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APRIL 14, 2004
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Source: Seattle Weekly
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0415/040414_music_yes.php
Tales From Discographic Oceans
And here it is . . . again . . . Yes.
By Dave Queen
Thirty-six true summers ago, Jon Anderson tired of being a milkman, so he
decided to combine the Mars Volta with the Outfield, and the mighty riff
machine YES went into overdrive with riffs like “Owner of a Lonely Heart,”
where Trevor Rabin took a flare gun and burned the corrupt apartheid state
to the ground!
(TEMPO CHANGE) Hey, they just discovered a new planet, how cool is that!
And it was designed by Roger Dean. All the Yes covers are really
photographs from outer-space telescopes, so they’re actually TRUE. Except
for the cover of Relayer (1974), which is a photo of my apartment block
after I stupidly lit the crack pipe with the gas burner on. How about that
“Gates of Delirium,” which took up all of Relayer’s vinyl side one?
Antiwar free-improv noisefest! People complained about their
so-o-o-o-o-o-o-ng lengths, so they wrote a song based on War and Peace.
What a way to claim you’ve read something. Next time you’re in class, just
answer every question by playing a bass solo. Tales From Pornographic
Oceans somewhat more believably was based on “Sexual Perversions Among
Galapagos Tortoises,” which Steve Howe liked so much he decided to resemble
one!
(KEY CHANGE) I haven’t done any actual research on the upcoming Affirmative
show, so I have no idea what the lineup is going to be. [Anderson, Howe,
Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman, and Alan White.—Ed.] Everybody who ever made a
car-stereo demonstration CD or appeared on the Con Air soundtrack or was in
the Buggles was a member at one point. The Buggles album (1979’s Drama,
recently reissued by Rhino alongside 1978’s Tormato and 1983’s 90125) had
the best Deanscape and the weirdest vowel sounds in the history of singing.
Anderson rhymes “throw” with “try” and “and you” with “blind you,” like a
Corey Hart from New Zealand. Was this the same Trevor Horn who didn’t
produce Judas Priest’s Turbo (1986)? Which (despite the Wang Chung–y “Wild
Nights, Hot & Crazy Days”) was a failed fusion of the pre-Moby (ha ha!)
electro orcus-dorkus of “Don’t Kill the Whale” (Tormato) and 90125’s “Owner
of a Lonely Heart”’s brain–squeezing, synapse-shattering,
spleen-perforating, foreskin-separating, testicle-crushing ROCK AND ROLL!
(SHE’S GIVIN’ ME EX-CETACEANS) “Don’t Kill the Whale” has a surprisingly
sharp and sarcastic edge not usually expected from Jon Anderson or famous
dead flute players: “Beauty/Vision/Do we offer much?” I’m going to throw
this bowl of tuna away because it looks like dog food and I’m too lazy to
make it into a sandwich. “Don’t Kill the Whale” would be remembered only
as the fifth-best Disco-Sucks-disco (Dahldisco?) record ever (after “Miss
You,” “Another One Bites the Dust,” “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” and Don
Felder’s “Heavy Metal”) if not for Rick Wakeman’s surrealist/intoxicated
subversion of the material. If you’re in one of the telescope seats
(assuming Roger Dean hasn’t painted over the lens), focus on Wakeman and
you might see him order take-out food onstage. And you thought “Cans and
Brahms” (Fragile, 1972) was the only thing he ripped from Jerry Lee!
(Unfortunately the rumors that Tormato is to be played in its entirety at
all the stops of the current tour have been denied, and after what happened
last time, souvenir tomatoes will not be handed out at the door.)
(REGIME CHANGE) Great as the show will undoubtedly be, were I a promoter, I
would charge twice the admission for a Steve Howe–Trevor Rabin fight to the
death! These two get on like Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. after a coke-fueled
game of powerboat “chicken”! (“Mano a mano, turtle dude!”) Howe first left
Yes to invent stadium prog with Asia, who produced the best-selling album
of 1982, admittedly the year when the music business was so depressed that
Chu-Bops were being vilified as a threat to legitimate MP3’s. Asia’s “Heat
of the Moment” had a thundering kidney-defenestrating, medulla-buggering,
etc., riff, but still got blown up like a box of kittens by Rabin’s “Owner
of a Lonely Heart,” which simply “Owned” everything! Howe has expressed
dislike for this spine-mincing, eyeball-vaporizing ROCK anthem on numerous
occasions, a mystifying lapse of judgment from the man who invented both
George Lynch and Loren Mazzacane Connors, but then Robert Plant refuses to
sing “Pictures of Matchstick Men” live, preferring to do endless
Scandinavian tours with bogus Whitesnake “reunion” lineups, so who knows
how rock gods think, anyway? (Asia’s Geoff Downes on the enduring
world-conquering appeal of his band: “Who wants to see some faggot farting
around on a synthesizer with some tart squeaking on top, calling it the
cutting edge of dance music?” And who wants to see the “new” Yes logo
anywhere?)
(UNDERWEAR CHANGE) Back to “Don’t Kill the Whale.” “The squawk box . . .
consisted of two speakers mounted on a 3-foot cube. These emit ultrasonic
sound of frequency 16,000 and 16,002 cycles per second, respectively—too
high to be audible to most people. These combine to produce a beat
frequency of 2 cps, which is too low to be heard. This infrasound may cause
the victim to feel giddy and nauseous. Highly directional, it could be
focused on individuals within a crowd, causing distress to the victims,
creating panic in others who would see the apparently inexplicable effects.
After realizing that Rick Wakeman was deliberately doing this in between
ordering take-out food onstage, Yes replaced him with Patrick Moraz, who
used to be in the Moody Blues, whose single ‘Ride My See-Saw’ was fantastic
post-psychedelic Strawberry Alarm Krautrock! Except they didn’t do reggae
as good as Yes.”—“The Technology of Political Control,” written by some
bleeding-heart liberals who seem to inexplicably object to using weird
weapons on the subversives and perverts and turtle fetishists who hate our
freedoms and want to destroy our way of life.
(TIME SIGNATURE CHANGE) The editor of this music section apparently
doesn’t esteem Mr. Vincent Gallo very much, but I must part company with
him on this particular point! It’s undeniable that Gallo’s classic film
Buffalo 66 made Yes cool again with its use of “Owner of a Lonely Heart of
the Sunrise.” I liked that film very much, as I sympathized with the lead
character’s odd situation. Well, that’s my excuse for constant late and
blown assignments and for the ones that actually turn up reading like tales
from topographic toilets. (OK, it’s actually not “prison” but “England”
I’m returning home to after a mysterious 11-year disappearance, but . . .
I’m assuming some of you have been there, right? Just kidding, English
people, I luv you all. Except for Jon Anderson, who hasn’t delivered my
milk in 36 years.) Tomato plants are good for hiding marijuana plants.
Bring both.
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