Yes - Relayer

I got this album in Jr. High.  I went to a school called Roehm Jr. High (pronounced ray-mm) and we were The Bucks.  Our mascot was a big deer head with big antlers.  Our colors were dark blue and yellow, and in the morning if we needed paper or notebooks we could go to the school bookstore (a closet where some kid would stand for half an hour in the morning), and buy what we needed, pretty cheap.  The paper notepads had a dark blue cover with yellow printing and the deer head was in the middle.  Above it said "ROEHM" and below it said "BUCKS."  Well, the blue was the exact same color as a Bic pen and the text was all block letters, so we would all use an eraser and erase parts of the "B" in Bucks and fill them in with blue ink from a Bic pan, and it would then pretty perfectly say, "ROEHM SUCKS."

I still think it's funny.

The school went on to let the kids vote for what they wanted the mascot to be long after I was gone, and the kids were all big fans of Jurassic Park so they became the Roehm Raptors.  That right there is why you don't let kids make any decisions.  Not that this has anything to do with anything, but now you know.

So I probably got this in 1975, when I was 13.  This was nothing like Fragile, or Yessongs.  This was pretty abrasive, hard and metallic sounding.  Even the pretty parts weren't pretty.  I kind of liked that about the songs on this record, and as I'm listening to it now, I kind of still do.  I remember a friend of mine got high and put a cigarette on my original album cover and put like a two inch burn on it.  I remember just saying, "What in the FUCK are you doing?"  There was an ash tray right next to the cover.  It's okay, I found a really nice one to replace it (I'm sure it's nicer than my Jr. High copy).  Isn't that just the stupidest thing, though?

In the beginning of eighth grade I met a girl that I really wanted to go out with.  We had kind of talked on the phone over the summer (I don't know how that happened - maybe I really met her in seventh grade), and she wanted to know about this band, Yes that I always talked about.  I mean, I really loved Yes when I was a kid.  I'd talk about them all day if you let me.  Hell, I had Yessongs! That was a freaking three record set.  I think it cost like ten bucks, and that was serious money back then.  So this girl says, "You should let me borrow a Yes album so I can like them, too."

That's when I found out that guys that like Prog Rock pretty much live alone, because women really hate it.  I think when she handed me back Relayer like two days later I knew she was not gonna talk to me any more.  I think she said something like, "My dad asked what was wrong with someone that would think that was MUSIC."  I was crushed.  Relayer was my newest record and I thought it was so damned great.  I think I asked he why her dad wanted to listen to it and she said the stereo was in the living room, so everyone heard it.  Man, that would have sucked.  Everyone in our house heard what I was listening to, but that's because no one could ever get me to turn it down.  At least I had a stereo in my room.

So obviously Relayer isn't for everyone.  In fact, I don't even know where most Yes fans land on it.  I think it's good.  Better than Tales From Topographic Oceans but not as good as Going for the One.  Like I said, even the pretty parts aren't really all that pretty, because it's got kind of a metallic production to it that makes all its edges pointy and hard.  The Gates of Delirium is one of those full side songs, with like four "movements," but it's really no Close the the Edge.  The lyrics are typically dumb, like their lyrics should be.  When I was fourteen or fifteen I thought the lyrics were some weird, brilliant poetry, but they really aren't.  They just are what they are.

The second side starts off with a song called Sound Chaser.  It starts off like something that I would call Jazz (people that like Jazz would laugh at me for that), then gets into some wacky time signatures that don't make much sense, but dammit, I just like hearing Steve Howe and Chris Squire play really fast, even if it doesn't exactly sound like they're playing the same song.  All in all, a pretty cool, weird record that was better to me than at least one old girlfriend.

Yes - Fragile

When I think about how I used to listen to music when I was a kid, I think of Fragile a lot.  I bought it because I absolutely loved Roundabout.  I had a friend that I was with constantly and we both loved Yes, but I think we loved Roundabout first.  I liked it so much, I bought the album.  He liked it so much, he bought the album, too.  I think between us we had about ten albums, and that meant it pretty much didn't matter who's house we were at, at some point we were going to listen to Fragile.  Probably more than once.  So this was a record I was deeply familiar with, front to back, inside and out.

