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Owner of A Lonely Heart - alternate Vid???


ABECK

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I appreciate the overproduction. (don't get me wrong, I can dig the sparsest of arrangements as well). It's impressive, considering how much work that kind of production was at the time. I can't imagine this would have gotten airplay and video rotation if it was a straight up rock/pop tune.
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It is definitely the oddest inception of a popular album. For better or worse, it's the "Yes" I was first exposed to, so I've never really saw them as anything other. But when I think about it, I'd never consider any incarnation of GnR without Slash, Duff and Izzy to really be GnR. So, I get it.
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I get that someone would dislike 90125 if you were a fan of older albums. I was a huge fan of early Rush (starting with Fly by Night) and Power Windows was the last album I could stomach, though really Signals was the last really good album (IMO of course). I had a bandmate who hated early Rush, the raw guitars and more screechy Geddy Lee, while that was the **** for me :D His taste began right where mine stopped and that's fine.

 

But "disco"? Other than Owner, is there a 4/4 "regular" song on 90125? :D I also can't really think of any other albums from that time that sounded much like it, it still stands out from music from that time (IMO) and mostly still holds up. What other album sounded anything like 90125 before or after? (honest question, I certainly am ignorant of a fair number of bands and songs from every era). I'd say Drama did a bit, but that's Yes too so it doesn't count! I really like the synth sounds they came up with other than the orchestra hits. As I said before, Owner is my least favorite tune on that album by a mile and it's also the most dated with the orchestra hit stuff.

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Somewhat OT: I worked in a recording studio in the early 80s in Cincinnati which was in a building with some visual arts companies. One of them was a video editing business which had a new fangled rendering machine which was being used to do the effects on the video for Leave It. I used to walk by the door and see it running on the big screen.

 

I enjoyed 90125 a lot.

 

[video:youtube]

Moe

---

 

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I had a video tape of that whole 90125 era. I really was exposed to them through that album also but the drummer I worked with at the time loved Yes and introduced me to all the old stuff. From a musicianship standpoint I really appreciated them but it wasn't my thing musically.

"Danny, ci manchi a tutti. La E-Street Band non e' la stessa senza di te. Riposa in pace, fratello"

 

 

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Somewhat OT: I worked in a recording studio in the early 80s in Cincinnati which was in a building with some visual arts companies. One of them was a video editing business which had a new fangled rendering machine which was being used to do the effects on the video for Leave It. I used to walk by the door and see it running on the big screen.

 

I enjoyed 90125 a lot.

IIRC Godley & Creme said they were initially going to actually hang the band upside down, until they found out one of the members (I can't recall who) had multiple spleens so he couldn't be! {I guess that's a thing, I never looked it up.)

"I'm so crazy, I don't know this is impossible! Hoo hoo!" - Daffy Duck

 

"The good news is that once you start piano you never have to worry about getting laid again. More time to practice!" - MOI

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The Grateful Dead didn't sound like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Joni Mitchell didn't sound like Yes.

 

BUT!!! I would argue that early Yes sounds a lot like Crosby Stills Nash and Young! Any time I hear CSN&Y on the radio, I instantly do a double take and wonder if it's "Yours is No Disgrace" or something off Time & A Word. People don't think of Yes as a vocal band, but Jon and Chris's (and the others) locked vocal harmonies are pretty close. Also, Steve Howe's cut from the exact same cloth, I wouldn't be surprised if he played with Graham Nash in the British country circuit. Both have country tele and tight vocal harmonies. I guess a lot of bands did back then, but the blend is more similar than most.

 

As for Yes vs Eagles... I'm not sure which ones sound more "Country" to me. Early Yes is pretty flippin country. Which is one of the reasons it took me so long to get into them growing up. Suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks around the same time I started loving old blues. People think of Yes as a high-production psychedelic band, but their sound comes from pretty humble roots, which is what makes them so fantastic!

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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Yours Is No Suite Judy Blue Eyes?

 

Yes, both bands used vocal harmonies, but I don't know that that alone is enough to qualify as making them sound the same to my ears. After all, they both use guitars, too! To me, Yes's vocal work is one of their defining characteristics. ELP, for instance, only had Greg Lake singing, so harmonies were out of the question, excepting multitracking in the studio.

 

Steve Howe's musical hero was Chet Atkins. It shows in Howe's playing sometimes...when he's not displaying rock or jazz or classical influences... I confess that I was rather surprised to find out about his liking for Atkins, but once you listen to his playing you can definitely hear some country-ish riffs. As far as I know, none of the other members of the band claimed country influences.

 

My kids listen to bands that use vocal harmonies. My objection is the same as with the '80s hair bands--they all sound the same. They've discovered a formula that's popular and they're flogging it for all it's worth, but there's so little to differentiate the bands from one another that, while I admit that the vocals are tight and sometimes clever, I find the overall result to be rather sterile and repetitive.

 

Grey

I'm not interested in someone's ability to program. I'm interested in their ability to compose and play.

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I frankly didn't give a rat's butt that 90125 was a "new" Yes that didn't sound like the "old" Yes. I liked some (not all) of the old Yes a lot, but 90125 was a killer album that I played to death. The band was originally tagged with the name "Cinema" I believe, and perhaps they should have run with that. That album sold a ton of copies. I don't think it would have made any difference if they weren't call Yes, and all the fans of the original Yes could have spared us years of whining about it.
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I dig Owner of a Lonely Heart. Watching this and seeing Jon rocking back and forth I instantly thought of the fantastic Head East cover shared by EscapeRocks, a benchmark I now measure all live performances by. I wish I knew how to quickly create a mashup = if you want to have a bit of fun, open up a separate window, play Owner of a Lonely Heart, at the same time run the below video with the sound off. Enjoy

 

[video:youtube]

Some music I've recorded and played over the years with a few different bands

Tommy Rude Soundcloud

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Yours Is No Suite Judy Blue Eyes?

 

Yes, both bands used vocal harmonies, but I don't know that that alone is enough to qualify as making them sound the same to my ears.

I don't think I'd ever confuse the two, but the two share, not just use of lots of vocal harmonies, but more specifically, harmonies that are not largely simple 3rds and 5ths. Jon Anderson and Chris Squire were both big fans of Simon and Garfunkel, and not only did Yes cover S&G's America, but back to a CSNY connection, they also covered a Stills tune from his Buffalo Springfield days.

Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-)

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Love that album and song. One of my desert island pics. You can't think of this band as the same band that recorded Fragile, because it's not. It was Trevor Rabin and Trevor Horn in a studio for a few months. Alan and Chris were there for basic tracks then left. Jon came in when the album was already finished, and Tony was the touring keyboardist (with Casey Young under the stage playing other parts.)

 

I remember the official video for Owner being not much better. I remember them all facing each other on top of a building, then Jon turns into an eagle or something? Music videos were crazy weird in the early '80s. I miss it.

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