Yes, Yes...I Haven't Forgotten You

When the first part of this lil' project came out in May, I more or less isinuated that that wasn't the end of the story. Because, while I also insinuated - rightfully so, I'd say - that that album tells it's own story, it waasn't the end of the story. Knowing I could not fit all favorites of Yes on a single disc, YEsterdays was always conceived as a two-dis adventure. But as a sort of test balloon I sent out disc one as it's own thing, and now it's time to complete the mess adventure. 

If you remember, the original plan was an uninterrupted megamix with lots of linking sections taken fromlonger works, but halfway through I changed my mind. The linking sections remain, so you"ll have soe bits that don't sound like you might remember them. I also did some associations that seemed obvious to me, like pairing up one of Drama's highlights, "Tempus Fugit" with "Würm" [sic!], the ending section of "Starship Trooper" or ending with the last section of "Machine Messiah" fused to a reprise of "We Can Fly", which brings the YESterdays somewhat full circle - the first real track on volume one after the short prologue of "Vevey's Theme" was "We Can Fly", so circling back to it, albeit briefly, for the finale, seemed a neat idea. 

And of course  I might have edited some stuff out. I don't recall what or where in detail, but I can see that "Perpetual Change" lost about three minutes, and "Yours Is No Disgrace" about three minutes and a half, presumably of stuff I wasn't in love with. So, as usual: proceed at your on risk and peril. But you might to hear some of Yes' finest - according to ol' OBG, of course - in a new context or with new neighbours. There are a ton of classics present here, along with the aforementioned - "Siberian Khatru", "And You And I", "Turn Of The Century", "Yours Is No Disgrace", and more. I even found place for the proggiest of Trevor Rabin-era megaseller's 90125 proggiest and possibly best track, "Hearts". As usual, flow was importat to me, so again, here's hoping that for ypu this flows as nicely as it does for me.

And, well, that's it. That concludes this blog's adventures in Yes Land for now. So get ready for about an hour twenty of some of the best bits that Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire and the  rest of the crew have produced. Revel in some YESterdays, and then, as ever, it's off into the future. 

Is This A Mixtape? Yes! Is It Weird? Yes! Is It Yes? Yes!

If you've been around a while, you know two things about the One Buck Guy and prog rock: I'm not a huge fan of the genre, but I like Yes. But I like a lot of the bits and pieces from Yes that a - shall we say more classic - fan would probably frown upon. Hell, the One Buck Record of the day even proudly contains what is unofficially the worst Yes song of all time. Classic Rock ranked all (the) released tracks from Yes, and Tormato-era b-side "Abilene" came in 207 ot of 207! And yet here it is! Suck it, Classic Rock, I like what I like. and once you don't have to worry about the admittedly ridiculous opening (a synth made to sound like a horse neighing, predating Neil Young's synth horse experiments on Trans by a couple of years), the song is pretty neat. Sue me! 

This is just one example of what to expect - and not to - here. This albums is called a Mixtape, but isn't tagged as such, because it isn't one long megamix like the ones that are, even though that was the original idea. No, Mixtape here is meant to show you that this is someone's mix, a personal selection of songs. Oh, also: You have to take the word Mix really seriously. This was made during the 'OBG goes wild on Audacity'-era (some might say the 'OBG, WTF?'-era, but let's not dwell on that...), so it really is a mixtape in the literal sens, mixing and matching moments from Yes that I like. Often it's complete songs, but sometimes it might just be an extract  from a longer piece, or I edited out something I felt was superfluous, like the false ending to "Into The Lens (I Am A Camera)", the aforementioned fake-horse-bullshit on "Abilene" or even the occasional gratuitous keyboard solo. 

Before you recoil in horror, know that a lot of the music is intact, including my two favorite long-form pieces from Yes, "Homeorld (The Ladder)" and "Roundabout". But there is also a track called "A Moment - Alternate View", which is a remnant of the original idea, before plans changed. When I still wanted to do a one-hour megamix of my favorite Yes moments, I had prepared little bits from longer pieces that were supposed to serve as bridges in between the songs. But then, halfway through I realized that my original plan was counter-productive to my 'personal best' approach. If I want to hear one of my faves right away, it has to be indexed, so out went the continuous megamix idea, but I already had a couple of these 'linking bits' ready, so I decided to throw them on anyway. 

