Prog Rock Saturdays: Going for the One

nice ass!

Yes - "Going For The One" (1977) - Atlantic Records

Hello Friends,

It's another Summery Prog Rock Saturday here at the ol' Vinyl in the Valley Headquarters and tonight we're back with some classic lineup Yes on the turntable.

Going For The One is the band's eighth album and their first after a three year hiatus due to extensive touring and the releasing of various solo albums.  It also marks the return of Rick Wakeman who left the band after differences over Tales for Topographic Oceans. And while not as proggy as some of their earlier prog classics, Going For The One would be the last truly listenable prog album by the band.

The album would crack the top 10 in the U.S. and reach number 1 in the U.K. 

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Fun Fact: Hey kids, when Going For the One reached # 8 on the Billboard album charts in August of 1977, which album occupied the # 1 spot for a solid four months?

If you guessed Fleetwood Mac's Rumours buy yourself a drink!
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Things get started with the title track, probably one of their most accessible songs since 1971, a five-minute and thirty-second rocker featuring some blistering Steve Howe slide guitar playing.  Its like a kick-ass workout song for some late seventies prog nerd with sweatbands and oversized headphones.

That's at the right speed, kids.  Jon Anderson's vocals were actually that high!

Next up is the eight minute, New Age-y sounding, "Turn of the Century" which may or may not be vaguely about Russian artist, Marc Chagall, and how he grew distant from his wife when he moved from Russia to France in the 1920's to become a famous and important artist! 

Side One closes out with Chris Squire's (R.I.P.) Parallels.

Side Two kicks off with the short, sweet and airy ballad, "Wonderous Stories" which sounds like it could be a love theme on Game of Thrones.  Winter is Coming, friends! 

The album closes with the 16 minute, Awaken, which in our opinion is a little too long and little too underwhelming but overall the album has held up alright for over 30 years.

For the sleeve art, the band would get Hipgnosis to design the cover art, a stark departure from the fantastical and otherworldly brushwork of artist Roger Dean. The album definitely looks more like Wish You Were Here than it does Fragile.

By the end of the Seventies, Progressive Rock was on its way out and on its way to becoming more of a punchline in the rock & roll history books.  Never Mind the Bullocks would be released in October of '77, just two months after Going for the One.  Yes's next album, 1978's Tormato, would be a fucking disaster and don't even get us started about 1980's Drama which would attempt to merge Prog-rock with New Wave in a way no one asked for!  It would also feature The Buggles(!) on lead vocals and keyboards!

But that's for another Summery Saturday, kids!

RATING: 4 and here you stand no taller than the grass seas out of 5

  

Prog Rock Saturday - Yes - "Yours Is No Disgrace" Live (1972)

Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face

Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human race.

On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place

If the summer change to winter, yours is no disgrace...

RIP Chris Squire (1948-2015)

Hello Friends,

Longtime Yes-bassist Chris Squire passed away this past weekend.

"The Fish" was the only member of the band to play on every single record that they released in all their various forms.  In fact, Yes have some scheduled shows later on this summer and it will mark the first time the band ever takes the stage without their founding member and bassist.

Chris Squire, his ethereal harmonies and thudding Rickenbacker bass lines, will be missed.

Godspeed Starship Trooper!

Prog Rock Saturday: Fragile

Yes - "Fragile" (1972) - Atlantic Records

Hello Friends,

Its Saturday night and the Summer weather is finally here!  You know what that means... fancy cocktails on the porch, meats on the grill, the crickets are chirping and we've got some prog rock on the turntable.  Kicking off this season of Prog Rock Saturdays is another true classic of the genre, Fragile, Yes's fourth LP and first to feature the cover art of Roger Dean and the keyboard stylings of one Mister Rick Wakeman!

Wakeman, who replaced Tony Kaye, would introduce a deeper keyboard sound utilizing his own Classical influences along with the addition of more Moog & Mellotron.

The album contains nine compositions, five shorter pieces each highlighting an individual member of the band, and four longer songs that feature everybody.  Upon hearing the album's first notes, those familiar Steve Howe harmonics at the beginning of "Roundabout", the listener immediately knows they're in for a real proggy treat. Something ethereal and fantastic; a marriage of rock and classical styles.  Music that would ultimately define a genre but within a few years would quickly outdate and parody itself.

"Call it morning driving thru the sound and in and out the valley..."

Kicking things off is the eight-minute leadoff single, "Roundabout", which would actually peak at Number 13 on the Billboard Pop Charts in 1972 (albeit in an abbreviated form clocking in at under four minutes!)

Things get classical on Rick Wakeman's "Cans & Brahms", a short excerpt from Brahms's Fourth Symphony.  Singer Jon Anderson performs multiple harmonies with himself on "We Have Heaven"-- also clocking in at a very un-Yes-like under 2 minutes.

