----------------------------------------------------- JULY 3, 2000 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: Dallas Morning News http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/105689_YES03.html Yes is back to the basics Regrouped band wisely relies on jams at Smirnoff show By Matt Weitz There was a time -- the early '90s, to be exact -- when there was nothing more depressing than talking to Steve Howe, guitar kahuna of onetime British prog-rock principality Yes. You couldn't really blame him: He'd just come through a decade when the band was so at sea that it kicked things off by absorbing what amounted to the Buggles (Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes -- remember "Video Killed the Radio Star"? Didn't think so.) and ended them by enduring a suit filed by founding bassist Chris Squire over the rights to their name. Back then talking to Mr. Howe was an exercise in the brutal reality of disenchantment. "I don't think we're lousy," he helpfully offered nine years ago when talking to The Dallas Morning News. In the same interview, he optimistically opined that, "We ain't as good as we used to be," and that the group's early '70s playing was "poles better than what we can do now." Well, OK then. Time brings acceptance to us all, and Mr. Howe must've been close to the top of Time's list. He returned Sunday night to the Smirnoff Music Centre with most of his original band -- notably singer Jon Anderson and Mr. Squire -- and helped his old mates deliver an expansive portion of old favorites that helped remind the 3,000 or so in attendance that "classic rock" used to refer to music based on orchestral idioms rather than a horrible marketing niche. Yes -- supported by unusually effective staging that projected waterfalls of color upon a series of triangles (behind) and a billowing canopy (above) -- redeemed their old excesses by putting on a great show long on extended jams. Still, from the first notes of "Close to the Edge," it was all about reassuring the faithful, not winning new souls, a fact the group seemed to recognize by focusing on stretched-out versions of essential faves such as "Starship Trooper" and "Gates of Delirium" rather than marketable clinkers such as "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and others too painful to recall. Age has lent Mr. Anderson's once supremely annoying voice a timbre that leaves it sounding accomplished rather than maddening; Mr. Squire's clanky, full-throated bass lines reaffirmed his position as an important figure in the early "lead bass" school of the bottom end (Phil Lesh and Jack Casady are arguably better but more American competitors), full of sternum-rattling, hair-mussing low notes. Like recent Smirnoff guest Roger Waters, who had also weathered a long spell of band-name-related legal difficulties, Yes managed to keep their coin legal tender in the realm of rock. Show opener Kansas, once equally mighty and then equally devalued, did not fare so well. Although their versions of new songs such as "Not Man Big" (What?) and "Icarus II" were every bit the equal of old tunes such as "Hold On" and "Carry On Wayward Son," their blues-based, violin-driven approximation of Yes' classicism had not weathered the passage of time. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com