Seeing that this is a truly personal mix, in every word of the sense, you get - for better or worse - some exclusive edits. I've always liked Yes' take on Simon & Garfunkel's "America" for example, but the album version took forever to get to the vocals/song section, while the single edit threw out one of my favorite parts: the little country licks Steve Howe played - and for a classically trained Brit he sure loved to play a country lick or two - so I edited a third version that splits the difference between the two mentioned. 

The so-called 'Chop Shop Mix' of "White Car" is a whole 'nother story. I had always liked the original one-and-a-half minute doodle off Drama, but it really was just a doodle, an intro and a short verse. So I tried to make it into more of a song, using the original song, the tracking sessions version and a live version from the Drama tour to create this version. I always felt that that song deserved more than to be an excuse for Geoff Downes to doodle on his keyboards, for Horn to mess around with a vocoder and for both to tease the audience with a couple of notes from "Video Killed The Radio Star". Whether this new mix makes this more of an epic song or whether it works for you remains to be seen, but hey, lemme know, eh. 

So yeah, this is what YESterdays is, and I hope you enjoy it. The whole adventure spread into a two-disc thing at the time, but I'll just send out this as a test balloon, and can bring out the sequel if anyone is actually interested. and despite being essentially a Part 1 or Volume 1, this album is - as all of my alts and other albums are - sequenced to tell a story, so it has a short prelude in the classical-sounding "Vevey's Theme" and ends with an epilogue of sorts, Chris Squire's amazing solo bass version of "Amazing Grace". 

So, time go back in time and enjoy some YESterdays...yes?  

Are You Ready To Take A Dip Into Folly's Pool?

 

Even though the reaction to my Will Beeley Anthology was, I felt, a bit muted, I continue to dive a bit deeper into some of the fabulous little known artists featured on this blog's beloved All Pearls No Swine series. Our candidate for today : Folly's Pool, as featured with the song of the same name (cool, their own theme song. Or : lazy, they naed themselves after one of their tracks. Both work.) on All Pearls No Swine Volume  29. Maybe Beeley's folk-rock wasn't your thing, so how about folk rock via prog rock this time, in the best sense of the term. No endless keyboard noodlings just because, no sidelong instrument wanking just because. Instead a prog rock that has their roots in folk and folk rock, in something older and more solid than 'oh, look, what this Moog can do'. There is a clear link to the more progressive wing of the British folk-rock scene of the early 1970s, but I'm not an expert on that subject, so I let you, more knowledgable reader, if you are out there, make those connections. But really, “Jig In A” makes that link really obvious, even though the band was from Fresno, California!

There is some stuff on here that I would normally be cautious about, like a a ton of flute by band member Danny Jordan. But really, this is lovely stuff, with the flute, like the guitar breaks dosed just right to not overstay their welcome, even on a quasi instrumental like "Kathleen". "From A Memory" has a decidely West Coast feel to it (Fresno strikes back!), while "Before The Gates Of Elessaar" - befiitingly for its epic title and construction brings on some heavy guitars. Every one of the seven tracks here has something to recommend. I am also a fan of the epic tale of "Fallen Pony". But really, there are no duff tracks here, which given the slim track list, is great news for you and me and everyone we know. 

Folly's Pool - the band - dropped this fantastic album in 1977, at a time when prog rock was on its way out, then disappeared for a couple of years before making a new wave/pop record ten years later, then went silent before reuniting at the begining of this century and being surprisingly prolific since then. But Folly's Pool - the album - is a great one-shot of ultra lovely folk-prog-rock, so give this a listen, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree...

Against The Current: The Lost Marillion Album, or Fish's Last Stand.

