A "new" Yes album from 1976?!

[marino]

Knowing that there are many Yes fans around here, and in case you didn't already stumble on it:

 

Some crazily creative character named Rael has taken ten pieces from the five solo albums that every member of Yes made in 1976, plus one unreleased Yes tune, assembled them in seven longer songs, and compiled a "new", fictitious Yes album.

 

It sounds mostly like vintage Yes, and - in my opinion - it flows well to the ear regardless.

Sometimes it's not easy to follow what's going on because he changed some titles too - but musically, it seems to make perfect sense.

 

The guy also assembled stuff from Genesis, Pink Floyd, Beach Boys and Gong! ("Master Builder" is probably my absolute favorite Gong track)

Enjoy

 

[video:youtube]

[Marzzz]

Oh jeez, it did have to start with Pat Moraz' opener from side two of "i"...fwiw Squire's "Fish Out of Water" was the only listenable solo from the Yes crew, IMHO.

[AnotherScott]

I was eager to hear this, but in the end, it merely confirmed to me that Chris Squire had the only worthwhile solo album. Just consider "Fish Out of Water" to be the "missing" 1976 Yes album, done!

[Baldwin Funster]

I think ramshackled is pretty good. The production is a little uneven . Its definitely not a prog album. I like that alan marshall vocal.

[GRollins]

A friend of mine, being a guitar player, pounced on Steve Howe's solo album...I, being a bass player, went for Squire's album. My buddy was sorely disappointed--to the point that he was trying to figure out a way to take the album back as defective or something. I, on the other hand, was pretty content with Squire's effort. It sounded more Yes-ish to me, and that's what I wanted.

 

It's like when Chick Corea assembled Return To Forever, finally hitting the ultimate personnel roster with the addition of Al DiMeola. So they hit the ball out of the park with Romantic Warrior and what does Chick do? He disbands RTF and reshapes it into a crash and burn formulation. Meanwhile, Al DiMeola goes out and starts a solo career continuing where Romantic Warrior left off, generating a number of albums that clearly showed that he was the standard bearer for that kind of music.

 

In that same sense, Yes was veering from the path they'd been on (breaking my heart in the process), but Chris Squire seemed to want to still be "Yes."

 

I liked Wakeman's solo albums, but they were not Yes music per se and didn't go into heavy rotation. Howe and Anderson's efforts didn't work for me. Did Alan White have a solo album? I'm coming up blank. On the other hand, if he did and it was that forgettable, then I guess that kind of answers my question.

 

Grey

[mcgoo]

Yes, Alan did an album called Ramshackled. While it bore little or no resemblance to Yes, I always thought it was a really good album.

[Dr Mike Metlay]

I think ramshackled is pretty good. The production is a little uneven . Its definitely not a prog album. I like that alan marshall vocal.

This. By far the best of the five, because it WASN'T proggity prog prog proggishness. It was silly and funny and incredibly well played and emotionally accessible and a breath of fresh air at the time. Still love it to death.

 

Olias of Sunhillow is a reasonably close second; I thought it was a wonderfully coherent effort, and in later releases the audio was cleaned up quite nicely. Very Anderson.

 

The other three were totally forgettable to me. I was a HUGE Chris Squire fan but I was tired of Fish Out Of Water in a dozen plays or so; barely managed the How album once through. Ditto the Moraz.

 

YMMV

[AnotherScott]

I never actually heard the Alan White album. Possibly I should re-listen to Olias, I didn't give it very much of a chance.

[mate stubb]

I haven't heard it in years, but back in the day I had i from Patrick Moraz on heavy rotation and really enjoyed it. Not very Yes-like, but that was fine.

[Dave Bryce]

I still have 'i' - side 1 was also heavy rotation for me years ago - and tunes from it come up here and there on my shuffle setting. Same with Fish Out Of Water.

 

dB

[marino]

A word on those five solo albums: While I agree that Fish Out of Water was the most/only Yessish work of the bunch, I find all of them quite listenable.

 

Back to 1976, many Yes fans were disappointed that the individual member of the group would "lose time" with their individual projects rather than give them a real Yes work, so the solo albums were criticized a lot... but in those particular years, I was lost in my own Jazz Explosion, so my interest in Prog calmed down for a while. Consequently, I heard the solo albums several years later, and judged them with a cooler frame of mind. Maybe that's why I found all of them musical and pleasant, regardless of them being more or less "Prog".

 

The only thing lacking in the solo albums, in my opinion, is that magic interaction, where everybody gives his own contribution to a rather complex overall texture, which is one of the secrets of the Yes sound. And I think that's one reason why listening to the Moraz album, for example, from beginning to end can result in a bit of fatigue... it's too easy to detect that it comes from the mind of one single musician.

