I took piano lessons for about ten years starting when I was a kid. I was that pompous oaf who called Prokofiev's works "derivative" while extolling works like Chopin's Military Polonnaise as the truer example of craft and vision.
Why yes, I got the dogsnot beat out of me on a fairly regular basis, why do you ask? :)
So, I guess now would be a good time to check them out again, since he's no more.
The new guy sounds like the old guy but with a harder edge to his voice, and the lyrics have gotten much less pretentiously spiritual (the last album with Ed, Songs from Black Mountain, is for die-hards only).
Most of the tunes with Chris Shinn can be heard on Youtube so you can make your own mind up about them w/o investing any dinero. The three I mentioned are all pretty solid songs. Basically it sounded like the other three guys were like "We still like playing together...let's just get a new guy to sing!"
Torchsong, if you like the sound of Live you should also check out 'The Gracious Few'. It's essentially the same deal. The backing 3 guys from Live, with Kevin Martin (Vocalist for Candlebox). It's a little heavier sounding than Live, but not bad.
Like you, I was pleasantly surprised by 'The Turn'. Expected to hate it, and was whisked away to the mid-90's...
I try to stay out of the Beatles Are the Greatest Band Ever arguement because it really is a pointless debate. I will say this though. I recently worked the Firefly and Big Barrell music festival in Dover Delaware and I saw about 100,000 people and 100 plus bands. I also heard Beatles covers, McCartney covers and Lennon covers scattered throughout 7 days of music festival. I also heard some youngster name Paul playing the sh&t out of Band On the Run and Live And Let Die.
I dont believe there is a winner in that debate but I will say that the music of The Beatles is certainly the most influential over the past 50 years and denying it or explaining it away seems pointless. Whether by quantity or quality the Beatles have left their mark and hearing so many genres play their music is great.
I am late to the party on this thread, I have skimmed through several pages and can sum up a few quick responses:
- I'm not into the hat pop/fiddle rock at all - I love metal and punk but when everyone downtunes the guitars to D and does the whole cookie monster vocal thing, they lose me. Die hard fan of the Darkness. Gimme Cheap Trick any day - Zevon rules and his first album is brilliant top to bottom, one of my all time favorites by any artist. You're here because you like descriptive imagery.. you like literature.. Give it a try.
Bowie is pretty much my god, I am a hardcore devotee to the holy trinity of Bowie/Iggy/Lou, but.. we lost one of my idols this weekend- Chris Squire of Yes. So I've been rocking that nonstop since I heard the news- I have been a fan of the band for a VERY long time. Yes was pretty formative for me from an early age and they definitely showed me the wide range of things that were possible within the rock form. I have remained a big fan and revisited their stuff often over the years. They were absolutely a weird band in the best ways and found success being unique, which made a big impression on my junior HS level ears and my later listening habits. As for the bass playing I could go on and on about Squire and why he was so awesome as a musician.. He was one of the all time greats and nobody had the tone that he had, playing the crazy stuff that he played. And he could sing harmonies while doing it too.
It's always sad when these guys leave us, but I do end up diving way into the catalog every time it happens, and I always get to something that I either rediscover or discover, and I gain a lot of new appreciation for. I've found more than a few this week and I've been a Yes fan for over 30 years. It's like one final gift from the musician that you spent so much time being a fan of.
Yep, very sorry to see Chris Squire pass. He was a big influence on me as I was learning bass in my teens. I spent many hours playing his stuff, and he, even more than Geddy Lee, was why I bought a Rickenbacker (a 1968 model, I think) while I was in college. I never got to see them in concert, though.
Back in the '80s, the classic rock station out of Chicago used to play albums in their entirety at midnight. One night I stayed up late and happened to tape Fragile. I played the hell out of that cassette. And yet Yes has still always been one of those bands I say I'm going to dig deeper into and yet never have. I never got further than picking up one of their pop albums from the '80s - not even the one with Owner of a Lonely Heart, the follow-up that essentially brought an end to their brief spell as MTV hitmakers. It's a shame it takes the death of one of their core members to remind me to finally get around to listening to more.
