1975 - Long Beach

June 23, 1975 Long Beach, California, US

The idea that Relayer formation was short-lived is wrong. Though they recorded only an album, they did many shows, in 1974, 75 and 76. The shows in 74 usually featured the entire Relayer and the entire Close to the Edge, leaving space only for a couple of other songs. The 75 shows were more variated, featuring solo spots, Ritual and a completely different, acoustic version of Long Distance Runaround. In 76, the set list would be similar, but without Close to the Edge, as Moraz playing this song was at least uninteresting, and without To Be Over, which the band was not that fond of.

This show, in 1975, has my favourite live version of To Be Over. Although the band stopped playing this soon after this show, Howe loves it and said, recently: “To Be Over” was so unplayed and unsung. It was like this song has just been forgotten about, or by Yes themselves, we had not played that song.
Another highlight is Sweet Dreams, in a completely new arrengement, very "Relayer-esque", with stunning solos of Moraz and Howe, and powerful drumming.
Moraz liked to change the songs, and this went well with simpler music, like Sweet Dreams. But in a complex suite like Close to the Edge, his improvisations are often disastrous. He should be forbidden to play it!
Ritual in this show has Moraz also giving his particular view to this song, using timbres and melodies similar to those he used in Relayer. The mellotron parts, for example, ressemble those in Sound Chaser. And in this tour Ritual included a quote from The Remembering.
In 1976 this song would get an arrangement with less freedom to Moraz, and he would play more similarly to Rick.

Set List:
Firebird Suite
Sound Chaser
Close To The Edge
To Be Over
Gates Of Delirium
Your Move/Mood For A Day
Long Distance Runaround/Moraz Solo
Clap
And You And I
Ritual
Roundabout
Sweet Dreams

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1970/71 - BBC Sessions EDITED

BBC Studios, London
1970-04-07 (For Everyone), 1970-10-20(America), 1971-04-12(Clap)

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America
June 05, 1971
Sportpalast, Berlin, Germany

There was some confusion here. The America I posted, believing to be from BBC, was actually from a show in Berlin, June1971. So I'm posting the actual America from BBC now.


(these are not the BBC Sessions (with Peter Banks) released on Beyond & Before: BBC Recordings 1969-1970)

Today I present three sessions from BBC, when Yes played one song in each.

For Everyone, with their original formation, is a longer arrangement than the one featured in Beyond and Before. It has 9 minutes, with a bass/organ solo of 3. The song was not released in a studio album, but part of it would become the Disillusion part of Starship Trooper (we can notice, in the difference of the arrangements, that this encarnation of Yes was very nice and powerful, but Yes with Howe would be much more original, which is shown in Disillusion, so different than everything they made).

America was perhaps played by Yes for the first time in this BBC session. It has a drums intro, and a very different and adventurous arrangement. Bill's drums are never what you'd expect them to be in this song! The original Simon and Garfunkel version included a verse that began "Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat" and ends "and the moon rose over an open field." Yes included that verse in this arrangement but excised it in 72.
Quoting a review from a show in November, 1970: "The climax of their show was a dramatic arrangement for Simon & Garfunkel's America that opened with a strange 1930's Berlin style intro played by Tony Kaye on organ and Steve leading into Jon's simple emotive vocals. Bill Bruford was a tower of strength throughout."

Clap is predictable as always, but has a great portion of Classical Gas in its middle. Steve said, back in 1970: "Clap is slightly influenced by Chet Atkins. It's a simple tune I used to play and expanded by putting in stop time breaks and bits from Mason Williams' 'Classical Gas' which I've always loved. Down in Devon the boys said they wanted to find a solo for me and this came up. I started playing it on a couple of gigs and it always goes down well. People don't know what to associate my guitar style with, blues or the underground. I want to do a solo album one day, but there is no hurry."
According to Mick D: "Theres a story behind... Yes wanted to do Starship Trooper but after five hours they had still not nailed it so with just a few minutes left howe recorded Clap so at least the session wasn't a complete waste" Later, in 1971, Starship Trooper would be broadcast at BBC, wchich said they were playing it live, but it's clearly the studio version! So don't be fooled: there's no BBC broadcast of Starship Trooper!

Sound quality: For Everyone is a radio broadcast, but BBC kept no record of it. This version was recorded from FM. America is the best version that can be found. Clap has a good guitar sound, but some constant noise behind.

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REUPLOADED: 1974 Detroit

28 February 1974

This concert is from the tour of Tales From Topographic Oceans. The band played all that album, and all of Close to the Edge, leaving space left only to Roundabout.
Soon after this concert, the band would drop The Remembering out of the set list, probably because it really didn't work well on stage. So this is one of the few times they played it live.
Highlights to me are Ritual and Roundabout, both featuring a band full of energy.
Sound quality is not the best, but all the instruments are very clear (and there's not Tales bootleg much better than this).

