Now if Phil Collins joined yes after Bill Bruford left recording Close To The Edge, can you imagine the drumming turning out differently compared to Alan Whites? Imagine the 1972 live performance of that song, then Phil stays for Drama once The Buggles join and into the 80’s depending on if he never returned to Genesis.

Heard somewhere Phil nearly joined Yes but since it never happened, we had a ton of great Genesis albums of the 80’s featuring him but just imagine the what if scenario. Heck could you see him on the Union tour having a drumming duel against Rabin on the extended version of Yours Is No Disgrace?

I went to a record store today to pick up a couple vinyls and have a look at some other things. After going through the "Y" section (for Yes, of course), I found a peculiar album named "The Twelve Towers at Dawn" with a Yes logo on it. I had never heard of the album before so I didn't pick it up.

Fast forward to now. I looked it up and it is apparently some kind of Yes live album, but there's no Wikipedia article or any real information beyond some forums and such. Does anyone have any information about it?

I’ve listened to The Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge and 90125 what other albums should I check out?

I’ve never heard of Yes or Moody Blues but my parents have. I’m working at an escape room/VR bar in Florida and he said he & his wife & some friends were eating at the sushi place next door. He came in & ordered 2 of our Chardonnays (we serve alcohol in our escape rooms) & chatted with me a bit & complimented the store then left. He was so nice. He told me to look him up & that’s how I found out about this subreddit. Anyway, all that to say he’s a very nice guy- oh and he’s got great hair

I’m going to drink spiked eggnog and listen to the Steven Wilson mix.

Pain in my ASS! Has anyone else been listening to the original "Run With the Fox" on Spotify in the last couple of weeks, only for it to become grayed out/"Unavailable" all of a sudden?

I’m curious, has anyone have any stories or interview snippets of what particular band members thought of key albums they weren’t a part of? Such as Wakeman’s opinion on Relayer, Bruford’s opinion of Topographic and other 70s albums, Anderson’s view on Drama?

I took Annie Haslam’s vocals from Turn of the Century and combined it with Yes. I stripped out Jon, just to see how she would sound.

No substitute for Jon, but she sounds really good.

Maybe it could be reworked as a duet of sorts - enjoy!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/poz76ihvf5nwf3gyzxwu7/tofc.flac?rlkey=9aexlrkgfdm4nz85rikeotsmj&st=a87exegi&dl=0

Got the new 50th anniversary vinyl LP of Relayer. Still insane and still intense!

What a fantastic album

So Davison is to me the poor man’s Anderson but today YouTube recommended randomly this 2016 live performance of Into The Lens from the Horn and Downes 1980 lineup album Drama and it’s not bad!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BUOnSeKrwdA

maybe the 80’s material is more suited to him?

From Going For The One, 1977

I always get a little anxious when I have to post a review of a Yes song from before 1980. At this point, I’m in this series for the writing, not the ranking, but I get that there's a lot of diehard Yes fans who do care a smidge where I’ve put something on the list. Like, I doubt anybody’s actually gonna be bothered that I put Themes below Holding On, but people might care that I put Wonderous Stories below anything from Union.

And that's obviously not to say I think the song is bad - obviously I think it's the weakest link on Going For The One, but that's like saying this vanilla shake isn't quite as good as this cookies and cream shake. At the end of the day, I’m happy with both - I’m just a bit happier with one of them.

It might also be the fact that this song was actually a pretty big hit for the band. Now, that might be surprising for Americans like myself, but my British readers might already know that it reached #7 on the UK charts. Not bad for a rock band that was well on its way to being quote-unquote “uncool”.

Then again, this song isn't exactly what I’d call cool… not that that’s a bad thing! This song marks the purest form of what Steve Howe calls Jon Anderson’s “Renaissance period”¹ - and from the very start, the song sets that tone very effectively.

The first thing you hear is some acoustic twelve-string guitar and what I believe to be mellotron strings, followed by Jon’s voice, which sings a melody that’s more sing-songy than usual. The mood here is pretty clear - this is music you could hear if you lived through the renaissance. Maybe you’d hear it from a church choir, or a minstrel group. Or both at once.

And yeah, I think the song captures that vibe pretty well. It definitely helps that they’ve got Rick Wakeman back for this album - his specialty is playing keyboard parts that would have sounded outrageous 500 years ago, while also sounding exactly like music written 500 years ago. He plays sick beats for getting burned at the stake for witchcraft to, and as such, his synthesizers don't at all sound out of place here. It also helps that they sound as close to harpsichords as possible without actually being harpsichords.

