Published on Apr 15, 1997
If you’re looking for a little sunshine in the form of music to
brighten up this Income Tax Deadline day, well… see you tomorrow.
(No, wait! Don’t go! We need all the hits we can get!)
Yesterday I nearly fell over myself praising the work of Don
McLean – and rightfully so, ’cause it deserved it. Today, we’re
going to talk about one of the biggest, smelliest pieces of dog
shit ever to be released under the guise of “rock” – and in a
double album, no less. Grab a sandwich and a beer, ’cause this
one’s gonna be fun to rip on.
Today’s victim: art-rock band Yes. While there never was any
question that the members of Yes were talented musicians, there is
something known as too much of a good thing – and that is named
Tales From Topographic Oceans. I know that art-rock is
supposed to be somewhat pompous and overblown, but
this is ridiculous.
While on tour (I’m guessing for
Close To The Edge), lead vocalist Jon Anderson was looking
through
Autobiography Of A Yogi – nothin’ like a little light
reading in the john, you know – and became inspired to write music
based around the “shastras”. (I once had a similar experience,
writing music about the “Shastas”… oh, never mind. Bad soda
joke.) Eight months later, they had this monstrosity – and don’t
give me this “Just think, it takes two years for a baby elephant”
jazz.
The album features one song on each of its sides – bad move.
Doing a piece on a theme that is a side long is one of the biggest
challenges any artist faces. Mike Oldfield successfully did it,
Jethro Tull did it while making a few mistakes, then promptly
messed it up by trying it again one album later. Yes takes possibly
one or two good riffs and pounds the bejeezus out of them. By the
time they’re done, the once-good riff sounds like it’s a sheep
being butchered.
And it’s not even the subject matter that inspired the music
that is the problem. Christ, Anderson could have been reading the
fuckin’
Kama Sutra, and this album would still suck. Welllll…..
maybe it would have been a little more interesting (and would have
sped up the invention of the music video by almost a decade), but
it still would have been a big pile of (forgive me, Dennis Miller),
dog shiiiit that even Divine wouldn’t have eaten.
Even the song titles are enough to fracture the jaw of an
elephant – c’mon, “The Revealing Science Of God – Dance Of The
Dawn?” (Betcha God was considering suing for defamation of
character on this one.) Gee, I feel so cosmic… yeah, right. I’ve
felt more closer to spiritual oneness sniffing nitrous oxide in my
dentist’s office. ‘Course, he wasn’t there when I broke in to do
so, but I digress.
Awright, maybe some parts of it didn’t stink. I’ll concede side
one starts off okay – the chant at the beginning is somewhat
interesting. And there are some interesting riffs that Steve Howe
is able to squeeze out of his guitar.
But the moments of brilliance are few and far between. There is
only so much noodling that Rick Wakeman can do on the keyboards
before it sounds like he’s sitting on them to see what kind of
noise will come out. Steve Howe has always been an incredible
guitarist, but when you hear him recycle riffs from “And You And I”
from the previous album
Close To The Edge, you know he’s got to be bored with the
entire creative process this monster had become. We have four words
for this: “going through the motions.”
Alan White does provide a decent backbeat, though there’s only
so much he can do with the drums (unless you’re Neil Peart). And
Chris Squire… well, there are very few people who can make the
bass guitar more than a rhythm instrument, those people I can think
of at one o’clock in the morning being the late Cliff Burton and
Geddy Lee. After a while, it’s so much plink-plink-plink on a
four-string guitar. Can you say “Zzzzzz”?
And what pisses me off about this half-ass effort from Yes is
that they were so much better than this. No, really. The album
Fragile allowed them to delve into their creative dreams and
not bore the listener to the point of suicide. Even
Close To The Edge, as indulgent as it was, was at least a
halfway interesting album to listen to. This is just musical
masturbation at its worst – so bad that it sent Rick Wakeman
running for the exits not long after its completion. (He would
return in 1977 for
Going For The One, but after two albums, the honeymoon was
over again.)
Tales From Topographic Oceans began a downspin for Yes that
I don’t think they fully recovered from until their first breakup
in 1981 and their reunion album
90125. Sure, they had their moments – “Wondrous Stories” and
“Tempus Fugit” (featuring Trevor Horn as lead throat) being two
prime examples of what they could do when they cut the bullshit and
got to the heart of the music.
With this release, though, Yes lost the credibility they had
worked to build up, which is an even bigger tragedy. Avoid this
album like you would a restaurant serving burgers suffering from
mad cow disease. Remember what Uncle Ronnie taught us through most
of the ’80s: Just say “No”.