Frank Blank Posted August 26, 2019 Share Posted August 26, 2019 9 minutes ago, 4000 said: I’ve never really had much time for any sort of “musical orthodoxy”, probably because my dad was/is what I refer to a a “Jazz fascist”, in that he views almost all non-Jazz as crap and I grew up not being able to play music at home (although did hear stuff on the radio) unless it had been vetted; the first I was allowed to play was ABBA. Of course it wasn’t all bad as I was exposed to most of the great jazz artists literally from birth (probably before!). Yes, I went from a musically broad minded 15 year old to a ‘Punk fascist’ almost overnight. I can remember slagging people off for listening to bands I hadn’t even listened to! 12 minutes ago, 4000 said: So I decided pretty early that if I liked something, it didn’t matter what it was. As such I’ll happily switch between Yes, The Damned, Manowar, Tangerine Dream, ABBA, Count Basie, Johnny Cash, Stravinsky, First Aid Kit and Sandy Denny etc etc without blinking an eye. As I did in private but in public I was a bit of a silly curmudgeon. 13 minutes ago, 4000 said: So far as I’m concerned there are only 2 types of music, music you like and music you don’t. If you don’t like it, that doesn’t mean it’s not valid. Just move on to something you do like. I hope I didn’t appear as if I am still that way? I did write that ...the silly orthodoxy wore off with age... but anyway, yessir *salutes* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4000 Posted August 26, 2019 Share Posted August 26, 2019 Just now, Frank Blank said: Yes, I went from a musically broad minded 15 year old to a ‘Punk fascist’ almost overnight. I can remember slagging people off for listening to bands I hadn’t even listened to! As I did in private but in public I was a bit of a silly curmudgeon. I hope I didn’t appear as if I am still that way? I did write that ...the silly orthodoxy wore off with age... but anyway, yessir *salutes* No, absolutely didn’t come across that you were still that way, was just making a general point. *salutes right back*. 😁 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Blank Posted August 26, 2019 Share Posted August 26, 2019 22 minutes ago, 4000 said: No, absolutely didn’t come across that you were still that way, was just making a general point. *salutes right back*. 😁 As you were soldier... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alyctes Posted August 26, 2019 Share Posted August 26, 2019 Fragile and Close To The Edge, in that order. Close To The Edge is the better record, but Fragile has better songs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrevorR Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 For me it’s Close To The Edge which I still love, closely followed by The Yes Album and Going For The One. Definitely “soundtrack of my youth stuff”. I do some writing for Rock and Reel (now RnR) magazine and featured CTTE in an article on their “It Started With A Disc” column about a record which was fundamental in your musical or listening history... still love it... 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrevorR Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 Heres the full piece in easier to read on a phone form... IT STARTED WITH A DISC: CLOSE TO THE EDGE - YES Some would call it the pinnacle of an entire genre. Others might say it’s the moment its creators attained the perfect expression of their muse. Many would claim it represents the jewel in the crown of progressive rock’s Year Zero. Audacious! Virtuosic! Majestic! Perfect! Personally, I hated it. Couldn’t get it at all. Well, there was that bit at the start which just seemed to be random noise. Then it seemed to ramble on for ages, never getting anywhere. And what the heck was a “Khatru” and why were they so popular in Siberia? What a complete waste of three pounds and twenty-nine pence. It even had the single most boring mud brown album cover I’d ever seen. A cassette-tape was unceremoniously flung to the back of a bedroom cabinet and forgotten. Not the most auspicious start for a candidate for It Started With A Disc. How could this be my initial reaction to an album which I now count as pivotal to my personal and musical development? Well, perhaps there is a little more to the story. In the period from 1976 to 1979 I never bought into the punk ideal. That type of music wasn’t really for me. No, I was a heavy rock fan. Led Zeppelin, Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple were my listening staples. These sat uneasily alongside an unhealthy (I presumed then) interest in Abba, The Electric Light Orchestra and other chart pop. But we didn’t talk about those. If there was any other genre that I was likely to listen to it would be rock and roll or rockabilly - influenced by the kids I hung around with at youth club. If we were going to play ‘C’mon Everybody’ it would