Side One concludes with the driving "South Side of the Sky" which seems to be about freezing to death while on some sort of mountain climbing expedition.  

Side Two opens with drummer Bill Bruford's 35 second instrumental, "Five Per Cent for Nothing" followed by the unlikely "hit" single, "Long Distance Runaround/The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)", a staple on 1970's FM Radio.

Steve Howe gets his time to shine on the classical guitar solo, "Mood For A Day"-- which we enjoy thoroughly more than the ragtime-y, "The Clap" (from The Yes Album.)

The album concludes with the 11-plus minute epic, "Heart of the Sunrise" which starts out sounding like a manic buzz saw but eventually comes around to nice, quiet, ethereal melodies featuring some nice interplay between Steve Howe's fingerpicking and Jon Anderson's elfin vocals.  Loud-quiet-loud at its proggy best!

Vincent Gallo like this song so much he used it in a pivotal scene in his 1998 weirdo-indie film, Buffalo 66.

Love comes to you and you follow...

Great album for listening to loudly on a balmy May Saturday. Fragile, along with The Yes Album and Close to the Edge, form probably the strongest trilogy of albums in the prog rock canon (with the possible of exception of Pink Floyd's Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and Animals!)  The band would start to disintegrate and things would start to get way too overindulgent (if you can believe that) by 1973's double album, Tales from Topographic Oceans.

RATING: 4.5 Hot Colours Melting the Anger to Stones out of 5  

Prog Rock Saturday: Ramshackled

Alan White - "Ramshackled" (1976) - Atlantic Records

Hello Friends,

Summer is winding down kids and we're down to our last couple of Prog Rock Saturdays for the year and tonight we're listening to an album called Ramshackled by Alan White.

Oh boy, where do we start with this one?

So Alan White was a drummer for The Alan Price Set, Joe Cocker, John Lennon's Plastic Ono band, George Harrison and starting in 1972, for the Prog Rock supergroup, Yes.    

In 1976, White released his first (and only) solo album entitled Ramshackled and since its Prog Rock Saturday here on Vinyl in the Valley, we've decided to give it a spin!

Our first impression of this record is how un-proggy it really is.  We were expecting overlong songs full of complex drum solos and weird time signatures and what we found instead was a very MOR, mid-Seventies rock album with a little prog and some jazz fusion thrown in for good measure!

The funky opener, "Ooh Baby (Goin' To Pieces)" sounds more like something from Van Morrison or Santana (or, better yet, Van Morrison singing in Santana) than anything Yes has ever done!  "One Way Rag" is next and was occasionally performed by Yes live on their 1976 tour.

"Avakak" (aka "Twelve Ways to Drink Meths") is a jazz-inspired, very Zappa-sounding instrumental which is also the album's proggiest track!

Side One concludes with bandmates Jon Anderson & Steve Howe helping out on a song with lyrics based on a poem by William Blake.  "Spring-Song of Innocence" sounds like Yes-lite.  Uninspired and kind of boring.

Side Two doesn't fare much better.  "Giddy" is a very Middle of the Road rock song while "Silly Woman" is a pretty terrible (and very white) attempt at reggae.  "Marching Into A Bottle" is a Renaissance Faire sounding instrumental which I believe does not even contain any drums!

"Everybody" sounds like the band is channelling Dr. John.  What the fuck is going on here?

Luckily, the record is slightly redeemed by the closing track, "Darkness Pts 1 - 3".  Like I said, slightly.

Overall, this is not a great record. Alan White was one of the most important drummers in the prog rock genre and Ramshackled is certainly not going to be his legacy!  

RATING: 2.5 Alley Cats Scratching in the Trashcan out 5

Prog Rock Saturday: The Yes Album

Yes - "The Yes Album" (1971) - Atlantic Records

Hello Friends,

We're picking up where we left off last summer tonight on Vinyl in the Valley.  Prog Rock Saturdays are back (finally!) and the drinks are flowing, the grill is smoldering, the mosquitoes are biting and we've got Yes on the turntable!

The Yes Album is the group's third album, the first with guitarist Steve Howe and the last with keyboardist Tony Kaye (for now!)  The album is widely regarded as their coming out album with longer songs with more complex instrumentation and strange, mystical lyrics that sound like they've been lifted off the pages of science fiction stories by Robert Heinlein, Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke.

At 9 minutes and 36 seconds the anthemic, "Yours Is No Disgrace" kicks the album off.  Complex bass & drum lines (courtesy of Chris Squire & Bill Bruford) square off against big-sounding organ tremors while Howe's guitar noodles in and out of the melodies all the while Jon Anderson's elfin vocals holding things together (... on a sailing ship to nowhere...) through various time signatures and changes of direction.  The stage is set for what Yes the band would sound like for the duration of the Seventies as well as laying the groundwork for pretty much everything ever done by Rush.

