Yessongs

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Product description ------------------- 2CD set Their first live album, originally issued as a lavish triple LP in 1974. Features the classic lineup! .com ---- Opening with a few bars of Stravinsky ( /exec/obidos/classical-artist-search/Stravinsky%2c%20Igor/%24%7B0%7D ) to set the adoring crowd on its feet, this once-three-LP set is Yes at their finest. This was, after all, probably the most mainstream act that had even provisional "prog rock" status, and their tunes show it. While "Heart of the Sunrise" may be one of the more modestly titled Yes songs (compare it with "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" or "The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)" or even "Total Mass Retain"), it also bears marks of the band playing at its most frenetic pace around Jon Anderson's soaring near-falsetto. Rick Wakeman's grand synthesizer flashes are more than textural, finding visual meshes enty with Roger Dean's cryptic cover art--most of which is shrunken or absent on this two-CD reissue. When Yessongs was cut, Marshall stacks were in their heyday, and Yes happily engaged in harmonic and melodic excessiveness as well as carefully planned layers of complexity. "Roundabout" was the band's biggest hit to this point. It appears here faithfully reproduced. As for the rest, it's entertaining in a 1970s way--full of light shows, staged visuals, and more. It took a few years for prog rock to dwindle and for punk-colored art rock to swerve toward songs about buildings and food ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002KNV/%24%7B0%7D ). On Yessongs, the band was peaking, singing songs with far grander purpose (Siberia, the Apocalypse, etc.). By any account, this is one of the classic live albums of its generation, and as the soundtrack ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B000007SPM/%24%7B0%7D ) to the hip 1998 film Buffalo 66 ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/0783229585/%24%7B0%7D ) hinted, at least one manic Yes song ("Heart of the Sunrise") passed muster for drama in the 1990s. --Andrew Bartlett