The Yes Discography: Mirror to the Sky (2023)

[The Letter M]

Of the 90's Yes albums, this would be number 1 for me (2 if we count the Keys material as an album, but technically some don't). Talk has strong songs all the way through, and while The Ladder is, at points, proggier than Talk, there's some parts I find are a bit meh, while Talk is good-to-great all the way through.

I often wonder what a 4th YesWest album would have been like had they continued in this direction, and among Yes's 70's prog contemporaries, Yes was about as proggy as any of the others with an album out around this time. They really stepped up from BG and Union, but as Orbert said, poor label backing and relatively small returning fanbase did not allow this album to prosper as it should have. In retrospect, it has indeed become many fan's favorites, and as Orbert said, it is MY favorite of the three Rabin Yes albums.

And yes, I'll also echo the wonderful sentiments about "Endless Dream" - classic Yes epic, dreamy, spacey, full but airy, like a modern "Close To The Edge". Also, the closing section still gives me chills to this day, especially when the chord progression changes just slightly - you know which part I'm talking about.

-Marc.

[Nel]

"Real Love" is one of my favorite Yes songs. Just the way it builds up to that chorus, and how it sort of feels mechanical, like some kind of structure is sort of being built in the sky. The three-track suite at the end of the album is pretty nice too. Like the other 80s and 90s Yes albums though, the rest of the album doesn't really do much for me.

[KevShmev]

I didn't mention much about it last night, but Where Will You Be was, to me, at the time the modern day equivalent of Turn of the Century.  If that exact song was on a classic Yes album, and that was Steve Howe playing the acoustic guitar in it, most hardcore Yes fans would salivate over it, but Trevor Rabin is the devil, so therefore the song never gets any props. 

[Orbert]

I like "Where Will You Be" because it's so different.  The way the percussion keeps it going, against the completely laid-back feel overall.

I never had the Rabin-hatred that a lot of hardcore Yesfans do/did, and I was a longtime Yesfan.  I recognize the guy's talent, and the albums with him aren't bad; they're just not really the type of music I choose to listen to.  I never listened to Talk when it came out; I figured it would just be more of the same, but I do remember seeing them on Letterman and thinking the song was okay.  Nothing special, but okay.

[KevShmev]

I can see Walls (the song they played on Letterman) coming across as pretty run of the mill, and if you are an old school Yes fan, that tune wouldn't get you excited at all about hearing the rest of Talk; I will certainly concede that.  But fans should be smart enough to know that the radio hit is not the best example of an album's possible greatness (even if The Calling was the first single from it), so why not check out the rest of the album and listen with an open mind?  I swear, sometimes fans go into an album wanting to NOT like it, which makes absolutely no sense to me.

[Jaq]

Agree 100% with you, Kev. If you played Where Will You Be without identifying who the guitarist was, I think most of the more closed minded, Yes is Only Yes When Steve Howe Plays Guitar, would enjoy the song, and would promptly turn on it when they figured out it was Rabin. I'm an oddity in the fandom of Yes for a simple reason; I like Trevor Rabin as a guitarist in general more than I like Steve Howe. I was a fan of Trevor Rabin long before he "joined" Yes, when he was playing as a session musician on Manfred Mann albums in the early 80s, so to me, his arrival in Yes was no big deal. I loved how many different sounds Rabin could yank out of a guitar, the apotheosis of which is the wall of guitar sounds he produced on Talk. It doesn't really shock me that he went into doing movie scores, because he was already writing guitar orchestras with Yes. Make no mistake, Steve Howe is an amazing guitarist and I have no problem with people calling him the sound of Yes. I just dislike how people treat an amazing talent like Rabin just because he ISN'T Steve Howe.

[KevShmev]

I am not sure I can say I like Rabin more as a guitarist, but I love both guys' playing, and they bring very different things to the table. 

I am also a pretty big fan of Rabin's first solo album and Can't Look Away, his fourth.  Face to Face is mostly quite good, as well.  And the new one, Jacaranda, is also quite nice, showing off his fusion side a bit. 