I try to stay out of the Beatles Are the Greatest Band Ever arguement because it really is a pointless debate. I will say this though. I recently worked the Firefly and Big Barrell music festival in Dover Delaware and I saw about 100,000 people and 100 plus bands. I also heard Beatles covers, McCartney covers and Lennon covers scattered throughout 7 days of music festival. I also heard some youngster name Paul playing the sh&t out of Band On the Run and Live And Let Die.
I dont believe there is a winner in that debate but I will say that the music of The Beatles is certainly the most influential over the past 50 years and denying it or explaining it away seems pointless. Whether by quantity or quality the Beatles have left their mark and hearing so many genres play their music is great.
Back in the '80s, the classic rock station out of Chicago used to play albums in their entirety at midnight. One night I stayed up late and happened to tape Fragile. I played the hell out of that cassette. And yet Yes has still always been one of those bands I say I'm going to dig deeper into and yet never have. I never got further than picking up one of their pop albums from the '80s - not even the one with Owner of a Lonely Heart, the follow-up that essentially brought an end to their brief spell as MTV hitmakers. It's a shame it takes the death of one of their core members to remind me to finally get around to listening to more.
My Mum was a huge fan of Yes back in the early 70's, I've never got into them. Maybe I should give them another go.
Back in the '80s, the classic rock station out of Chicago used to play albums in their entirety at midnight. One night I stayed up late and happened to tape Fragile. I played the hell out of that cassette. And yet Yes has still always been one of those bands I say I'm going to dig deeper into and yet never have. I never got further than picking up one of their pop albums from the '80s - not even the one with Owner of a Lonely Heart, the follow-up that essentially brought an end to their brief spell as MTV hitmakers. It's a shame it takes the death of one of their core members to remind me to finally get around to listening to more.
If you like Fragile, you'll like The Yes Album. With Closer to the Edge they start getting deeper into the prog and further from the rock. But that and Tales from Topographic Oceans are still quite good. After Relayer it's much more hit or miss for me.
After listening to them so much in my teens and early 20s, these days, as with many other bands, I can only listen to them in small doses.
Yeah, Prog Rock is pretty much hit or miss with me. Sometimes I love it, sometimes it's so pretentious I just can't take it.
My wife likes to listen to a Prog Rock channel on Pandora while she paints, and one night it shuffled onto some track by Yes that felt like it went on forever. We stopped to make and eat dinner, and when we finished, it was still playing. My tolerance of that is very dependent on my mood at the time. I have songs by Miles Davis that go on for that long, but unlike Prog Rock, those songs don't feature someone singing about elves and fairies, or interstellar travel, or whatever.
Still, from what I've heard, Yes seemed to have a tighter grip on things than a lot of similar bands.
Yeah, Prog Rock is pretty much hit or miss with me. Sometimes I love it, sometimes it's so pretentious I just can't take it.
My wife likes to listen to a Prog Rock channel on Pandora while she paints, and one night it shuffled onto some track by Yes that felt like it went on forever. We stopped to make and eat dinner, and when we finished, it was still playing. My tolerance of that is very dependent on my mood at the time. I have songs by Miles Davis that go on for that long, but unlike Prog Rock, those songs don't feature someone singing about elves and fairies, or interstellar travel, or whatever.
Still, from what I've heard, Yes seemed to have a tighter grip on things than a lot of similar bands.
Their proggier albums only have three or four tracks filling the 40 minutes, so yeah, they could stretch them out with the best of them.
If you like Fragile, you'll like The Yes Album. With Closer to the Edge they start getting deeper into the prog and further from the rock. But that and Tales from Topographic Oceans are still quite good. After Relayer it's much more hit or miss for me.
I love the "classic era" Yes.. Basically from The Yes Album through Relayer like you said. Close to the Edge is their masterpiece IMO.. Relayer is like the dark twin of that record, also great. If you're more into the shorter songs on Fragile/Yes Album (which IMO are also classics) and want more I'd recommend Going For The One (their next record after Relayer)- it's strong and the songs are shorter. Their first two albums (self titled, and Time And A Word) are good too but they are more straight ahead rock, the prog ideas were starting to come together that early, but the band really comes into their identity on The Yes Album.
