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Originally Posted by Everyneurotic
i was kinda kidding man, i know nobody likes yes. at least you really show appreciation.
i'm yet to venture to the yes album and back but i'm kinda familiar with them, and out of the ones i heard, my favorite is fragile. i noticed that yes were a lot better live than in the studio, they always tried to super polish everything and multitrack as much as possible, i love "close to the edge" live but find the studio version just ok, same with relayer, too smooth but life i love all three songs. weird. but i'm not saying this so you should like them, just i don't know, making conversation...no, actually, to show you that even thought i love them, i know what you mean.
but i agree, not only wakeman, but all of them could fare really well playing less.
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I'm not ashamed to admit that in the days before punk rock existed in the suburban NW (it seems weird, but there's a reason that Queensryche were the first band to come out of my homeground and why even years later the underground bands were all so versed in Zeppelin, and it's the fact that the local radio stations in the '80s never once admited that the Ramones had ever existed!) I listened to quite a lot of Yes (and for that matter Rush, and even worse, Triumph). Of the music that I had been allowed to know existed in the world, art rock was the most appealing to me because it was rock with at least somewhat artistic goals (i.e. pretentions). I also listened to my share of metal because of the power.
Then one day I was randomly twisting the radio dial and I caught the tail end of "She's in a Bad Mood" on the local college station. In those thirty seconds my life was completely changed. Here was music that was artier than anything Yes had ever dreamed of and with more power than any metal band I had ever heard! What's more it wasn't cheesy, wasn't overproduced, and even the dj who came on to announce it afterward sounded like she was from another, much more interesting, planet. In a total epiphany I realized that there was a whole world of possibilities and sounds that AOR radio had been completely hiding from me, and I was never going back.
So I still have a nostalgic soft spot for the geeky 17 year old that was listening to Yes when that happened. Through my much more informed musical ears today, I can still admit that The Yes Album (which is actually pre-Wakeman when you come down to it) is a decent record that isn't light years away from Tortoise in terms of theory and minus Anderson's vocals (which are much less elfy on that one than later) sound. I'm glad Sonic Youth are arty and not just noisy and powerful, and that this made them palatable to my teen art-rock geek ears.