----------------------------------------------------- AUGUST 12, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------- Source: Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6738-2002Aug11.html A Resounding Affirmation For Yes -- and Art-Rock  By Dave McKenna  Several thousand Yes fans came to Merriweather Post Pavilion on Friday eager to root on the last of the progressive-rock giants still roaming. Prog, also called art-rock, sprang up in the early 1970s as nothing less than a rebuttal to all the popular music since Elvis. All the big bands were British, but proggers found their core audience to be American middle-class kids too insecure to dance and too comfortable to talk about revolution. Yes's songs never relied on the verse-chorus-verse structure of all previous rock-and-roll; instead, a typical piece contained several "movements" loosely connected by a lyrical conceit regarding mountains, stars or the deep sea. The Yes faithful committed to memory every movement of 20-minute opuses with titles like "The Revealing Science of God." Even without radio play, time was when Yes could fill stadiums -- the band packed RFK in 1976. Now touring with a classic lineup (Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Steve Howe, Alan White and Rick Wakeman), Yes won't be playing any stadiums, but the size and fervor of the Merriweather crowd proved that the dinosaur's still got a strong kick. The nearly three-hour set shunned more accessible fare (singles "Your Move," "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and, most surprising, "Roundabout" went unplayed), but was heavy with faithful versions of the deep-album cuts from the 1970s that the hardest of the hard-core fans craved: "South Side of the Sky," "We Have Heaven" and 1977's "Awaken" (on which Squire played an oversize and Spinal Tap-ish triple-neck bass). The very mature audience pumped enough fists and cheered every song so raucously that it seemed memories of adolescence were as responsible for the reactions as the performances were. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, problems, corrections, or additions, contact YesinthePress@aol.com