That gentle classical atmosphere is what gives the song its edge - despite being almost purposefully edgeless. That may be why it was such a big hit compared to the band’s other output around the time. Not everyone can get into a song like Don't Kill The Whale, but it's a lot easier for the everyman to get into a song as, for lack of a better word, inoffensive as Wonderous Stories. It makes Yes’ otherworldliness palatable.

Speaking of otherworldliness, how about those lyrics? Yes aren't really known for being specific with their lyrics, but this song almost seems like it’s trying to tell a specific story - not unlike Turn Of The Century earlier on the album. There's something about escaping one thing to leave and hear somebody else’s ‘wonderous stories’. It gives you just enough details to get a general outline of the song, but not enough to get a full picture. So, Jon, tell us - what exactly is this song about?

Jon:

It was about the joys of life, as opposed to the uptightedness of some aspects of life. Romantic stories from the past and future, really - a kind of dream sequence.¹

…Thanks, Jon. I dunno why I expected something specific out of him.

That being said, he is spot-on about the song’s general vibe. Even while only telling half of a (wonderous) story, you can still tell what he’s going for. It's a song about escaping life to indulge in fantasy, even if for just a brief time. That’s a concept I think a lot of people can relate to. Obviously it's important to not let those stories rule your life, but having a storyteller in your life is important as well. Ironic that this song should be about that, considering for most of us, Yes are that storyteller.

…Of course, usually when they’re telling said stories, it's not Wonderous Stories. The downside of being an inoffensive song is that it's also not a very impactful song. When I’m putting on Going For The One, it's usually the three songs before this one, and on some occasions the one after. And while this song does serve an important purpose on the album - that being the ever-useful palate cleanser before the gigantic album closer - it's not something I listen to outside of the context of the album. Maybe on a sleep playlist…

Well, sleep playlist or no, Wonderous Stories certainly has its place. Maybe it's not the most impactful Yes song, but I definitely don't dislike having it on. It's got all of Yes’ musical expertise, put into a soothing little piece. And while I’m not sure if there are any Wonderous Stories superfans out there, I have my fingers crossed that they won't find and murder me by saying this song’s pretty good.

Yessources

1. Yesstories: Yes In Their Own Words, Tim Morse

Did anyone else never realize that the word “wonderous” is actually misspelled in the song’s title? The word’s actually spelt “wondrous” for some unknown reason, and I never realized. If I had a nickel for every time a Yes song permanently altered the way I spelt certain words, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice…

I've been reading Steve Howe's autobiography All My Yesterdays. I've made it as far as the mid 2000s. It's fairly obvious, to me at least, that Howe had issues with "certain members" of Yes (as he frequently says in the book). In fact Yes — more often than not — comes across as painful and joyless in his writings. (At least though the early 2000s!)

As someone who recently finished Geddy Lee's terrific autobiography, My Effin Life, I am a bit underwhelmed by Howe. I'm not sure if I'm going to finish it. I feel like I know exactly how the rest is going to go.

Anyone else read the book? Thoughts?

We were listening to Relayer and my wife suggested that Soon would be a good track to play at my funeral. I'd been thinking the same for years, to be honest.

What Yes track would you have played at your own funeral?

I don't know why, but I always fall asleep when hearing Talk. It's a good album and feels amazing to sleep to

At long last I have finally finished remixing Going For The One in surround sound. I was able to get very good vocals and instrument separations which makes it interesting to hear the individual parts more clearly. It was kind of a learning process, and I even created new settings for the script used to assign the speakers, and used a variety of creative techniques.

The 5.1 files require a surround sound system to fully enjoy, but even on stereo headphones or system the mix will sound different than the original. Also included are instrumental stereo versions of each song.

I put a lot of time and effort into making this as good quality as i could so i hope you all enjoy and let me know what you think. Feel free to share it wherever.

It is available to download from my google drive here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NvMuKXGCF6oye9rKb3OcxeCr0o4zqbQ9?usp=drive_link
I'm also sharing it on the Soulseek file sharing network, which you can access with the Nicotine+ program. https://nicotine-plus.org/

Next up is Rush Permanent Waves 5.1 version.

Enjoy!

https://preview.redd.it/nd3nwxboib2e1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b21168ac1be958b56f422e34886d546681f467c5

I know it’s not the most popular album but it’s my favourite just because that was the tour I first saw them on so it’s meaningful to me.