Yes, Live at Wembley Arena on cassette

Started by JimD, February 01, 2012, 12:23:36 AM

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rogerg


JimD

QuoteIf I remember correctly they were designed with the primary purpose of causing the largest tangle of tape known to humankind :)

Also generally stopping whenever they felt like it if you had a nice servo-controlled deck.  Or not rewinding very well.  Or flying through the air with the greatest of ease when you were fed up with them and going "rattly-ker-plank" when they hit something (note of course that all of this applies to cassettes of any brand/length anyway).

But what about *this* - //http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:TDK_D_C180_cassette.jpg - imagine how much prog you could get on there!!!

Drifting back to music and the band in question - has anyone else other than Trapezium Artist seen Yes ever?  If so, what were they like?
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Trapezium Artist

Quote from: "JimD"
QuoteIf I remember correctly they were designed with the primary purpose of causing the largest tangle of tape known to humankind :)

Also generally stopping whenever they felt like it if you had a nice servo-controlled deck.  Or not rewinding very well.  Or flying through the air with the greatest of ease when you were fed up with them and going "rattly-ker-plank" when they hit something (note of course that all of this applies to cassettes of any brand/length anyway).

But what about *this* - //http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%95%E3%82%A1%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB:TDK_D_C180_cassette.jpg - imagine how much prog you could get on there!!!

Drifting back to music and the band in question - has anyone else other than Trapezium Artist seen Yes ever?  If so, what were they like?

Oh ... does that disqualify me from answering your question? Off the top of my head, I think I saw Yes play in 1977, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1985, 1989 (ok, ABWH), 1991, and perhaps three or four times since. So I could go on for quite a while ...

Bizarrely, I find it harder to remember the more recent gigs than the ancient history ones; then again, it might be that the 1970s gigs were so much more memorable ... What were they like in 1977 and 1978?  :o  :mrgreen:  :shock:

danofmayz

I wish CD's had a little hole you could tape over to make them recordable  :lol:
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JimD

QuoteOh ... does that disqualify me from answering your question?

Oh no, not at all  :oops:

Just wanted to acknowledge that you HAD brought the "I've seen Yes live" factor to this thread :)

So, TA, without me resorting to Googling for the timelines of Yes, did you see either the Trevor Horn-fronted era or the 90125-tour era?  My guess is seeing them in 1980 and 84/85 may mean yes (to Yes), but like I say, I've not got the facts to hand - but I am asking!

I myself like a lot of Yes, but not all of Yes.  So although I've never seen them live (I was mostly too young) I don't know if I'd actually ever see my optimum Yes gig now, if you know what I mean - they could play an entire set of songs I don't really enjoy!

Of course I might equally be really pleasantly surprised, after all I first heard them when I was working in an office in 1998 and when we were working a late-nighter the boss brought in "Going For The One".  I was quite put off at first by the manic slide playing of the title track but was totally hooked by the end of "Wonderous Stories".  

As for recordable CDs it has always been a source of disappointment for me that if you put your finger through the hole on a CD, spin it around and shine a torch at it, there is no sound  :D
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Pedro

I've seen them a few times, including the Drama tour, Onion tour and the 35th anniversary line-up.
"Putting food on the table is more important than 7/8"

Trapezium Artist

Quote from: "JimD"
QuoteOh ... does that disqualify me from answering your question?

Oh no, not at all  :oops:

Just wanted to acknowledge that you HAD brought the "I've seen Yes live" factor to this thread :)

So, TA, without me resorting to Googling for the timelines of Yes, did you see either the Trevor Horn-fronted era or the 90125-tour era?  My guess is seeing them in 1980 and 84/85 may mean yes (to Yes), but like I say, I've not got the facts to hand - but I am asking!

I myself like a lot of Yes, but not all of Yes.  So although I've never seen them live (I was mostly too young) I don't know if I'd actually ever see my optimum Yes gig now, if you know what I mean - they could play an entire set of songs I don't really enjoy!

Of course I might equally be really pleasantly surprised, after all I first heard them when I was working in an office in 1998 and when we were working a late-nighter the boss brought in "Going For The One".  I was quite put off at first by the manic slide playing of the title track but was totally hooked by the end of "Wonderous Stories".  

As for recordable CDs it has always been a source of disappointment for me that if you put your finger through the hole on a CD, spin it around and shine a torch at it, there is no sound  :D

Oh dear, you're going to get me started. A few specific answers though. First a more complete list of Yes gigs I've been to:

1. 1977: Empire Pool Wembley, GFTO tour; Anderson, Howe, Squire, Wakeman, White
2. 1978: Empire Pool Wembley, Tormato tour; same as the year before
3. 1980: Edinburgh Playhouse, Drama tour; Downes, Horn, Howe, Squire, White
4. 1984: Wembley Arena (same as Empire Pool, but rebranded by then), 90125 tour; Anderson, Banks, Rabin, Squire, White
5. 1985 ... err, not sure they played in 1985 in the UK, so that was a false memory
6. 1987: hmmm, did Yes even play in the UK at any time during the Big Generator tour? If not, then I certainly didn't see them.
7. 1989: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Maryland, ABWH tour; ABWH + Tony Levin (I had moved to the US a year earlier)
8. 1991: San Diego Sports Arena, Union tour; Uncle Tom Cobbley and all
9. 1998: ICC Berlin, Open Your Eyes tour; Anderson, Howe, Khoroshev(?), Sherwood(?), Squire, White
10. 2000: Columbiahalle, Berlin, The Ladder tour; Anderson, Howe, Khoroshev(?), Squire, White
11. 2001: ICC Berlin, Magnification tour; Anderson, Howe, Squire, Wakeman, White
12. 2003: Tempodrom, Berlin, Full Circle tour; Anderson, Howe, Squire, Wakeman, White

Amazing: it has been almost a decade since I've seen Yes play live. Despite my not-very-favourable-proto-opinion of the current line-up, maybe I should go and see them again before they shuffle off their mortal coils. Of course, I missed the chance at the end of last year ... but perhaps the fact that I did speaks volumes. Oh dear.

But none of this erases great memories of times gone by. Yes, to answer you specifically, I did see the Horn et al. and Rabin et al. incarnations live, but for me, it will always all be about the 1977 and 1978 gigs and the line-up of the time. Special, very, very special. Find that Wembley 1978 bootleg and understand why.

Of course, you may have your regrets about never being able to see Yes in their undisputed pomp, but I harbour regrets of my own, namely that I was too young to have seen them prior to 1977, missing out on so, so much. Oddly though, I was already a Yes fan from about 1972 and the age of eleven: my dad occasionally brought home cassettes (!) from the company training college he ran and The Yes Album was one of them. I played it to death on a crummy mono portable player, often listening late at night under the sheets.

But weirdly, it never struck me to go and look for any of their stuff in the record shops, meaning that I completely missed Close to the Edge, Relayer, and for me, the ultimate album, Tales from Topographic Oceans, the first time around. What the hell was I thinking?!?

That changed when I reached 16 and on the way to a school mountaineering trip in North Wales. One of my friends had a copy of the NME (I think), which he passed over to me to read. There was a big spread about Yes and their "comeback album", GFTO, and I immediately devoured it, remembering how much I liked their one other (in my idiotic world  ;) ) album.

I recall two things about that copy of the NME: first, to demonstrate how musically naive I was at the time, I had to ask what the word "bassist" meant, having decided that it was pronounced "bass-east", as if it was French  :shock:  And second, elsewhere in the same paper, there was a tiny picture of something that looked like a giant spaceship, which the paper said was from a little-known film that was taking the US by storm. It was an X-wing fighter and the film was Star Wars.

Anyway, I bought GFTO as soon as I could and I raced back at lunchtime every day from my summer job on a farm and played it from end to end. My parents then made a pretty radical decision (by today's standards at least), and let me travel from sleepy North Bucks down to Wembley that October with a friend (both of us 16) to see Yes play live. My second ever live gig was a few weeks later, namely The Buzzcocks at Friars, Aylesbury. Sublime to the ridiculous: the latter lot walked off as they threatened they would if the front row of the audience wouldn't stop spitting at them.

Oh, and my LP of GTFO was a deep, translucent red. Anyone have one of those?

Mikey

Quote from: "Trapezium Artist"1998: ICC Berlin, Open Your Eyes tour; Anderson, Howe, Khoroshev(?), Sherwood(?), Squire, White
Saw that one at Manchester

QuoteOh, and my LP of GTFO was a deep, translucent red. Anyone have one of those?
No, mine was the standard black one
I used to have a signature

JimD

QuoteOh dear, you're going to get me started

Wow, crikey-balls that was quite a recollection.  Excellent too, many thanks for sharing.  The notion of a french-style "bas-seeste" is very cool!
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Mikey

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JimD

I just heard a snippet of "Roundabout" on the sports programme of Radio Bulgaria!

http://bnr.bg/Audio.aspx?lang=1033#http ... ramme.aspx - 12:24!
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sawtooth

I saw them on the GFTO tour at Stafford Bingley Hall. It was my second ever gig as a nipper (the first being Uriah Heap for some unknown reason...).

Perhaps because of my inexperience of gig-going, or maybe because of the old rose-tinted specs, that concert will stay with me as possibly the best gig I've ever been to. I was fairly near the front, just in front of Steve Howe. As a keyboard player meself, God knows why I didn't take position at the other side of the stage so i could witness the wonders of the Wakeman, but there you go....

Can't recall the quality of the sound - but I'll never forget the atmosphere, the musicianship and the light show. In particular there was an awesome effect where they fired a laser up at a series of mirrored strips hung at the front top of the stage, which fired laser 'rain' down to the ground. A bit like a mirror ball but all in one direction if you see what I mean!
I must have caught the prog bug at that gig, as my next gig was seeing Genesis at Knebworth the following year! :D