If the band had known how close to the truth the title of their 1987 album Clutching At Straws came, they might have wanted to reconsider. Then again, Fish's tales of the tortured rock star Torch was nakedly autobiographical, with its harrowing account of Fish's worsening alcoholism in "Just For The Record" ("Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways / But When ut gets right down to it it's the same drunk haze") and "Sugar Mice" ("So if you want my adress it's number one at the end of the bar"), disillusion with the life as a rock star ("We're terminal cases that keep talking medicine / pretending the end isn't quite near / we make futile gestures, act to the cameras / with our made up faces and PR smiles") and overall atmosphere of despair. Don't get me wrong, Clutching At Straws isn't nearly as miserable-sounding as these lines make it sound, in fact, rarely has extended misery sounded as enticing and seductive as on Clutching At Straws. But all was indeed not well for Fish, and for his band mates in Marillion.

The success of Misplaced Childhood and number one smash "Kayleigh" had put the band into an endless cycle of touring, doing promotion and finally recording a new record. The sessions for Clutching At Straws had already proven to be difficult, with the dreaded 'musical differences' causing more than a few arguments, often in different states of intoxication, between band members. Then it was on the road again, tiredlessly, only to get back together to plot a follow up record. The band members were all tired, and tired of each other, when they reconvened. Fish usually complained about the music the rest of the band was working on "being shite", and the band members returned the compliments concerning his lyrics. In between all this strife, the band somehow managed to go into a studio called Tone Deaf (a sign? an omen?) to cut demos of four songs, then holed up in an isolated castle - clearly the most sensible idea for five often drunk guys starting to hate each other - to write, and managed two other demos of songs, before Fish announced his resignation from the band, and Marillion, for all intents and purposes, broke up. 

"Ha, photobomb, guys, technically I'm already gone..."

Marillion was reborn in short order, of course, recruitiong Steve Hogarth as new lead singer, and using a ton of the musical ideas the band had worked on in early 1988 for use on 1989's Seasons End, while Fish took a bunch of his lyrics to use on his next three solo albums. A live album (The Thieving Magpie) closed out the Fish era in a rather underwhelming way. This is of course the moment, where the One Buck Guy's alternate history generator goes into overdrive: What if EMI had insisted on one last Fish-led studio album? What if Fish, after long and unpleasant negociations, agrees that the band can use the demos they cut in early 1988, but refuses to go back into the studio to record anything else and forbids the band to record anything else for that album without him? 

Faced with Fish's 'take it or leave it' proposition and a demo tape of six songs, some not even fnished, the guys at EMI face a problem: These songs do not an album make, as a matter of fact, they're barely more than half an album. Faced with this dilemma, they go back to the vaults, and decide to go right back to the beginning of the band, promoting Fish's last album as a 'now and then' proposition. They pick the band's early epic "Grendel" as a way to fill out the album, only slightly regretting having used the original b-side version on the stopgap compilation album B'Sides Themselves earlier in the year. A solution is found: An alternate version, cut at Fair Deal Studios, is a rarity the fans don't have and can thus fulfill its function as quality filler to go with the material recorded, which also includes "Beaujolais Day", an unused song from the Clutching At Straws sessions. Thus, Against The Current is born, with title and artwork being a wink at the situation the band and its estranged lead singer were in. 

[Alternate History Generator Off]

So, Against the Current. "Beaujolais Day" is a fine, energetic opener, giving way to "Tic-Tac-Toe", "Sunset Hill", "Exile on Princes Street" and "Story From A Thin Wall" as the atmospheric ending of Side A. Side B would then open with the short "Shadows On The Barley", give way to the Fair Deal version of "Grendel" and then close out with the short instrumental "Voiceless In The Crowd". In order to create Against The Current I had to work with the fact that "Tic-Tac-Toe" and "Shadows On The Barley" were incomplete and stopped abruptly, but other than a quick fade out at an appropriate moment there wasn't much else I could do. And "Voiceless In The Crowd" was originally an entire song called "Voice In The Crowd", but there was something off about the track. The drumming sounded weird, and the entire track had this weird Phil Collins vibe to it, as well as sounding pretty samey to some of the songs on side one. So I basically got rid of the song and only kept the parts I liked, which was the beautiful opening and the closing of the song with some beautiful guitar playing. And since there is no more voice, well, voiceless, geddit?! 