I don't think the younger generation of kids have records like that.  I think that since they all know where to download music for nothing, they have way too much music.  I know, I can hardly believe I said that.  How can anyone have too much music?  Well, they can't, really.  Eventually there will be things they feel a need to hear, even if they have a large library, but when you're discovering music and yourself, I think there should be an opportunity to really learn some records really well.  If I had 25,000 songs by the time I downloaded Fragile, I wouldn't have listened to it in nearly the same way I did then, and that would change the way I listen to it now.  It would probably change the way I listen to everything, and I already think I have the attention span of a preoccupied gnat.

I can remember certain things when I hear this, but today I'm really not trying to be nostalgic.  I'm thinking more like how I loved Roundabout, and  heard it on the radio all the time, and now I was able to hear it at home, too.  But there were eight other songs on Fragile, and I grew to love them all.  I don't think I ever would have heard South Side of the Sky unless it was played on some Yes special on the radio.  If I had just downloaded things and hit shuffle all the time, I'd have never gotten past the slightly abrasive opening of South Side of the Sky.  But since I was limited in my choices, I think time and listening helped get me past the abrasiveness, to where I could hear the cool guitars and remarkable drumming and eventually decide that my favorite song on the album was South Side of the Sky.  I honestly don't think people grow up listening that way anymore.  I've been told I'm pretty condescending sometimes when it comes to how other people decide to listen to music, but really, if you think all good music was made from 19xx to 19xx and there's nothing else worth hearing, then it's really not me being condescending when I say you should change the way you listen to open yourself up to discovering something new that you love that you maybe can't even be bothered to go look for.

It's weird that an album I have possibly heard more than any other recorded piece of music in my life, for forty years at this point, would make me think of how to find and enjoy something new.  But if I hadn't been limited in what was available to me, I wouldn't have listened to We Have Heaven, Five Per-Cent for Nothing or The Fish more than once or twice at most.  I'd have probably skipped out on Mood for a Day after just a listen or two.  I think that would be a tragedy.  Maybe not a major tragedy, but I wouldn't be the same person (though it's certainly open to interpretation if that's good or bad).  I still love the end of Mood for a Day and I can remember just taking the needle off the record then and going to bed, because that was good, I felt done with the day.

But a lot more often I'd play Heart of the Sunrise twice.  I love how it's so fast, and then so mellow, and then so fast.  God, my dad hated that song!  If he came in to talk to me about something he'd always say to turn it down, because it was too jarring.  Me, I still think it's cool as hell.  And all those songs that came before it, that I had to learn how to hear for what they were, are what helped me to find a way in to appreciate songs like Heart of the Sunrise and South Side of the Sky.  I remember thinking that lyrically this stuff was deep.  But that's because it didn't really make much sense and I didn't know that it would never make sense, because it was mostly just crazy lyrics that fit in with the crazy music.  I'd like to have a conversation back where I just wouldn't accept that the coolest thing about Yes wasn't the lyrics with someone older than me.  I must have been an insufferable little turd.  I still like straight light moving and removing sharpness of the color sunshine as a lyric, because it fits the song so well.  It sure as hell doesn't make any sense, though!

So Fragile is one of those things that because of my limited resources, actually helped me to appreciate that some things were going to take some time for me to understand.  That's one reason I so rarely "review" a new album.  I don't care to convince people that something is or isn't good.  I don't care what other people listen to so long as I can continue to listen to what I like (which is why I feel cheated by the radio).  I mean, I'm talking about my records, so I'd think most of my little essays would be towards the positive.  If they aren't, then trust me, that record is in the return for store credit pile!

