Member:
yogibear
Date:
11/18/2002
This is arguably the greatest live album recorded. Originally it had shoddy/poor engineering and some instruments were hard to hear. This remastered version sounds wonderful and all the bits that were "hard to hear" are here in their fullness. This has all of the very best and most classic of Yes' best and most well known tunes up to Close to the Edge.
There are 8 tunes on the first CD and it has more of their shorter and radio friendly tunes while disc two had the longer tunes. The total time on disc 1 is 66 minutes. Disc two had 5 tunes and the total time was over 63 minutes.
Musically this is Yes at their ultimate best. Jon sounds great and most of the background vocals works well and sound good as well. This featured the debut of Alan White on most of the tunes and Bill Bruford is only on "Perpetual change" and "Long distance runaround/Fish". Bruford is great on the tunes he plays on and Alan while a good player just seems hard pressed to fill Bill's shoes. Some of the tunes here are taken at a slightly faster tempo than on the albums.
Jon sings well on all the tunes and occasionally sounds like he over-sings if that's possible but it does happen here. Chris is excellent as usual with his bass but even on the remaster it sounds like he is still lower in the mix than the other instruments. Rick does a great job on the tunes/albums he recorded with Yes but on the early stuff he mostly plays mellotron/organ.He does a great "6 Wives" with its excerpts of Bach from "Messiah" done on mellotron. Some of Rick's keyboard voicings live do not sound at all like the albums sounds he recorded. But this is mostly a minor quibble. Steve plays wonderfully on both discs and I think is what drives them live and in the studio as well. Steve is probably the best represented here with his playing and he is all over the place with his slightly left of the norm virtuosity.
The version of "Siberian Khatru" is awesome and is probably better than the album version. "And You and I" is done basically all electric and does come off as weaker than the album version. "Roundabout", "Close to the Edge", "Perpetual Change", and "Yours is No Disgrace" are all played wonderfully and show the "awesome power and energy" that Yes could generate was present at this show.
This album was and continues to this day to be a true showcase for the professionalism that Yes exhibited live and a testament that they were just not a "studio" band but could "deliver the goods" live as well. No wonder people consider this to be the best of the 70's live albums. It is phenomenal. I think it is one of the best live albums of all time.
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