[Orbert]

I can see Walls (the song they played on Letterman) coming across as pretty run of the mill, and if you are an old school Yes fan, that tune wouldn't get you excited at all about hearing the rest of Talk; I will certainly concede that.  But fans should be smart enough to know that the radio hit is not the best example of an album's possible greatness (even if The Calling was the first single from it), so why not check out the rest of the album and listen with an open mind?  I swear, sometimes fans go into an album wanting to NOT like it, which makes absolutely no sense to me.

It was 1994.  I'd just lost my job and had a two-year-old kid.  After Union and all it seemed to portend... we got another RabinYes album.  I didn't buy it because I had better things to spend my money on.  I didn't go into the album not wanting to like it; I didn't go into it at all.  There is a difference.  Listening to it with an open mind, I found that I like it quite a bit.  I mentioned a few times now.

If your post wasn't directed at me, then I apologize.  But it seemed to be, as it references points I made in my post, which immediately preceded yours.

[KevShmev]

No, no, I was not talking about you! I swear.

I meant fans in general.  Hell, I've seen it with a small number of DT fans in regards to the last album, ones who felt such an allegiance to Mike Portnoy that they wanted to NOT like A Dramatic Turn of Events, which is just goofy.  Why would you want to not like the music by a band you love?  It's crazy to me.

[Orbert]

Ah, sorry about that.  All is cool.   

And I know what you mean about DT fans and MP, but mostly I think fans who won't listen to ADTOE with an open mind are only cheating themselves.  If they don't like it because of the songs, or the production, that's one thing; but if they don't like it simply because the drummer isn't the original drummer, that's just silly.  There's a lot of good stuff on that album.

Yes is kinda different in that regard anyway.  If you count ABWH as a Yes album (which many do, including the official Yes website), then there is nobody, no one person, who plays on every album.  People come and go every couple of albums.  People leave Yes and then come back ten years later sometimes.  I heard "Owner of a Lonely Heart" on the radio before I'd heard that Yes had a new album out, or were even back together, and the first thing I thought was that's not Steve on guitar.  But whatever, they have a new guitarist.  Steve's in Asia now.  And those orchestral strikes were kinda cool; is that a synth, or a guitar synth, or what?  And I did buy the album, and I did like it.

[Zydar]

I'm giving this album a first spin now, sounds good after a first listen. The Calling, I Am Waiting, and Endless Dream are the highlights. It sure is no Fragile or anything from that era, but I wasn't expecting that either. I sort of lost interest in Yes after Drama.

[ytserush]

Wow, no one else has this box?  I know it's out of print, but I didn't think it was that rare.  It was huge news when it came out.  Or maybe that's just how it seemed to me.

Box is a favorite of mine too. I bought it as soon as it came out and a lot of the rarities were new to me at that time. It had been 10 years since I heard Run With The Fox and it was as awesome as I remember it.

I love the booklet that came with it. Sounds better than the Rhino reissues too. I wish there was more live stuff on it.

We had Roger Dean sign the box when he came in for a signing. I wanted something big for him to sign. I couldn't find my albums at the time so this was all I had ready to go. Very nice guy. I wish he'd come back here more often.

[ytserush]

I played An Evening of Yes Music Plus to death when it came out. It was the best sounding Yes live album I'd heard up to that point. Might be my favorite Yes live album ever.

I love Talk too.  Probably the most focused effort of the Rabin years. I really wished I'd seen this tour. I slagged it off figured I'd catch them next time. The band can really hum on this record. Everything you'd ever want in a "classic Yes" record contemporized.

Good stuff. Sonic bliss too.

[FreezingPoint]

I agree with most, if not all of what has been said here. Talk is actually the last Yes album I got into. I did hear and like a couple of songs before hand, but it was only last year that I got into the whole album. I remember I was at the computer lab at school (probably browsing DTF  ), and then I Am Waiting came on. I was hooked. That guitar solo bit right in the beginning! It was just soaring.

In fact, that is the word I would use to describe the entire album. Soaring guitars, soaring vocals, catchy and melodic but progressive at the same time. To me, this is the perfection and the definition of 90s progressive rock. It is big, modern sounding, and heavy yet has its moments of soothing calmness. The best part is Endless Dream. It sums up the entire album. There are so many great hooks in that song, and it just gets better and better throughout. It is such a beautiful album. It is disappointing to hear that it did not do well in it's time but it is nice to hear that people hold it with high regard now.