This isn't in any wy a 'great lost album', but an eminently listenable album full of fine moments that deserve better than to be soon forgotten bonus tracks, so that's exactly what Against The Current delivers. Sure, some of it isn't as polished as the group's studio creations - given that these were simple guiding demos, but as a goodbye to Fish and Mark I of the band, I don't think I'm clutching at straws when I say that Against The Current is a pretty decent send off. Listen, and see if you'll agree.  

You Kansas boys, the de-progging will continue until morale improves!

Time for round two of our popular (?!?) deprogging program, letting good ol' Kansas go of their prog pretenions a little earlier than they did for real. If you have checked the de-progged verion of Leftoverture and its accompanying write-up, then you know that I feel that Kansas always was a bit of wolf in sheep's clothing, finally bursting out of their woolly disguise to be the AOR/mainstream rock band they always wanted to be at the turn of the decade. You'll also know that I find their prog ambitions to often be misguided, especially with their often dreadfully timed and obviously only-there-for-credit instrumental solos. So, round two does the same thing that round one did: A grating solo? An ill-advised prog section? Gone and gone! Admittedly, they were already on their way to more conventional pop songs, generally going for shorter songs than previously, yet still with some grafted on prog sections that in this version have gone the way of the dodo. 

All in all, five of the tracks have been edited: "Paradox", "The Spider" (which admittedly only leaves a snatch of this already short song), "Closet Chronicle", "Nobody's Home" and "Helplessly Hoping". As with Leftoverture, what's left is more of an art pop album than the Yes imitation these good ol' boys from Topeka were trying to be. To be fair, Point of Know Return doesn't only have the acoustic guitar by the campfire classic "Dust In The Wind" that ultimately turned off a lot of their old prog fans from the band for 'selling out'. It also had what is maybe not their best song from their prog era - that one might still be "Carry On Wayward Son" - but the one song that showed how they could best align their pop and their prog instincts. The title song is somewhat of an ideal Kansas song: it has a great big pop hook, some thankfully short prog sections, the usual tempo changes etc., but finally does all of this and gets out in less than three and a half minutes! Well played, Kansas! If only you had been so disciplined more often!

There are still enough traces of prog if you're a fan, and definitely more than a shot of rock'n'roll, things that then started to drift into more of an AOR sound on follow-up Monolith. So, this is the last - and possibly best - of the classic Kansas era, in a leaner, meaner version. So, get ready for some heartland proggers slightly de-progged...but still laying some kick ass music...

The Legend Of Ragnarok - Kiwi Psych Space Prog Rock, Anyone?

Ragnarok definitely defied the odds during their existence. That a bar band touring the backwater bar circuit of the North Island would become New Zealand's premier prog rock outfit, all while losing their co-lead vocalist halfway through doesn't sound like a receipe for success. And real, palpable success wasn't forthcomung for the remaining Rangarok quartet, so after a third album failed to take shape, the band called it quits. But for five years and two albums following back to back in 1975 and 1976 Ragnarok were the premier space rock band from New Zealand, having a repertoire ranging from repetitive drones to harder edged rock, incorporating psychedelic elements. During their bar band days they played faithful Led Zeppelin, Yes and Pink Floyd covers, while slowly developing their owwn compoistions, all the while upping the stakes in the make-up and costumes department to somewhat profit from the popular glam rock stylings of the day. 

Female lead singer Lea Maalfrid had a powerful voice, but I generally prefer the lead vocals of her male colleagues. Nothing chauvinist about that, but her voice sometimes has this showtune belting thing to it that I'm not fond of. I generally prefer the fuzzy, floating Ragnarok with equally fuzzy and floating (sometimes bordering on lazy-sounding) vocals from Ramon York. I really like "Fenris", their debut album's opener, though, where Maalfrid sounds menacing and eerie rather than showboating, the same is true for her second vocal appearance on "Fire On Sky". The incessant touring got to,Maalfrid, so she left after the debut album, with the remaining quartet completing Nooks. 