be Eddie Cochran’s original, not some crappy punk cover. So my reaction to Close To The Edge wasn’t some clichéd knee-jerk “Load of rock dinosaurs” rant. I had genuinely expected to enjoy it. The fact that I didn’t get it at all was a bitter disappointment. My rock tastes were already starting to branch out in a more prog direction and I had heard the odd Yes tune that I really liked. A compilation album contained the squelchy synths and wah guitar of ‘Don’t Kill The Whale’. ‘Wondrous Stories’ was regularly heard on the radio. Yes was a band I was determined to check out. Yes was a band I fully expected to love. So one afternoon in 1979 I found myself upstairs in Truro’s Saffron Records, rifling through the LP racks, pocket money jangling temptingly in my trouser pocket. There were so many exotically designed covers tempting me in. Was today the day to buy some Yes? Or perhaps I should finally plump for a copy of Brain Salad Surgery, scary looking cover or not? The triple album glory of the live album, Yessongs, was further than my pocket money could reach. Similarly some of the newer LPs. But then I spied a drab little cassette sitting forlornly in the racks with a sticker proclaiming, £3.99 £3.29. Done! When I got it home I slipped the cassette into my tiny hand-me-down cassette player. There seemed to be some louder than usual hiss coming from the speaker which suddenly exploded into an unintelligible noise. Little was I to know that the minuscule mono speaker was in no way equipped to deal with the subtleties of the rainforest sounds which coalesce into a free-jazz influenced intro section on ‘Close To The Edge’. For the remaining twenty minutes of side one the cassette player struggled manfully on, signally failing to deliver anything near the high fidelity sound which the music demanded. Side two didn’t fare any better and so the cassette was unceremoniously chucked in a cupboard. Fast forward six months and my birthday present meant I was finally freed from the vagaries of hand-me-down audio equipment. Resplendent in my bedroom sat a brand new Sharp music centre... Record player, cassette deck, AM/FM radio and three glorious watts per channel of stereo sound. As I consigned my cassette player to the cupboard a dusty cassette fell out and bonked me on the head. “Oh, that! Well, I suppose I should give it more than just one listen. It can’t sound any worse on the new hi fi.” That said, I wasn’t holding up much hope as I slipped it into the cassette deck and pressed “play”. What a revelation. A torrent of sound cascaded from the speakers; chaotic but yet revealing of a subtle structure. Chris Squire’s bass wrestled with Steve Howe’s spiky guitar lines until suddenly punctuated by a complex vocal harmony. Gradually a compelling melody emerged, driven by the bass and underpinned by Rick Wakeman’s Hammond organ and Morse code Moog synth. Forty short minutes later the cassette mechanism clicked off as side two finished. I was hooked. A lifetime love of prog and Yes was underway. Looking back, though, thank heavens that, on that fateful day in Saffron Records, I hadn’t plumped for Tales From Topographic Oceans. There are some musical traumas from which you could never have recovered! 4 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrevorR Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 On 24/08/2019 at 22:51, Stub Mandrel said: What do you think about that Captain America? "Err ... Avengers dissemble?" He does play a groovy bass, though. Used to be in Linda Ronstadt’s backing band, you know! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrevorR Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 On 25/08/2019 at 11:18, BlueMoon said: Another vote for the Yes Album. I remember listening to "Yours is No Disgrace" on Dynatron headphones at an exhibition in the very early 1970's. Hooked from that day on. I agree that their interpretation of America is fantastic. I first came across this on an "Atlantic" sampler album. Strange: there is not much talk of "Talk" in the thread. I like Talk and of all the Rabin era ones I probably listen to that most. Some lovely tunes and vocal harmonies on that album. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stub Mandrel Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 On 26/08/2019 at 20:32, Frank Blank said: Indeed so but Fragile is my favourite Yes album simply because that was the first Yes album played to me by my brother. My favourite track however is Sound Chaser from Relayer. I’ve only recently been remembering how influential Chris Squire has been, I loved his playing, as did my brother, that mad metallic tone and the distinctive Rickenbacker. He was important also as something to kick back against when Punk happened as I would listen to the incredible virtuosity of Yes and think I’d never play music or be in a band but then Punk happened and that was my music rather than the hand-me-down prog from my brother. Obviously Punk made lots of us suddenly realise we could play, form bands, gob at each other and suddenly all that widdly-woo prog indulgence was sneered at by the new Punk orthodoxy. I still listened to Yes, Genesis, Steely Dan but in private! Thank lord the silly orthodoxy wore off with age and now I listen to Crass alongside Yes, Genesis alongside Sleaford Mods. I’m rambling... I never objected to a bit of punk, but as I've grown older I enjoy it al lot more - I love the ramshackle chaos of some of the old live stuff but appreciate that many of the classic punk recordings demonstrate a lot more craft than I realised, even if they sound simple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davo-London Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 Great post BTW. I have a deep love of Tales from a Topographic Ocean. There I said it. I totally admire the construction, the complexity and the sheer admiration for producing such an album. Go back and listen again it is incredible. That said, I saw Yes several times in late 70's and early 80's but never thought them much of a spectacle on stage. I prefer their albums. I agree with many that The Yes Album and Relayer are fantastic. I never really got into Close to the Edge and Fragile. So I'm going to give them a re-listen. Peace Davo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davo-London Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 Oh and Chris Squire's Fish out of Water is wonderful too. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Blank Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 2 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said: I never objected to a bit of punk, but as I've grown older I enjoy it al lot more - I love the ramshackle chaos of some of the old live stuff but appreciate that many of the classic punk recordings demonstrate a lot more craft than I realised, even if they sound simple. This is so true, the vibe at the time was very much ‘we can all start bands and play like [insert band here]’, which was great but I think the bands that inspired that sense only sounded achievable in comparison to the incredible virtuosity of the prog bands that came before. As you say, when you listen back now, the craft is much more than I certainly realised at the time. Still a good song is a good song and a bad song a bad song, if it’s 8three chords and the truth’ or twenty four times more notes than Bach’s entire output with seven difficult time signature changes. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosmo Valdemar Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 1 hour ago, Davo-London said: Oh and Chris Squire's Fish out of Water is wonderful too. It's note-perfect from start to finish. Surprisingly, it doesn't feature much of what we consider the classic Squire Rickenbacker tone. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skinnyman Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 (edited) 55 minutes ago, Cosmo Valdemar said: It's note-perfect from start to finish. Surprisingly, it doesn't feature much of what we consider the classic Squire Rickenbacker tone. But it has got that incredible bass "fanfare" at the start of Hold Out Your Hand... (I learnt it just so i had something to show off with if ever the need arose. The need has never yet arisen but i live in hope.....) Edited August 28, 2019 by Skinnyman 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosmo Valdemar Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 16 minutes ago, Skinnyman said: But it has got that incredible bass "fanfare" at the start of Hold Out Your Hand... (I learnt it just so i had something to show off with if ever the need arose. The need has never yet arisen.....) I've just ordered a Brassmaster kit to help me try to replicate it! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davo-London Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 Has anyone ever got close to Chris' sound? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chezz55 Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 Favourite Yes Album? 'Yes' from 1969 - Love Pete Banks guitar work and his interplay with Chris Squire, Tony Kaye and Bill Bruford. 'Every Little Thing' and 'I See You' still give me goose-bumps. Runners-up would be 'Time And A Word' and 'The Yes Album'. Nothing else worked for me until 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart' Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosmo Valdemar Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 2 hours ago, Davo-London said: Has anyone ever got close to Chris' sound? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
visog Posted August 28, 2019 Share Posted August 28, 2019 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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