[Orbert]

Keys to Ascension (1996)


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Jon Anderson - Vocals, Guitar, Harp
Steve Howe - Guitars, Vocals
Chris Squire - Bass, Vocals
Rick Wakeman - Keyboards
Alan White - Drums, Vocals


Live Tracks

Siberian Khatru
The Revealing Science of God
America
Onward
Awaken
Roundabout
Starship Trooper

Studio Tracks

Be The One
That, That Is

----------

Talk was a critical success, generally regarded as the best of the three albums by the 90125 lineup, but it was a commercial failure, having been released on a small label with little to no resources with which to promote it, and which went bankrupt.  Trevor and Jon were fighting again, and this time Trevor decided that enough was enough, and he left the band.  Tony followed him out the door.

Jon made some phone calls and eventually convinced Rick and Steve to return to Yes.  The lineup was now the same as Tales from Topographic Oceans, Going for the One, and Tormato.  It had been nearly 20 years since this band had played together (other than being part of the Union tour), but it was a return to "classic" Yes in much the same way as ABWH had been, and this time with all five members being Yes veterans and with the name Yes on the cover.

They began writing, and Jon got the idea of playing a few shows near his home in San Luis Obispo, California.  The Fremont Theater was a small venue, and the idea was that playing live together, under controlled conditions, would be a way to get the old energy back.

They played three shows, and all three were recorded.  The seven live tracks here were taking from those recordings.  Unfortunately, music as complex as this is a challenge even for musicians of Yes calibre, and the two weeks they had set aside for rehearsal had not proven to be sufficient.  Upon listening to the tapes, the band agreed that some overdubs were in order.  Three tracks have their vocals almost entirely replaced, and there are instrumental overdubs as well.  Still, the band did play all of the music you hear on the album, and four of the songs had never been released on an official live album before, so they were anxious to release it. 

By the time the overdubbing and final mastering was done on the live tracks, they had also completed two new studio tracks.  One was nearly ten minutes in length and the other was over 19 minutes, a new "epic".  Some members of the band, most notably Rick, felt that they should wait until they had a full album's worth of material, which they could then release as a new studio album.  Being included as "bonus tracks" on a live album would marginalize the new songs.

But as is the case so many times in Yes history, the suits made the final decision, and in hindsight, it was not for the best.  The album was released as a two-disc set, with the live material given primary importance, and the two new songs including as "bonus" tracks.  It was given an elaborate package, with a new Roger Dean cover, a booklet with lyrics and extensive liner notes, a poster, and a slipcase over the entire assembly.

It was released by unknown label Essential Records (a division of Castle Communications), given almost no promotion, and became yet another Yes album with great potential, but which few people even knew existed.


Keys to Ascension 2 (1997)


(Click for larger view)

Jon Anderson - Vocals, Guitar, Harp
Steve Howe - Guitars, Vocals
Chris Squire - Bass, Vocals
Rick Wakeman - Keyboards
Alan White - Drums, Vocals


Live Tracks

I've Seen All Good People
Going for the One
Time and a Word
Close to the Edge
Turn of the Century
And You And I

Studio Tracks

Mind Drive
Foot Prints
Bring Me to the Power
Children of Light
Sign Language

----------

A few months later, the band had completed five more songs, including another epic.  Yes management eventually made a deal with yet another small, unknown label, Purple Pyramid (a division of Cleopatra Records) to release the remaining live tracks from the San Luis Obispo recordings, and again include the new songs as "bonus tracks".

The band now had enough material for a new album, and would have had a full CD if they had not released the other two songs.  At one point, Jon had even come up with a title for the new album, Know.  But the decision was made to release the remaining live tracks and new studio tracks together as Keys to Ascension 2.  Rick was furious and quit Yes, again.

The new album matched the first Keys to Ascension, with the two CDs in a single case, another poster, Roger Dean artwork, and a slipcase over the entire package.  It was released, given no promotion, and within a year was found in cutout bins in discount stores.

