but the album taken as a whole is an entirely rewarding and unique musical experience. By the time you get to the final wife, “Catherine Parr,” Wakeman has pulled out all the stops creating a memorable, stomping beauty of a theme that he drives home with soaring synth lines, organ fills, church bells and a Copland-esque finale that will have you cheering in the aisles. At his best here, Wakeman combines virtuosity, taste and an irresistible, wink-wink attitude toward genre rules that can only be born from true mastery. He is the best and this is his best album.

            - Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On #23: Yes – 90125 (Rhino)

Many think of Yes as the 70's prog-rock band with that fantastic alien world album cover art. As a child of the 80's, my memories of Yes are the “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” video and “Owner” on the radio, in the car, going on long road trips to Disney World with the family. At that age, I mostly disregarded any music earlier than 1980, but hey... Michael Jackson had exploded and Duran Duran captured my musical focus. It wasn't until about 10 years ago that I rediscovered Yes and their classic 1983 album 90125.

The album could very well have been 90125 by the band Cinema, the name that some members of Yes adopted when singer Jon Anderson quit the band a few years earlier along with keyboardist Rick Wakeman. After singer/guitarist Trevor Rabin entered the band for the 90125 sessions, Chris Squire played some of the music to Jon and it was enough for Jon to agree to rejoin Yes late in the album's construction. The nine tracks that ended up on the album are nothing short of fantastic. Again, this was the emerging 80's and synths were gaining popularity fast. Keyboards had almost always been prominent in Yes with Rick Wakeman's magical fingers, but at the time they were part of the prog-rock style. I can hear some of that style throughout the 90125 album, but there is something quite different going on. The pop/new wave sensibilities had influenced the band without taking over and morphing Yes into something they had not previously been.

“Owner Of A Lonely Heart” kicks off the album with a bang with its ultra-catchy verses and chorus, and ended up being the band's first and only number one single in the U.S! In my opinion “Hold On” and “Leave It” rival “Owner” as the best songs on this album full of great songs. With Jon's wonderfully majestic vocal style spearheading them, there is so much melody and intricate excitement going on. I find these songs in my head days after playing the album. A great example of the brilliance of 90125 can be found in the lyrics of “Our Song”: "Music has magic, it's good clear syncopation." Magic indeed. The guitars, keyboards, vocals, even the production by short-lived member Trevor Horn is all top-notch.

I rediscovered Yes as a band (including their 70's output), but this album brings back distant memories of songs from 90125 that I believe hold up very well at 27 years old. The peak of the band Yes is five numbers that are not a zip code of any kind: just

9 0 1 2 5!

Sincerely,

J O E L

What Are You Listening To Lately (Part 11)?

Sly & the Family Stone - Stand!
If it were not for the just-OK "Somebody's Watching You" and the slight excess of "Sex Machine," this album would be perfect - the absolute inverse in its brightness, drive, and optimism of There's a Riot Goin' On's murk, languor, and pessimism. There's nary a hint of the darkness that would consume Sly a year or so after the making of this album - it's all hope and optimism and direct confrontation of problems, none of the resigned negativity he'd essay on the next record. And it's beautiful for most of its length, with "Everyday People" standing as not just one of Sly's best songs, but one of the best pop songs of all time. A true, indelible, A+ moment. But it's only one standout of Sly's grand statement of purpose - or at least of the purpose he espoused in 1969. On nearly any other record, "Everyday People" would be a career-topper the artist would try forever to recapture. On Stand! the song, brilliant as it is, finds at least three others on par with it - the bruising funk of "Sing A Simple Song," the tense equality plea of "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" and the nearly-surpassing-it masterpiece of "I Want to Take You Higher." It's a landmark album, kept half a star short for me only by some minor flaws which in truth never cross my mind while it's playing, only in reflection afterwards.


Meat Puppets - II
In a way, their best because it's got the most breadth but it's also a little on the side of wild youth - they got wiser as they continued, and I for one appreciate that. But even so, they're pretty damn smart even this early on in their career and I don't think they were ever more fun, singing however they feel it without worrying about, y'know, pitch and stuff and playing their wacked out guitar/bass/drums the same way. Which just means that Kurt & co. cleaned them up a bit for their respectable stab at the MTV crowd, not that Nirvana improved on the melodies or the words. Cobain was right to pick three songs from this album for their big acoustic special because it's the Puppets' catchiest, their easiest to absorb (especially in the cleaner Nirvana versions) and he knew as well as anyone that "grunge" fans fans not acclimated to the underground that spawned Nirvana would be able to glom on to these shoulda-been hits more readily then the thrash of the first record or the wide-eyed (or should I say wide-pupiled?) psychedelic wonder of some of the later ones. So yeah, I guess it really is their best, a repository of melodies, riffs and memories, even though I find that I don't always go to this for my Puppets fix, which just means there are more great ones lurking out there.


Various Artists - Produced by Trevor Horn
Before I had any idea who Eno was, before I made any connection between Phil Spector and the multitude of hits he produced, I could identify a Trevor Horn production within a few bars. So his 80's material collected here holds a special place for me. He's the magic link between ABC, my heroes in Art of Noise, my favorite Pet Shop Boys song, the wacko "Buffalo Gals," and my otherwise inexplicable attraction to Yes and Godley & Creme. I don't necessarily need his 90's and 00's stuff the way I love his 80's, but neither do I mind hearing how he's developed (though I have yet to develop my own tastes enough to enjoy t.A.T.u for more than 2.5 minutes at a time.). Like the key AoN releases, like "Buffalo Gals," like "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Cry," the bulk of the 80's material here takes me to a sentimental place that I enjoy visiting. And if I don't love it all equally, this is a fundamental piece of my musical development. Eno and Spector came later and I can't in truth say that they've meant more to me.