Set list:
Part one:
Firebird Suite
Siberian Khatru
And You And I
Close to the Edge
The Revealing Science of God

Part two:
The Remembering
The Ancient
Ritual
Roundabout

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2007 - Rick Wakeman Live in Toronto

Rick Wakeman and the English Rock Ensemble
2007-08-19, Danforth Music Hall, Toronto, Canada

Rick's plan for this year's second semester was doing small tours with orchestra, playing The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Kinghts of the Round Table and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. For reasons unknown, it didn't work, so he did only a couple of normal shows with his English Rock Ensemble.
But the most interesting about this recent show are exactly the long parts of these two records that were played. Without the orchestra, he still played most of the albums, in arrangements for his rock group. And these new arrangements really rock!
The singer is Ashley Holt, whose voice is far away from what it was in the 70s. But the rest of the band is very good, and Rick does what only he knows to do, with dozens of keyboards (including playing backwards, as you see below!)
















Disc 1:
Journey-Recollection-The Battle
The Forest
The Spaceman
Catherine Parr
The Visit


Disc 2:
Jane Seymour
Sea Horses
Wendy House
King Arthur
The Last Battle
Lancelot and the Black Knight
Merlin the Magician
Crowd Noise
Starship Trooper

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2002 - Las Vegas

Las Vegas Nevada USA 2002-08-25

This is a superb quality soundboard.
Probably a leak from the Westwood One archives, as WWO aired a 60 minutes edit of this show.
So this is not your typical stereo soundboard feed, but a multi track mix.
As you probably know, this show was right after Rick rejoined the band, so we can hear some minor errors in his playing, especially in the songs from Magnification. Jon is not familiar with South Side Of The Sky, which becomes very funny.
The setlist was interesting, including America and Yours Is No Disgrace. Chris and Rick are very prominent on the mix.
Curiosity: there's a law in Las Vegas that prohibits live concerts of during more than two hours, so they had to drop And You And I and the solo songs (To be over, Fish, etc).

Disc 1
01 Firebird suite
02 Siberian Khatru
03 America
04 In the presence of
05 We have heaven
06 South side of the sky
07 Heart of the sunrise

Disc 2
01 Magnification
02 Don't kill the whale
03 Awaken
04 Roundabout
05 Yours is no disgrace

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1977 - Northern Flight (Gothenburg)

1977-11-12 Gothenburg, Sweden PRRP017
(For those who don't know, PPRP means Progressive Rock Remaster Project, and is a project with some dozens of bootlegs of concerts by the 70s best known prog bands, like ELP and Genesis, most of the times remastered and with good sound quality. And nice artwork! Their bootlegs are free for sharing but should not be sold!)

Exactly 30 years ago, Yes was doing this show, in the end of their Going for the one tour. In this tour, they had a lot of fun. Rick was so happy to rejoin Yes, the band was also happy to have him back (they got rather tired of Moraz...), and they were enjoying doing shows.
You can feel this good vibrations here. They were satisfied with their new album, so they played it all. The title track and Parallels, especially, work wonderfully on stage, even better than on studio, in my opinion. Awaken was good, but would get better in their following tour (of Tormato).
Their last number was either Starship Trooper or Yours Is No Disgrace (here it's the latter), and they were much extended, achieving 14+ minutes. Expect something in the style of Yessongs' version, but at the same time in a different way. Howe's solos seem endless (which can be regarded as good or bad...)
1-1. Firebird Suite 1:54
1-2. Parallels 5:53
1-3. I've Seen All Good People 7:11
1-4. Close To The Edge 19:15
1-5. Wonderous Stories 4:16
1-6. The Colours Of The Rainbow 1:18
1-7. Turn Of The Century 7:59
1-8. And You And I 10:10

2-1. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto 1:32
2-2. Going for the One 5:33
2-3. 'Flight' Jam 4:29
2-4. Awaken 15:35
2-5. Roundabout 8:46
2-6 Yours Is No Disgrace 14:00

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1970 - Every Little Thing

April 3, 1970. Cologne, Germany

This is one of the last shows with Peter Banks. The sound quality is better than the 1969 show in Belgium I posted here before. But not so good. The voice doesn't sound very clear, but guitars and keys are very good.
The show's repertoire is all from Yes and Time and a Word. Only 5 songs, as it was a big festival with Deep Purple, Soft Machine and others.
An exciting performance, you can see the band is having lots of fun. Bill's playing is awesome. Due to time restrictions, they couldn't jam too much, and that brought good and down-to-earth performances of No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed and Everydays.

Set list:
No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed
Then
Every Little Thing
Astral Traveller
Everydays

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