----------

I have to agree with Rick.  This should have been the huge, triumphant return of classic 70's Yes.  Seven new songs, including two epics!  They could have shopped this album to Atlantic, their home for so many years, and would have been taken back under their wing.  Instead, almost no one even knew that the band was back together, and because of that, it had already broken up again by time the music came out.  The only people who knew about it were people such as myself who regularly haunt the record stores and look in the Yes section for CDs to replace their old vinyl.  That's how I found both of the Keys to Ascension releases.

A lot of Yesfans like the new live tracks.  Many of these had never been released on an official live album before.  But the band is older now, and I'm not sure if it's a given or what, but they play much slower now.  To me, "Close to the Edge" is nearly unbearable.  Maybe it's supposed to be heavy and driving, but to me it just sounds slow and plodding.  "Turn of the Century", one of my favorite Yessongs of all time, is finally played live, but Jon can't hit the high notes anymore, so just as the big musical climax is coming up, they transition to a lower key.  It feels like they downshifted, or ran into a huge puddle of mud, with the finish line in sight.  A hole opens up and all the energy drains out.  Most of the new live material is like that.  Great songs, but they should have rehearsed more, or overdubbed less.  And it's just too obvious that the vocals were overdubbed in places.  There are spots where the sound quality is noticeably different.

I do like the studio tracks.  They definitely stand on their own and should have been released as an album.  "Mind Drive" is my favorite, but "That, That Is" (the other epic) isn't bad.  "Lifeline" (Steve's steel guitar solo which is the closing section to "Children of Light") is amazing.  And "Sign Language" is a nice, mellow, instrumental to close out the album.

I read a quote from Chris Squire in an interview years ago, and he mentioned that they had set out to record "a certain amount of new music".  I don't know exactly what that meant, but I noticed that the total running time of the seven studio tracks is 74 minutes, the length of a CD in those days.  CDs were later expanded to 80 minutes, but they were originally 74 minutes.  I know this because in 1997, once I had both of these albums, I looked for a cassette (remember those?) to put the studio tracks on because I didn't have a CD player in my car, and when I went to the store, I was surprised to find that they made 74-minute cassettes.  90 minutes was the standard for years, but since CDs were 74 minutes, so were tapes.  For a while, anyway.

In 2001, they finally put the seven studio tracks on a single disc, and even restored Rick's original instrumental intro to "Children of Light", which was excised (in retribution perhaps) when he left the band before the final mastering was done.  The disc was given the name Keystudio, an ugly cover, and no promotion.  Some of the tracks were reworked, and it's handy to have them all on a single disc.  But it's almost sad to see it now, knowing what it should have been.



A box set was also created, with the four original CDs, and a concert DVD.  I've tried to find this, but it's probably out of print and only on Ebay or used on Amazon.


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[Jaq]

In total agreement on the new songs. They should have been a new Yes studio album, rather than a virtual afterthought on two live albums by an under-rehearsed Yes. I have always wondered why Yes, arguably from 1983 or so on, was always put in a position where they were allowing their choices to be utterly dictated by the record labels. I am one of those who flat out missed the release of both of these albums in the 90s, and was a little shocked when I came across reviews of them around 2000 or so. The fate of the studio material on these albums is probably the second biggest missed opportunity in Yes' history, just behind Talk being such a good album and getting zero promotion. Most of the 90s output of Yes always ended with "imagine what could have been" when I think about it today.

[Nel]

I own that grey box set!  Bought it off of Amazon last year. The studio tracks are alright, as I said before, and I do appreciate them trying to tap into their older style, but they still never did much for me.

[KevShmev]

You can definitely tell that the first two songs were written in a hurry, as both are ripe with clunky vocal melodies.  It's like the great melodies are almost there, but they come off sounding a tad weird, and likely would have been better with a bit more working, but they were obviously in a hurry to release them so the public new that "Classic Yes" was back. 

Of the live tracks, Onward is just spectacular; a massive upgrade over the Tormato studio version. 