My copy of this has two booklets in it, because I saved the one from the copy my GE record player killed.  I think this is a copy I repurchased in high school, and it's in good shape.  The cover looks like it has some weird rubbing, not ringwear, but it's in fine shape overall.  The inside is perfect, too bad it's pretty devoid of any cool Roger Dean art in there!  The record is nice and flat and pretty quiet, so it's enjoyable to listen to.  It's funny that we always thought Yes should sound pristine and that if you could you'd want it on the best system possible, but I don't think any Yes albums would ever get an audiophile excited.  They sound good, but they're never great.  I think that's okay with me, because Steve Howe's guitars always cut right through any business or murkiness, anyway.

Yes - Yessongs

I remember the day I bought this 3 record monstrosity the very first time (this copy is my second, and it's a little noisy but good enough). I was at an old record store called Daisy Music Company. I had saved my allowance for what seemed like a thousand years so that I could buy this Yes album with every damned song I knew by them on it. It was 1973, I was 11 and I just knew this would make me the coolest kid on the planet. Hey, I had no idea how completely uncool progressive rock was, and to this day I still think Yes was a great band that had a lot going on for them. I never said I was cool, just that I thought I could be when I was 11.

I remember once when I was at a party some time when I was older than 11 year old me, and there were actual college guys there, and they had commandeered the stereo. The stereo was always my favorite place to hang out at a party because I could talk about music all night (still can, ask my wife, who gets easily bored with that!). I was pretty obsessive about Yes for awhile, and they were my first favorite band in the whole wide world. But back to the party with actual adults that could buy their own booze, and didn't mind my being around. So I'm hanging out at the stereo, mostly listening to these guys talk about bands I had only read about and playing some of those albums, and I'm getting a little plowed and someone finds Fragile and decides to play that. These guys get to geeking out on how incredible the musicians in Yes are, and I'm totally into this, and the subject goes to Yessongs. These guys are talking about how awesome Bill Bruford is on it and one of them says, "He's just so amazing on Close to the Edge, with all the time changes and stuff." Everyone agrees to his brilliance and I'm thinking, "He only plays on three songs on that album, and that's not one of them." So I work up a little nerve and spit out probably close to verbatim on the back album cover, "Alan White plays drums on all tracks except for Perpetual Change, Long Distance Runaround and The Fish." I get a look from our drumming expert that's like, "Shut up, dick;" and I'm wishing I had kept my mouth shut until one of the other guys that seemed to really know his shit and was apparently the Geek Squad Leader, says. "I think the kid is right. Bruford left for King Crimson shortly after Fragile came out."

"Yeah!" I'm thinking. "I had something to offer that these guys that know everything didn't know" (it would be years before I noticed everyone didn't read every word on the album covers every time they listened to an album). The Leader even let me pick an album to put on. I think I played it safe and grabbed Free's Fire and Water album, because everyone seemed to like that and it was one of my friend's older sister's albums. I was nervous that they wouldn't even let me play it, but one of the other guys seemed pretty happy that we were rocking a little harder, and the rest of the party was really party music of the late 70's, which kind of meant hard rock of the early 70's here in Ohio.

And that has next to nothing to do with Yessongs. Which is a really great yes album. You certainly don't need it, but they play the songs superbly and you get the entire Close to the Edge album, and a lot of Fragile and The Yes Album, too I thought it was a great buy, lemme tell ya! I had those albums by the time I got around to buying this copy, but like I said, Yes was my first favorite band, and I played their albums constantly. This one went through my horrid GE plastic record player, my slightly less horrid BSR changer, and then my first Dual, a 1019 which had seen better days! I got another Dual, a 1229, that was better, and that's probably when I bought this copy. I listened to this album a lot, and I remember when I figured out that during Rick Wakeman's solo that the chorus singing was actually a keyboard! Wow, that blew my mind back then. But there's just so much I love about this album, even though I played it to utter death.

Which reminds me, I was saying I remember getting it at Daisy Music Company. When I bought it, the guy hanging out at the record store (whom I figured must have been beyond cool to know the owner well enough to just stop in and talk) says, "Here's someone who just saw the movie last weekend." I had no idea there was a movie. I just wanted this giant collection of music. I'm halfway through it right now, and I think I'm gonna play the rest of it and read the book that comes with it, which is really just pictures if I recall correctly.