Steve Howe's fingerpicking guitar solo, "The Clap" is next.  Kind of a hoe down feel to this.  Its pretty impressive, to say the least, but I'd like to think its actually written about "the clap" (aka gonorrhea).  Howe has said he wrote it for the birth of his son.  

Side One ends with the amazing three-part mini-suite, "Starship Trooper" which culminates in the climatic three-chord instrumental cadenza of "Würm".  Nothing short of epic!

Side Two begins with the familiar and FM radio friendly, "I've Seen All Good People", the first part of which ("Your Move") was released as a single and features some very folksy acoustic guitar work with lyrics vaguely describing a chess match (...don't surround yourself with yourself, move on back two squares...)  With the help of headphones or decent speakers you can make out the chorus of John Lennon's "Give Peach A Chance" buried in the harmonies towards the song's end.

Jon Anderson's "A Venture" is up next and it kinda sucks.  It would have probably worked better as part of a larger piece and as Tiki T. points out, it sounds like bad Supertramp.

The album concludes with the 9 minute loud-quiet-loud "Perpetual Change" which could be about world politics, time travel, drug use, all three, or perhaps, none of the above.  Who cares?  If you're turning to Yes for deep lyrical insight into say, The Vietnam War, concerns about the environment or the meaning of life, you've got bigger problems to deal with.  

Take it for what it is, virtuosic and strange music with themes and characters out of the the furthest reaches of our imaginations.  Now, Starship Trooper, go on sailing by!

RATING: 4.5 Long Winters Longer than Time Can Remember out 5

Prog Rock Saturday: Close the Edge

Yes - "Close to the Edge" (1972) - Atlantic Records

Hello friends,

As another summer draws to its bittersweet close, we've got one more "Prog Rock Saturday" in us before we bid adieu to bbq's, baseball and fireflies and say hello to sweaters, long walks and hard ciders!

Tonight on the turntable, we've got Yes's 1972 prog masterpiece, Close to The Edge, recorded by a band of virtuoso musicians at the height of their creativity and cohesiveness.

The album consists of just three songs with the title track taking up all of Side One.  Now this may sound extremely over-indulgent (and it could be argued that it indeed is) however the end result is highly listenable; the music is complex without being alienating.  The songs and themes on the album seem to be influenced by some sort of New Age-y spirituality but-- unlike, say the double album, Tales from Topographic Oceans-- the mysticism does not distract from the music at hand.  Rather than sounding too "mathy" or overwrought, the album comes off as five musicians pushing themselves to new limits while creating some pretty solid early 70's FM rock.  (This is the classic Yes lineup that reads like a who's who of prog-rock: Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Bill Bruford, Chris Squire & Rick Wakeman.)

Side One is dedicated to the epic song "Close to the Edge" which consists of four separate movements.  Full of tempo changes and cryptic/cosmic lyrics sung in Anderson's near castrato voice ("Close to the Edge, down by the river, not right away, not right away"), "Close to the Edge" comes very close to going over the edge, but somehow remains listenable throughout.  In fact, the middle section "I Get Up I Get Down" with its delicate two-part harmonies and massive cathedral-style organ is downright pretty!

Side Two begins with the tuning of a twelve 12-string guitar which leads into a very straightforward chord progression.  "And You and I"-- also consisting of four smaller movements-- is the band at their absolute peak.  There's more melodic shifts, tempo changes and harmonies that you can shake a stick at, but somehow it all holds up in this ten minute epic.

The album ends with the riff-based and funky "Siberian Khatru".  Not sure exactly what the title means but at this point who cares?  Clocking in at just under 9 minutes, this is the album's shortest song and features some pretty amazing Steve Howe guitar work!

Season's change. The nights grow cooler as the days grow shorter; the leaves on the trees are starting to change color; icy cold vodka martinis are being replaced by whiskey sours and stiff manhattans.  Ah, the circle of life!   
  
RATING: 5 Sad Preachers nailed upon the coloured doors of time out of 5

PROG ROCK SATURDAYS HAVE RETURNED!

At the close of our last Vinyl in the Valley staff meeting, I was given the fortunate task of advising you all that....PROG ROCK SATURDAYS ARE BACK!

Yes friends, back by popular demand, starting this Saturday we'll be blowing the dust off of some fine pieces of progressive music and spinning them into the wee hours. 

We'll be delving into the abyss of late 60s and 70s innovation and savoring some of England's strangest musical offerings!

King Crimson! Yes! Early Pink Floyd! Early Genesis with Peter Gabriel!

I know, I know. You can hardly contain yourself, right?

I'm not going to pretend that this is some of the sexiest shit in the world, but it's definitely worth a listen!

And I'll be behind the bar concocting equally weird drinks to wet your proggy whistle!

So join us this Saturday in the Court of the Crimson King!

XO,
Tiki T.