[darkshade]

I've been lurking this thread since the beginning, mostly because I've said so much about the 70s Yes albums in the past here and on other sites that I don't feel like repeating myself. Then the 80s and 90s albums have just been read by me out of interest. Now, I finally have something to say, in regards to Keys to Ascension albums. I actually don't have those albums, but I do have Keystudio. I got it years after being into Yes (got into them in 2005, and got Keystudio maybe a couple years ago). I remember liking it, but didn't give it enough listens. I'll have to return to it because I really liked Fly From Here that came out last year, and don't know much about their other 90s and 2000s albums.

[ytserush]

I got into both of these for the live tracks and didn't think I'd like the studio tracks but I was pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't mind hearing some of these live.

I didn't know about the overdub problem or that Rick's intro got cut.

Looks like I need to find a copy of KeysStudio afterall. I thought it was just a straight studio reissue so I never bought it as I had those tracks already. Actually, the box set is probably a better option for me.

[Orbert]

Wow, someone who has the box set, and someone who has Keystudio!  I figured we're getting into the really obscure stuff here, and didn't expect.  But it's cool.

The new studio tracks do have a feeling of being a bit underbaked, and also of "Yes trying to sound like Yes".  It's almost like, after Trevor and Tony left and Steve and Rick came back in, that they wanted to prove something.  And something that 70's Yes was known for was the long songs.  Instrumental excursions and different sections, fast and slow parts, mellow and rocking parts, all in the same song.  I have to admit that as a proghead, these things will tend to grab my attention.  But it still comes down to good songwriting.  Without that, I don't care how long the song is or how many key changes there are or whatever.

I don't think the new songs have the same strength as, say "Close to the Edge".  That song was real lightning in a bottle; it will never be equalled.  And even if they could write another song like it, it would still be dismissed as just them copying themselves.  So any new epics would have to be totally different, yet somehow just as good.  Or at least pretty good.  With shorter songs, there isn't that kind of pressure, but you only have so much to work with.  You want it to be somehow more than just a regular song, but not feel like you've bloated it up just to make it seem more impressive.  In some ways, writing a short prog song is harder than writing a long one.

"Be The One" is easily my least favorite.  Man, when I found Keys to Ascension in the store, I was so pumped.  Actual new music by the 70's lineup!  But I did what I always do, and played the album sequentially, which meant the live tracks first.  I was impressed with how good they sounded, but this was before I knew how much overdubbing had been done.  Then came "Be The One".  Whoa.  The way it starts, it almost feels like it stumbles into the opening chord.  I know what they were going for here, but it felt weak.  Its slow beat just felt lame to me, but somehow I wasn't surprised either, after hearing how much they'd slowed down the live material.  There's a spot later in the song where the tempo picks up for a while, then it returns to Tempo I and pretty much finishes out.  So... 20 years later, here's what these guys sound like.  Disappointing, but not exactly surprising.

"That, That Is" is better, with some slightly more interesting lyrics and musical ideas.  It's just a consequence of being a longer song with different sections that there's a greater chance that something in it will grab you.  Then it ended, and I thinking back, I was disappointed overall, yet at the same time, I was still glad to have new music, anything by a band I had once loved.

Keys to Ascension 2 was another surprise, and happened the same way.  I had no idea that it was out, but was digging through the racks at Best Buy, looking for Yes CDs to replace my aging vinyl, and there it was.  This time it was one disc of live and one disc of studio.  I figured that with five songs on a disc, that's a pretty good average song length, though it occurred to me that it wasn't necessarily a full CD's worth of songs.  And it wasn't.  And the live songs were obviously the ones leftover from the first Keys album; almost all of them had been released before on at least one live album.  But hey, new Yes to take home.

With the live stuff, I have to say that again I was a bit disappointed overall.  "Going for the One" felt sloppy, "Close to the Edge" was painfully slow, and I was fine with "Turn of the Century" until the aforementioned horrible key modulation that just took the wind out of the sails.  "And You And I" wasn't bad, but with superior live renditions of most of these songs, I knew even then that I wouldn't be listening to these very much.

