Published on Jan 26, 2004
Another decade, another box set for prog-rock giants Yes.
The obvious question for any Yes fan — and I’m going to operate
under the assumption here that anyone who isn’t a Yes fan isn’t
going to bother reading a review of a five-disc, $50 box set — is
how this new set compares with the band’s 1991 four-disc
collection,
YesYears. Is it worth owning both, or will one or the other
do on its own? The answer, as with so many things connected with
this famously hard-to-pin-down outfit, is less than clear.
An immediate point of interest, though, is the fact that the
1991 collection was issued with the participation of both the
“Classic Yes” and the Trevor-Rabin-led YesWest factions, whereas
this set was compiled under the auspices of the current Classic Yes
lineup. In other words, if you’re looking for more unreleased
Rabin-era tracks, don’t look here. What you will find is a number
of variations from
YesYears — notably the absence of any of the bonus tracks
from the earlier collection — and a small sprinkling of additional
unreleased material, all of it from one variation or another of the
“classic” lineup.
As on
YesYears, the band is generous in terms of material from
their first two somewhat obscure albums, including eight songs and
42 minutes of music on disc one. It’s interesting stuff, if kind of
gawky in places, a musically adolescent band trying to grow into
the prog-rock adult it would become. Still, it seems excessively
generous when you come upon the harder choices ahead.
None of those hard choices are made when it comes to 1971’s
The Yes Album; five of its six tracks can be found here,
including all three that previously appeared on
YesYears, plus guitarist Steve Howe’s solo piece “Clap.”
(Howe was apparently the most active participant from the band in
the assembly of this set… draw your own conclusions.) Better
choices are made when it comes to the band’s breakthrough
Fragile; this set trades in bassist Chris Squire’s “The
Fish” for the underappreciated gem “South Side Of The Sky.” (But
why include “America” again? This makes three different albums
where this former non-album single release has been made available
to fans, and guess what? It’s not that great…!)
Close To The Edge always presents problems; it’s a classic
album whose three tracks all deserve to be here.
YesYears featured only the title track;
In A Word adds “Siberian Khatru.” You want to say this is a
game of “You can’t win,” though, when you consider the missing “And
You And I” is almost universally loved among Yesfans and its studio
version is missing from both collections. Sigh.
The choices from
Tales From Topographic Oceans and
Relayer are good ones, trading “Ritual” from
YesYears for the next-best suite from
TFTO, “The Revealing Science Of God,” and this time
including the full “Gates Of Delirium,” one of the band’s most
dynamic long-form pieces. The choices from
Going For The One are equally sensible — you have to have
the title track, “Wonderous Stories” was a minor hit, and “Turn Of
The Century” deserves to be included on one of the two collections.
It seems odd, though, to drop “Awaken” (another fan favorite, and
singer Jon Anderson’s self-professed favorite Yes track), and to
exclude “Parallels,” which the band used to open concerts with
regularly in 1977-78, from both sets. Tough choices, indeed.
Tormato is where things get a bit weird. Sure, add “Release,
Release” in place of
YesYears‘ “On The Silent Wings of Freedom,” that makes
sense. But “Arriving UFO”? Who
likes this song? And then there’s the fan-bait, the
previously unissued, quote-unquote bonus tracks. “Richard” is an
outtake from
Tormato. Think about it; this track wasn’t strong enough to
make it onto what’s generally regarded as Yes’s worst album of the
’70s. Uh-huh.
Next up are three
new! 1979 outtakes. “Tango” and “Never Done Before” hail
from the band’s aborted “Paris sessions,” and make the argument
that they didn’t pull the plug a minute too soon. “Tango” is a
ponderous, sing-songy waste of tape which sounds like it may have
had Howe’s guitar parts erased. As for “Never Done Before,” if
you’ve ever wanted to know what Yes might sound like as a
second-rate lounge act, here’s your chance. “Crossfire” follows, a
previously unreleased instrumental featuring Howe, Squire and
drummer Alan White in a directionless little jam.
And then we’re back to the proceedings at hand. The logical
tracks from the band’s ’80s incarnations show up here, with
“Machine Messiah” replacing “Does It Really Happen?” from
Drama, and “Leave It” assuming its rightful place here. The
next innovation is the inclusion of tracks from 1989’s
Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe album; the band appears to
have made peace with this fractured episode of its history.
The ’90s tracks are a bit of a puzzle. Taking two tracks from
the tepid
Union album makes sense if you feel obligated to maintain
balance between the two factions represented on that disc. But two
tracks from Rabin’s disastrous
Talk — including the woeful “I Am Waiting” — and only one
out of the album-and-a-half’s worth of strong new Classic Yes
material on the two
Keys To Ascension packages? “Mind Drive” is the right
choice, but this is still a disappointing oversight.
The selections from
Open Your Eyes and
The Ladder are predictable, yet frustrating;
The Ladder‘s “The Messenger” may be about Bob Marley, but
that doesn’t make it a better song than “New Language.” We close
things up with “Last Train,” a shuffling, pointless little outtake
from the
Magnification sessions, and that album’s sugary mini-epic
“In The Presence Of,” a song the band for some reason favors over
the title track and “Dreamtime,” both of which are punchier and
more dynamic.
On the bright side, the packaging for
In A Word is excellent — the “flipbook” binding of this set
is very attractive, and longtime Yes cover artist Roger Dean’s
dreamy landscapes feel like old friends. The detailed liner notes
are well done, even if raconteurs Chris Welch and Bill Martin do
tend to go on a bit getting to the point in their dueling essays
addressing (respectively) the history and larger significance of
Yes.
As an overview of the band’s work to date,
In A Word functions well, even if some of the choices made
are easy to second-guess. The reality is, this band still hasn’t
issued a truly definitive box set, and one begins to suspect at
this point that doing so may not even be possible. There’s simply
too much music and too much band and label politics interfering
with the decision-making process.