Yessongs (the live record from that classic period) is arguably their best album and the one that I saved 4 weeks worth of lunch money to buy on CD at age 12. Yesshows is the other live record worth checking out if you want more than the classic period stuff, it's pretty great too.
Tales From Topographic Oceans.. Double album, 1 track on each side! It meanders to me.. I STILL can't really get into that one.
The criticisms above are valid- Pretentious? Abso-freaking-lutely. The band had some real bombs over the years and there are some hilarious anecdotes about them worth sharing. They had a LOT of lineup changes- Chris Squire himself joked when asked about induction to the R&RHOF that the band was on it's 18th member so there probably wasn't room for them. Plus Rick Wakeman who was on keys in the 70s used to order Indian & Chinese takeout to be delivered to him onstage during some of the lengthy live jams. Wakeman's keyboard rig also apparently could pick up (unintentionally) radio signals.. so sure enough, local radio DJs could be randomly heard in some live shows. The band just released a box set of 7 full concerts from 1972 and I did read the production notes- on one of those shows apparently there's a spot where you can hear this (although the producers did try to scrub it from the recording).
Hilarious stuff. But I still love 'em- no band, even the legends, are above a misstep or an outright laughable or bad record here and there. With Yes- the high points were very high.
Back in the '80s, the classic rock station out of Chicago used to play albums in their entirety at midnight.
That's WCKG 105.9, home of Patti Haze.. She sounded like she smoked nonstop! I taped the Zeppelin box set among many other records that way.. .
I've been trying to remember that station's call letters. If I'm googling correctly, it looks like it's now something called Fresh 105.9. Or an AM business talk station. It actually makes me a little sad to think it's not cranking out rock anymore. That station was everywhere when I was a kid. I'd just assumed it had at least morphed into a typical classic rock station.
And I remember Patti Haze (or Hayes, I see it spelled both ways online). A voice like sandpaper.
Posted this on my facebook feed when I heard the news about Squire's death:
This might run a bit long, so if you don't care or aren't a musician, feel free to skip it. Short form, one of my favorite musicians died today, and I wanted to acknowledge the influence he had. Not just on me but on music.
From a very young age I was always a fan of bassists and always wanted to learn the bass guitar...to the point where when I was given my first six-string I cut off the top two strings simply so I could learn the notes and played it as a four-string bass, even if it really wasn't. By the time I got my first actual bass, I took to playing it like a fish to water.
I blame this passion on Gene Simmons of KISS. I saw him play live when I was the tender age of ten and never looked back. If Gene played it, it had to be cool, right? Over time my appetite grew to include other - some will say 'better' - musicians in the field. Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, Victor Wooten, John Paul Jones, Roger Waters, the late great John Entwhistle, insert your favorite here. I learned bits and pieces of how to play by watching their style and trying to emulate it or incorporate it into what I would play myself (which to be clear, was nowhere NEAR on the level these guys played...but you learn by listening to them and try to take from it what you can.)
And then there was Chris Squire from Yes. I was always too busy picking my jaw up off the floor to bother trying to learn anything. I think if you're really talented, really put your time in, and really work at it, you can truly make something your own - whether it's in music, comics, fine art, writing - and help define just what your chosen field really means. Chris was that kind of bassist. Many point to his work on The Fish from the album Fragile, but to me one of his finest moments was a simpler riff off Drama on the song "Does It Really Happen?" Not complex, particularly. He's not racing up and down the neck or anything. But there's something about that bass-driven song that just gets into your brain, stays there for the day, and won't leave until you force it out by listening to a different Yes song.
Nobody sounds like Chris did. There are attempts made, and some come dangerously close, but nobody could sound like Chris Squire except Chris Squire. Playing in Yes required a variety of styles and techniques, and he seemed to meet each new style head on. It wasn't that he was all over the place with his playing, it was that he knew what the song needed to be great, and provided it...while also upping the level for anyone who tried to come after him.
Chris passed on today after a short battle with leukemia. He had a profound influence not only on music, but on bassists in particular. We talk about people who "re-define" the areas in which they work. I think it's safe to say anyone with a love of bass guitar never looked at the instrument the same way after hearing Chris Squire play it.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Squire, and thank you for the music that I've listened to for most of my life, and will continue to enjoy throughout the rest of it.