Ahhh, but "Mind Drive" blew me away.  I know some Yesfans don't like it.  They say that it repeats itself too much (it does) and that the basic riff is too derivative of "Watcher of the Skies" by Genesis (it's not).  Well, it's not a perfect song.  But it has everything in it that I like in a Yessong.  Steve's acoustic guitar and his wailing countermelodies, in different places.  Rick's synths and acoustic piano, in different places.  Chris' bass and Alan's drums punching and slamming like there's no tomorrow, but also stepping back when it's time to get mellow.  I like the arrangement, and I like the contrast between sections.  The only thing I'm not 100% sold on is the last minute or so, Rick's little WTF moment, but whatever, I can live with that.

"Foot Prints" is pretty good, but it definitely repeats some sections one or two times times too many.  It's clever towards the end when they put all the parts together, but by then you've heard them all so many times that it's really getting tedious by that point.  There are a few places where they could've play a riff twice instead of four times, or four instead of eight, and it would've strengthened the song overall.  I think that maybe they were actually going for length here, knowing that the studio disc would be a bit on the short side, and that's unfortunate.  You never want to feel like a song was literally padded out.  Some say that about prog anyway, but I almost never agree with it.  Sections are repeated and new elements are introduced for a purpose.  It's rare that a Yessong overstays its welcome with me, but here's one that does.

"Bring Me to the Power" is similar.  Maybe a little too much repeating, but overall not as offensive, and a pretty good song overall.

I've heard the restored version of "Children of Light", now known as "Children of the Light".  Honestly, the intro by Rick doesn't add much, so losing it wasn't huge, but in general I prefer songs be left the way they were intended.  It's almost never a good idea to cut a part of a song out once it has been completed, and here is no exception.  That steel guitar solo in the closing section is just glorious.  The best minute and a half of Yes in a long time.

"Sign Language" is a nice, mellow closer.  Maybe a bit repetitive, but I like the concept, and it's pretty short so it doesn't really drag on too long.

Once again, Yes' management and lack of vision by the suits conspire to destroy something that could have and should have been huge.  In the late 90's, fans of 70's Yes were all middle-aged and had good jobs and plenty of disposable income.  A new studio album by the classic lineup, properly marketed, would have sold millions.  Many were still mourning the breakup after Tormato, even if some of us had eventually come around on Drama.  And even among those who finally accepted 90125 and its brethren as Yes, every single one of us would have bought a copy of Know, a new studio album by the Going for the One band.

[Jaq]

The funny thing about people comparing the riff in Mind Drive to Watcher of the Skies is that Phil Collins has said that Watcher was written explicitly so Genesis would have a song that would display the sort of instrumental complexity that a band he'd gotten into at the time Foxtrot was being written.

Namely, Yes. 

[Orbert]

Wow, I'd never heard that.  I wonder if someone had read that quote about "Watcher of the Skies" and had that in mind when they heard the "Mind Drive" riff and put it together backwards.  I never made the connection, myself, and when I heard that complaint, I shrugged it off.  They're not that similar.  They're two syncopated bass riffs in odd meters with the drums doubling.  To say that "Mind Drive" is a rip of "Watcher of the Skies" is to say that anytime anyone plays a syncopated riff like that, then they're ripping off "Watcher of the Skies".

The riff itself goes back to the XYZ days.  After Yes had broken up, seemingly for good, Chris and Alan got together with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones for a while.  The band was dubbed XYZ ("Ex Yes and Zeppelin") and to be honest, I regarded the stories as apocryphal at best, most likely myth.  But some tapes showed up on the net years ago which were supposedly XYZ.  There are four songs, "Mind Drive", "Fortune Hunter", "Can You See?" and "Telephone Secrets", and one just named "XYZ Demo".  They're pretty poor quality, but they could be what they claim to be.  They could also be any four guys in a basement or garage with a tape machine.  The quality isn't really good enough for me to listen to it and say that it's definitely Chris on bass, or Jimmy on guitar.  There are some people who perhaps could.

But the tape labelled "Mind Drive" most definitely is a jam based on that same riff, and is reported to be the genesis (ha!) of that song.