Simple but effective: the great cover art for their first album

A trio of songs from Nooks - "The Volsung", "Semolina" and "Paths Of Remembrance" - remind me of  the peaceful, friendly Pink Floyd of Obscured By Clouds - my favorite Floyd - having the same mellow, drifting vibe and acoustic backbone. Speaking of the Floyd: Ragnarok harken back to their old days as a cover band with a 16 minute+ medley of essentially the entire second side of The Dark Side Of The Moon. I dubbed that track "Dark Side Too", and the mimicry of the band is astounding, they really come quite close to the real thing. The other cover taken from a live recording is a Rory Erickson tune, with the lively "I Fall Apart" reminding people that these guys started out as a bar band called Sweetfeet.

Long form tracks "Dream", "Raga", "Nooks" and "Rainbow Bridge" have been edited for this collection, which splits pretty evenly between the self-titled debut and Nooks, plus the two live tracks. This is probably all the Ragnarok you need, or at the very least a really nice teaser to let you check out this fascinating little band. So get ready, folks, for the twilight of the gods... 

Glitter, make-up, fancy costumes...sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do...

The Sunflower State's Proggiest...De-Progged!

During my recent write-up accompanying *shels I enquired about the readership's tips concerning lesser-known outfits in the genre, which quickly led to the rebuke that Pink Floyd weren't prog, and neither were Kansas. And while I leave the former question for some other time, some other place and probably someone else, I can definitely concur with the second idea. Kansas never really were a progressive rock band. They were a bar boogie band with delusions of grandeur. Which isn't as bad as it sounds! Where would mankind be without the occasional bout of delusions of grandeur? Not very far along, that is certain. But yeah, Kansas, inspired by their idols from the other side of the big pond, they deperately tried to look the part, garnishing their songs with the required solos and extending them into long, self-important song structures like they've seen their British idols do. 

But here's the thing: It still is ersatz Prog, if your investment into the sound and signifiers of prog rock are mostly cosmetic. You can take any random track by, say, Yes and then debate whether that other long-winded solo is really necessary, but you can always see how the band came to it, how the song is constructed so that it would lead into that solo at that moment. With Kansas, you simply can't. You merely get the impression that there is now a keyboard solo because there hasn't been one for a minute and a half and it wouldn't sound proggish enough if there weren't. Seriously, Kansas has some of the worst-integrated solos I've ever heard. A good number of their songs aren't so much built to launch from one section to another, they are being interrupted by what the members no doubt felt was a signature solo to ensure maximum progressiveness. 

Here's Kansas' dirty little secret, though it didn't stay very secret for very long: At the heart, they always were an AOR rock band, it just took them a good long while to admit it, before they finally relented at the beginning of the 80s and fully embraced the power ballad/arena rock associated with that. But the inklings that they were always closer to Boston or Styx rather than Genesis or Yes were always there, only somewhat obscured by the pretentiousness of the titles, lyrics and arrangements. I mean, what do you get when a bunch of country boys from the sunflower state try to be as prog as possible? A wannabe epic humbly (or falsely humorously) titled "Magnum Opus" that features section titles like 'Father Padilla Meets The Perfect Gnat' because Peter Gabriel would come up with shit like that. 

There's no shame in being demasked as fraudsters despite all good intentions. And I'm not as cruel as Allmusic's big boss Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who denounces the double whopper of their "crippling ambition" and "lack of skills" for this album. They weren't completely useless boobs either, now, STE! But let's make the whole 'Kansas really was a pop band all along' more clear by getting rid of some of the excesses, shall we? So, to cut to the chase, I cut out all the superfluous stuff - the misshapen solos and, in the case of "Magnum Opus" whole sections that got on my nerves and I didn't want to hear again. Is this a major overstepping of the One Buck Guy in terms of Kansas' intentions? Of course it is! But it's for their and our own good! Leftoverture should have been the big beginning of their pop phase, with only minor prog touches. This version comes closer to that, though really I wasn't as radical as this write-up makes it sound. 