Back in the '80s, the classic rock station out of Chicago used to play albums in their entirety at midnight.
That's WCKG 105.9, home of Patti Haze.. She sounded like she smoked nonstop! I taped the Zeppelin box set among many other records that way.. .
I've been trying to remember that station's call letters. If I'm googling correctly, it looks like it's now something called Fresh 105.9. Or an AM business talk station. It actually makes me a little sad to think it's not cranking out rock anymore. That station was everywhere when I was a kid. I'd just assumed it had at least morphed into a typical classic rock station.
And I remember Patti Haze (or Hayes, I see it spelled both ways online). A voice like sandpaper.
How I miss WCKG, The Drive has served as a decent replacement, much better than The Loop has been in many years.
I was greatly saddened to hear the news of Squire's passing. I developed a love for Yes, when I was 14 working at Redamak's where the the only radio station allowed in the kitchen was WCKG. I have friends and family who when depressed go to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to help them break out of it. For me, it's Yes. I can put on just about any album and it helps to snap me back into place. And yeah, from Relayer on some of those albums can be hard to get through.
Shine your wings forward to to the sun. Rest in peace Mr. Squire.
Comments
Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet.
Why yes, I got the dogsnot beat out of me on a fairly regular basis, why do you ask? :)
Taylor Swift is my guilty pleasure right now. Pop songs I just can't get out of my head!!!
Like you, I was pleasantly surprised by 'The Turn'. Expected to hate it, and was whisked away to the mid-90's...
Taylor Swift is my guilty pleasure right now. Pop songs I just can't get out of my head!!! It is. This guilty pleasure, I really need to shake it off, shake it off.
...oh no it's happening again!!
As a card carrying member pop tripe I'll fight people about britneys two post crazy albums Blackout and Circus. Those are great albums.
Fool me once...
Well played, sir!
Well played, sir!
I dont believe there is a winner in that debate but I will say that the music of The Beatles is certainly the most influential over the past 50 years and denying it or explaining it away seems pointless. Whether by quantity or quality the Beatles have left their mark and hearing so many genres play their music is great.
- I'm not into the hat pop/fiddle rock at all
- I love metal and punk but when everyone downtunes the guitars to D and does the whole cookie monster vocal thing, they lose me. Die hard fan of the Darkness. Gimme Cheap Trick any day
- Zevon rules and his first album is brilliant top to bottom, one of my all time favorites by any artist. You're here because you like descriptive imagery.. you like literature.. Give it a try.
Bowie is pretty much my god, I am a hardcore devotee to the holy trinity of Bowie/Iggy/Lou, but.. we lost one of my idols this weekend- Chris Squire of Yes. So I've been rocking that nonstop since I heard the news- I have been a fan of the band for a VERY long time. Yes was pretty formative for me from an early age and they definitely showed me the wide range of things that were possible within the rock form. I have remained a big fan and revisited their stuff often over the years. They were absolutely a weird band in the best ways and found success being unique, which made a big impression on my junior HS level ears and my later listening habits. As for the bass playing I could go on and on about Squire and why he was so awesome as a musician.. He was one of the all time greats and nobody had the tone that he had, playing the crazy stuff that he played. And he could sing harmonies while doing it too.
It's always sad when these guys leave us, but I do end up diving way into the catalog every time it happens, and I always get to something that I either rediscover or discover, and I gain a lot of new appreciation for. I've found more than a few this week and I've been a Yes fan for over 30 years. It's like one final gift from the musician that you spent so much time being a fan of.
After listening to them so much in my teens and early 20s, these days, as with many other bands, I can only listen to them in small doses.
My wife likes to listen to a Prog Rock channel on Pandora while she paints, and one night it shuffled onto some track by Yes that felt like it went on forever. We stopped to make and eat dinner, and when we finished, it was still playing. My tolerance of that is very dependent on my mood at the time. I have songs by Miles Davis that go on for that long, but unlike Prog Rock, those songs don't feature someone singing about elves and fairies, or interstellar travel, or whatever.
Still, from what I've heard, Yes seemed to have a tighter grip on things than a lot of similar bands.