[Jaq]

I've also heard that some of the XYZ riffs turned up on the first album by the Firm, but as I haven't heard that album in a LONG time I couldn't tell you which ones. The XYZ project was actually fairly well known in the music magazines of the time, and I remember reading in some magazine about how, since that project had fallen apart, Squire and White were going to work with Trevor Rabin in a band to be called Cinema. I kind of miss those days; the internet puts so much information at your hands now, it was just cool to be connected to the music by magazine articles and comments that DJs said on air sometimes. Certainly was a different era.

[Orbert]

I never got into music magazines.  I'm not sure why, since I'm such a music freak, but I think I was just turned off by how the target audience is popular music.  You always know the cover artist or band, and chances are really good that the headline is something you've already heard about.  They broke up, or they're back together, or they have a new guitarist, or whatever.  I guess back in those days, they were the source of news, so if you'd heard about it, it was from those same magazines.

But everything seemed so sensationalized, so dumbed-down to the least common denominator, that I could never bring myself to buy one.  Some of my friends told me about XYZ, and really, it just sounded like one of those stories which was a good story, nothing more.  If it was actually documented, then yeah, that would add a lot more credibility.  I think in those days, I also tended to buy music that I liked, and didn't give a damn how popular (or unpopular) it was.  So most of the time, I knew the band on the cover, but it wasn't anyone I listened to anyway.

I did subscribe to Keyboard (then Contemporary Keyboard) for years and learned a lot about keyboards, playing, and technique.  I was much more interested in that than the latest gossip or fan-targeted news.  Also, let's face it, 99% of rock and roll is about guitars and drums.  There was only one place I was going to learn anything about building synth patches and wheel technique.

[Jaq]

Oh, you had to work to find the good stuff, and by around 1985 or so there weren't very many good music magazines in terms of quality-by then I was getting Kerrang, which oddly was occasionally popping up at local 7-11s-but back in the early 80s, Hit Parader and Circus actually did tolerable music journalism. Of course, as I said by 1985 or so everything was turning to dreck, and don't get me started about music journalism today. I'm sure there's some good stuff online, but finding it takes a LOT of patience.

And also back then, there was sort of an underground mentality to music news. Things were just known back then, passed from person to person. A guy in a band's fan club knew things, and he passed them on to someone like me, who dug out items from news stories he'd read in Circus, and then passed it on to someone else. Strangely the information managed to stay intact!

[The Curious Orange]

The problem I had with this is that the live tracks on Keys 1 are mixed totally differently to the live tracks on Keys 2 - Play the one after the other and they feel like two separate shows at two separate venues.

Keys would have made a great 2CD live album had it been mixed and sequenced properly, plus a great comeback album - the studio songs are just sublime. Keys 2 was released (here in the UK at least) the week before Open Your Eyes. Talk about falling from a great height to an all-time low...

[The Curious Orange]

Yes - Know.

I just got it!

[Orbert]

Yeah, Keys 2 and Open Your Eyes came out back to back over here too, which I thought was just horrible. 

In general, it's a pretty stupid move to release two albums of new material that close together anyway.  The only exception might be something like Load and Re-Load or Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, where the idea is that the two go together anyway, like a double album but released separately.

Here, it was an album of new material by the classic band (disguised as the bonus disc of a live album no one needed) stomped on by an album of new material by yet another new Yes lineup.  Open Your Eyes (which I'll be covering next) got all the marketing, while the album most fans of both old and new Yes consider to be superior, Keys 2, was ignored by their own management and label.  And the tally of management blunders behind the Yesmusic went up two more notches.

[Orbert]

Yes - Know.

I just got it!

Heh heh.  Jon Anderson, what a funny guy!

[Mladen]

I don't get it.  I feel dumb.

[Zydar]

Know sounds like No.

Yes / No

[Mladen]

Brilliant. 

[Perpetual Change]

Well, I'm falling behind in this discussion because I haven't heard many of these newer records. But I picked up Talk for $2.99 in a bargain bin today, and I hope you guys won't mind me posting about it later.

I have The Ladder and Magnification, and I've at least heard Fly From Here. So I will be posting more soon.

[Orbert]

Feel free to post about albums that have already been covered, even after we've moved on.  I'm always curious to hear what other people think of each album, especially if they can point out things I may not have heard or thought about before which will ultimately increase my appreciation for them.