At the end of the day, only four of the tracks here have been edited: "What's On My Mind" "Miracles Out Of Nowhere", "Cheyenne Anthem" and "Magnum Opus", and apart from the latter most cuts were minor, usually a solo or two. We're easing people into the de-progging project. If, however, some of you think this is a worthwhile endeavor, know that follow-up Point Of Know Return has also been de-progged for my own personal listenng pleasure and may follow on these pages if there is interest. 

So, Leftoverture deprogged. Hope y'all check this out...and if anyone has an opinion on whether this worked for you or not, let me know in the comments... 

From The Record Shelf: It Ain't Walking On Egg Shells, These Shels Bring The Noise...

And now for something completely different...I haven't indulged much in heavy music around here, mainly because it isn't my favorite genre. I mean, I dipped a bit into hard rock and heavy metal as a teenager, but really only a bit. Heavy prog or prog metal is definitely not a genre that I would have bet on being interested in when I was younger, mainly because what prog I heard, mostly from my dad getting a nostalgia vibe from time to time, putting on stuff like An Electronic Mass from Spooy Tooth with Pierre Henry, and then getting yelled at by my mom who aske for the noise to cease. The other reason why I wasn't into prog is that I'm a lyrics guy and that I'm not big into jams and everything jam-like. When push comes to shove, I'll take a singer-songwriter and his or her acoustic guitar. 

But it was a kind of boredom with that kind of music that finally drove me to check out prog rock. I was continuing to collect my Lucinda Williamses and Ryan Adamses, but at some point you've pretty much heard it all in the genre. So, I randomly picked up the BugglYes version of Yes and went from there. The fact that Drama, my first foray into prog, was verging on Heavy prog on tracks like "Machine Messiah" probably set me on the rails that lead us to our One Buck Record of the day. 

Boy, aren't we mysterious...

I didn't know anthing about *shels when I fished Sea Of The Dying Dhow out of a bargain bin somewhere. I don't even know what got me to pick it up, the art and song titles didn't really point to something in my wheelhouse. Maybe the hype sticker on the front that promised "a new and beautiful journey" pushed me, or I was just feeling adventurous that day. Anyway, The Sea Of The Dying Dhow is an album that I like, almost despite myself and my declared proclivities. The longer pieces alternate between melodic sections and sudden eruptions of noise. The music is both melodious and crunchy, the guitars can get really heavy at times, but Shels know how to not overdo it.   

*shels was formed as a follow-up project to British experimental hardcore band Mahumodo by their mastermind Mehdi Safa. Lyrics aren't a great concern and Sahfa is just an okay singer, which in turn also means none of the sometimes exagerrated and operatic vocal antics endemic to prog rock. In the end, it doesn't matter much , as about 80% of the album is instrumental, where *shels are more interested in the ebb and flow of their soundscapes than any traditional song structures. At times I'm reminded of some of the music by Steven Wilson/Porcupine Tree that I like.

In case you were wondering what the hell a dhow is...

So, friends and neighbours, are you ready for something a little out of my wheelhouse? Or yours? I am whenever you are. No need to go down to the beach, let's listen to some *shels right now...

A change to this blog's flight plan...

A ton of things to be featured are lying on their dedicated space on my HDD for a good long while now, while other things just come up in the moment, while I post some of those first things. In more plain words: I tend to get distracted. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, since it means I'm still discovering and researching and reworking on the fly. Life is constant flux, so why should a music blog be any different. All this is a long-winded way to say that when I posted Yes' From A Page (A Single Page) a week ago that got me thinking of the Drama and Fly From Here era bands, which in turn got me interested in the origins of the latter album's centerpiece. I knew it was based on a piece Trevor Horn and Geoffrey Downes a.k.a. The Buggles had presented to Yes and occasionally played live on the Drama tour before that specific version of Yes, lovingly dubbed BugglYes by me as opposed to other fans' more dismissive-sounding The Yeggles, disbanded. It turns out that "We Can Fly From Here" has a much bigger importance for Mrs. Horn and Downes than initially thought, which also explains why that song is the thread that binds the two bands together, over a time span of almost forty years. 