Yessongs (the live record from that classic period) is arguably their best album and the one that I saved 4 weeks worth of lunch money to buy on CD at age 12. Yesshows is the other live record worth checking out if you want more than the classic period stuff, it's pretty great too.
Tales From Topographic Oceans.. Double album, 1 track on each side! It meanders to me.. I STILL can't really get into that one.
The criticisms above are valid- Pretentious? Abso-freaking-lutely. The band had some real bombs over the years and there are some hilarious anecdotes about them worth sharing. They had a LOT of lineup changes- Chris Squire himself joked when asked about induction to the R&RHOF that the band was on it's 18th member so there probably wasn't room for them. Plus Rick Wakeman who was on keys in the 70s used to order Indian & Chinese takeout to be delivered to him onstage during some of the lengthy live jams. Wakeman's keyboard rig also apparently could pick up (unintentionally) radio signals.. so sure enough, local radio DJs could be randomly heard in some live shows. The band just released a box set of 7 full concerts from 1972 and I did read the production notes- on one of those shows apparently there's a spot where you can hear this (although the producers did try to scrub it from the recording).
Hilarious stuff. But I still love 'em- no band, even the legends, are above a misstep or an outright laughable or bad record here and there. With Yes- the high points were very high.
And I remember Patti Haze (or Hayes, I see it spelled both ways online). A voice like sandpaper.
This might run a bit long, so if you don't care or aren't a musician, feel free to skip it. Short form, one of my favorite musicians died today, and I wanted to acknowledge the influence he had. Not just on me but on music.
From a very young age I was always a fan of bassists and always wanted to learn the bass guitar...to the point where when I was given my first six-string I cut off the top two strings simply so I could learn the notes and played it as a four-string bass, even if it really wasn't. By the time I got my first actual bass, I took to playing it like a fish to water.
I blame this passion on Gene Simmons of KISS. I saw him play live when I was the tender age of ten and never looked back. If Gene played it, it had to be cool, right? Over time my appetite grew to include other - some will say 'better' - musicians in the field. Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, Victor Wooten, John Paul Jones, Roger Waters, the late great John Entwhistle, insert your favorite here. I learned bits and pieces of how to play by watching their style and trying to emulate it or incorporate it into what I would play myself (which to be clear, was nowhere NEAR on the level these guys played...but you learn by listening to them and try to take from it what you can.)
And then there was Chris Squire from Yes. I was always too busy picking my jaw up off the floor to bother trying to learn anything. I think if you're really talented, really put your time in, and really work at it, you can truly make something your own - whether it's in music, comics, fine art, writing - and help define just what your chosen field really means. Chris was that kind of bassist. Many point to his work on The Fish from the album Fragile, but to me one of his finest moments was a simpler riff off Drama on the song "Does It Really Happen?" Not complex, particularly. He's not racing up and down the neck or anything. But there's something about that bass-driven song that just gets into your brain, stays there for the day, and won't leave until you force it out by listening to a different Yes song.
Nobody sounds like Chris did. There are attempts made, and some come dangerously close, but nobody could sound like Chris Squire except Chris Squire. Playing in Yes required a variety of styles and techniques, and he seemed to meet each new style head on. It wasn't that he was all over the place with his playing, it was that he knew what the song needed to be great, and provided it...while also upping the level for anyone who tried to come after him.
Chris passed on today after a short battle with leukemia. He had a profound influence not only on music, but on bassists in particular. We talk about people who "re-define" the areas in which they work. I think it's safe to say anyone with a love of bass guitar never looked at the instrument the same way after hearing Chris Squire play it.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Squire, and thank you for the music that I've listened to for most of my life, and will continue to enjoy throughout the rest of it.
I was greatly saddened to hear the news of Squire's passing. I developed a love for Yes, when I was 14 working at Redamak's where the the only radio station allowed in the kitchen was WCKG. I have friends and family who when depressed go to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to help them break out of it. For me, it's Yes. I can put on just about any album and it helps to snap me back into place. And yeah, from Relayer on some of those albums can be hard to get through.
Shine your wings forward to to the sun. Rest in peace Mr. Squire.