 

I find that this compilation was well assembled, and I like how it flows from start to finish. It'a way to add variety and colors to the individual projects: To switch from one album to another in a continuous way. The guy even took the time to paste different songs together. I have listened to the whole album in its entirety a couples of times already.

[GRollins]

I find it interesting that, of all the solo projects, Rick Wakeman's are the only ones that remain musically relevant in the overall scheme of things. I mean, no one is clamoring to hear anything from Steve Howe's album, for instance. Chris Squire's gone (dammit), and I loved the guy, but his stuff wasn't in demand. Rick, on the other hand, can play excerpts from Six Wives and people fall out of their seats. Of course, it helps that he has a natural comedic bent, but when he starts playing, people listen.

 

Is Rick Wakeman the 21st Century's answer to Victor Borge? Discuss.

 

Marino's point about the solo albums lacking the interplay between the members of Yes is a valid one. The solo albums allowed you to see the way each member approached music on their own. Squire and Wakeman's points of view worked better than, say, Howe's, but they lacked the synergy that drove Yes as a band.

 

This is something that's been on my mind recently because I'm working on a piece with multiple parts--all me, since I can't find anyone to play with--and I'm trying very hard to "get out of my own head" so that guitar, bass, keys, etc. don't all sound so much like a bunch of little Greys all jamming together. Guitar needs to sound stylistically different from bass, for instance, lest I fall into the same trap. It's an interesting challenge.

 

Grey

[synthizen2]

Yes, Alan did an album called Ramshackled. While it bore little or no resemblance to Yes, I always thought it was a really good album.

 

I liked that album too, due to its NOT sounding anything like Yes.

 

However... Ramshacked is as much "Alan White" as Fictitious Sports is "Nick Mason". In other words, NOT AT ALL. Both albums were groups thrown together by the drummers, with friends that supplied all the songwriting. I guess you could say that those drummers chose the direction of the music and the musicians/songwriters they wanted... But these two "drummer albums" are not to be compared to, say, a solo album by Bill Bruford.

[David Emm]

"Olias of Sunhillow" is one of the ultimate bong LPs of the time. I suspect it was a Lexicon showcase, because the ultra-layering was made massive with high-end $5k+ reverbs we take for granted as plug-ins now. Eddie Offord would have crapped himself if suddenly handed Valhalla Massive.

 

A fellow Yes fan weirdly called that album 'hippie bullsh*t.' I said "No one asked you to pour the lyrics on you like sunscreen. Shut up and wallow in the million-buck studio craft, you ingrate! Its fifty layers of synths we can't even afford one of, hence the bong."

 

Jon & Vangelis made good partners. They occupied neighborhoods in adjoining, complimentary dimensions. I once astounded two young folks with "Olias" & "China" in one day.

[GRollins]

I've pulled up Olias of Sunhillow on YouTube and...

 

Surprise!

 

I'm liking it.

 

WTF? I suspect the change is largely in me and my tastes and perspectives. No, it won't go into heavy rotation, but it's pleasant fluff in a sort-of world music vein. I'm not real big on world music, per se, but in small doses it's a nice antidote to some of the crap that gets airplay on my local radio station. Given that I was in my shop all day yesterday running wiring for more lighting, all I had for company was the radio and their playlist doesn't really suit me all that well. It's just the only game in town. So, yeah, some Jon Anderson is working for me right now. I have no earthly idea how long it's been since I've heard this album--decades, for sure--but it's giving me food for thought as to Anderson's input into Yes, vs. the other guys.

 

Grey

[EricBarker]

"Fish Out of Water" really feels like a BAND. I was pleasantly surprised, only having picked it up a few years ago. I figured it was going to be "me me me", as Squire is definitely more extroverted than the average bass player. But it really feels like a cohesive group, similar to how "Voyage of the Acolyte" sounds like for Hackett (that maybe more-so since Steve doesn't sing). I gotta give Jon some props for Olias, he did EVERYTHING, and learned most of the instruments he played just to create the album. However, Olias never did anything for me, personally. I found it to be meandering and a bite trite... I've never been a fan of new age, and Olias definitely veers into that territory. I feel like Chris really provided the down-to-earth grounding that Jon always needed. Without Chris, Jon just floats up and away, and doesn't do much for me. I was quite disappointed with Jon's album with Roine Stolt, one of my favorite guitar players. But you can tell he's a giddy Yes fan, and probably didn't have the heart to tell Jon when he was going overboard. Chris was alway there to push Jon where he needed to go.