"We Can Fly From here" has the distinction of directly and indirectly starting two bands: According to Horn's introductions in concert, it was the first song the Buggles ever wrote together, then became the song that got them the gig as the bulkheads of Drama-era Yes. They never got to finish a version of "We Can Fly From Here" for their debut album Adventures in Plastic, but - like other tracks - noticed how, well, proggish the song sounded and, having the same manager, decided to offer the song to Yes, who had recently suffered the defections of Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. Whether the Buggles were angling for this or not, their meeting to offer "We Can Fly From Here" to Yes turned into the remains of Yes offering them a place in the band. A demo version of the song was produced in 1980, but the song seemngly wasn't developed much further and never made it onto Drama, though some archival live recordings exist. Horns and Downes then cut an impressive, elaborate demo in 1981 for possible inclusion on the second Buggles album, Adventures In Modern Recording, but this didn't come to pass, either. Basically , Horn and Downes decided to end their collaboration and Horn finished the album alone, with only three tracks featuring Downes, none of them "We Can Fly From Here". And then that was it, for a long time, for the song that started it all. 

Songs that have such a personal importance for its authors tend to die hard, though, and it seems obvious that Horn never really let the song go entirely.. So when the band reconnected with him in the late 2000s (after having been produced by him through their 1980s chart-making era, a.k.a. the Trevor Rabin years) and where throwing ideas around for a new studio album, Horn brought "We Can Fly From Here" up. Soon the idea was born to turn the original ideas into a long-form piece rivaling their early to mid-70s work, to be further developed from The Buggles' original demos. Oliver Wakeman, the keys man at the time was gently asked to leave to make place for Geoff Downes, because the latter was supposed to have a "greater sensibility for the material". Duh. Also brutally ironic, considering that Wakeman the Younger had suggested to contact Horn to begin with. The songs he developed finally ended up on From A Page, as mentioned in the intro. And so, BugglYes was reborn, or almost. 

Having recruited David Benoit from a Yes cover band to replace Jon Anderson a couple of years earlier, the first version of "Fly From Here", the long-form suite, featured him singing on the album that was named after it, 2011's Fly From Here. But the BugglYes were not quite done yet, and Horn still didn't have this song that was so close to his heart, in the form that he - secretly or not so secretly - wanted. After having unceremoniously fired Benoit for falling ill (history repeating itself for Yes vocalists), Horn - parallel to the band touring with Jon Davison - returned to Fly From Here and recorded replacement vocals for the entire album, including its centerpiece "Fly From Here" suite. The result, complete with new mixing and guitar and keyboard overdubs, was released in 2018 as Fly From Here: Return Flight. And, finally, after almost 40 years, the BugglYes had finally won. Their baby, the first song Horn and Downes wrote together, was finally out - with Horn on vocals and Downes on keyboards, like back in 1979. To be honest, I prefer the original 2011 version of the suite and Benoit's vocals, which seem more emotional and expressive, whereas Horn's vocals are more robotic, perhaps wilfully so, perhaps not. 

So, the album of the day. At four tracks it is probably more of an EP, though at 40 minutes length it's having classic album length. It captures the journey of the BugglYes' work on "We Can Fly From Here" from the relatively rudimentary first demo which is supposed to be Yes, but it's not obvious who besides Horn and Downes is playing on it. Even the drums could easily be a drum machine. Then, off to a live version from the same year's Drama tour, followed by the more elaborate demo Horns and Downes cut in 1981 and finally the suite from Fly From Here: Return Flight in slightly altered form. Some of the transitions of the suite were really iffy and not particularly thought out, glued together with an old piece of chewing gum and some duct tape. So I worked on the suite to get rid of some of these pretty bad transitions and tightened up the thing by eliminating some slow spots and redundancies (including the first part of Steve Howe's "Bumpy Ride" section, which was really badly integrated into the piece). "Fly From Here" is now coming in at a little over 19 minutes, almost five minutes less than the original. I think it works better that way. 

Looking at the journey of the song from its admittedly wobbly beginnings, I'm mightily impressed with The Buggles' version of the song, which probably convinced Yes in 2010 that there was something there. On the suite you can still trace back its opening parts to the demos from 1980 and 1981 and make some other fun observations, like how it takes the chord progressions of "Machine Messiah" at one point in a callback to Drama (starting from the "Sailor...sailor beware" section at 12.50 and re-appearing several times in the four minutes that follow). Spending an entire LP's worh of time on a single song and its progression can only work if that song is worth it, and I think that "We Can Fly" in all its incarnations is worth it. 

I'll let you discover if you agree. Ready For Takeoff in 3-2-1... 

A lost page from the book of Yes...

I'm a bit of a weird dude when it comes to Yes. Bit of a contrarian, maybe. I mean, I like Jon Anderson just fine with his beautiful high voice, and his penchant for unicorns'n'elves'n'shit. But I prefer Yes' other vocalists. Except for Jon Davison, now that dude totally sucks. But yeah, those other guys. This has, of course, to do with my own history with Yes. My first Yes album was that unloved album of the tail end of their classic era, Drama. So I'm down with the BugglYes. And I thought that Fly From Here, an album involving both ex-Buggles, was a really strong Yes album, so I'm down with Benoit David also. Unfortunately, of course, both of these dudes didn't last. The BugglYes called it quits after that one totally underrated album, and the David-led line-up...well, that is another matter entirely. Recruited in the band to replace an ailing Jon Anderson who didn't want to go out on the road (something that Anderson took really badly, who'd hoped they'd wait for his recovery), David got his pink slip pretty soon after Fly From Here when he developed his own health problems with a respiratory illness. But the band wasn't done doing him dirty! To add insult to injury, quite literally in this case, they revised Fly From Here a couple of years later and replaced all of David's lead vocals with those of producer and Drama-era singer Trevor Horn. That's some cold shit right there. But Yes have stopped being a band a good long while ago, they are, and have been for a long time now, a business endeavor, and if you're not a part of the ongoing business, then you're a problem. 

Another person who wasn't around long enough to see Fly From Here, but was involved in its making: Oliver Wakeman, who replaced his dad Rick, who left when Anderson went/was forced to go, for touring with the group. He was working on possible songs for a studio album before he left/was forced to leave and be replaced by Geoff Downs for being "closer to the material" that had its roots in the Drama era. Most of the material he worked on was replaced by that other, old/new material from the BugglYes. But a couple of years later, Wakeman reworked some of this material, with the authorization of Yes, adding newly finished piano parts to a David composition from the time (and a lead vocal from a later, unrelated album) to three Yes outtakes/early songs from 2010. So, he basically had enough material for an EP, but Yes, never ones to fail to monetize their fan base's faithfulness, added a double live album already issued in 2011, so they could market the whole thing as a mini-boxset. The live album is fine, with Benoit in fine vocal form and the set list having some songs rarely played at the time. But still, Yes were and are the kings of recycling and reselling. The 'new' music coming out of this project is well worth hearing, though, as all four are very fine songs.

Which, finally, brings us to the One Buck Record of the day. From A Page (A Single Page) owes its subtitle to the fact that I greatly condensed the mini-boxset. There's the four studio songs, plus a selection of my favorites from the live album, which of course includes the Drama tracks "Tempus Fugit" and "Machine Messiah"; old favorites like "And You And I" and "I've Seen All Good People", a really good version of "Owner Of A Lonely Heart" and a lovely rendering of "Onward". 

We will be seeing Yes again on these pages, but for now, dear reader,turn the page to From A Page (A Single Page)...