"YES" At The Garden, May 13, 2004. Most amazing.

Cafe Society
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My fave band, Yes, played Madison Square Garden this past Thursday. I finished a job at CNN uptown, and stowed my gear, and took the downtown “A” train, and just looked to buy a ticket. I got a great seat from a guy with a spare ticket.

The first half was great, a few new songs, some old chestnuts.
Then, the second half. My gosh. They played acoustic for maybe 4 or 5 songs. Rick on a baby grand, Steve and Jon on acoustic guitars and Chris on an acoustic bass. Alan on a very small basic drum kit. All sat on stools, lined up close. And just…played.

This is their 35th Anniversary Tour, and I wanted to catch it. They’re getting long in the tooth, but their ability to re-work their tunes is still fresh. Roundabout was given a jazzy rhythm that worked really well ( and is completely unexpected from them ).

Not nearly the only surprise of the show. Near the end of the 2nd set, Jon brought up onto the stage his Spiritual Mother, whose name I could not understand. This woman proceeded to speak a prayer of love and peace and harmony- in Sanskrit. She then went and sat down again in the audience.

I felt badly for Jon, this is a person dear to him in a spiritual way and the crowd was highly unhappy to hear what this woman was doing. Jon’s intensely spiritual center is hardly news to any fan willing to shuck out money to see him and Yes live. And yet, there were some scattered boos and mean comments. A bit sad, I’d say.

The show was sharply played, fresh in some approaches and completely envigorating. I can’t get their stuff out of my head now, and have been floating for days…

Any other Dopers attend, or see the tour elsewhere so far??

Cartooniverse

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I’ve seen Yes twice, on the Masterworks tour in 2000, and again on the Magnification/Wakeman reunion tour in 2002. Both shows were awesome. The Masterworks show was my favorite concert ever – I spent much of the next week feeling like I’d just had the most incredible sex of my life. GATES OF DELIRIUM!! RITUAL!! Yaayyy!!!

I just saw the set list for this tour and I’m kicking myself for missing the Anaheim show last month. Plus, they’ve announced a few summer dates with Dream Theater this summer (one of the few bands I like more than Yes) but so far they’re all on the east coast. Dammit!

At first I skipped over the words “and sat” in the last sentence of that first paragraph…hehe.

Well, it sounds like a nice idea, but the crowd was probably more interested in hearing rock music than listening to some Buddhist ceremony. I certainly wouldn’t like it if U2 or Stryper brought up a priest to do a Catholic mass in the middle of a concert, would you? Just my opinion.

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And here I thought this was going to be a thread about one of those public marriage proposals you occasionally read about.

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Yup, we caught Yes in San Diego a couple of weeks ago… great show! :cool:

The stage decor was pretty cool too… I believe it was designed by the same guy who did the cover art for many (all?) of their albums.

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prog rock… :eek:

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“Yes”? No.

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I agree, it was most creative. Lit from within or without…it filled the normally black airspace seen around and behind the musicians in a new way. I loved the thing that kind of rose above and behind Rick, it looked like three hands with 6 fingers each- obviously a nod to Rick’s prodigious work at the keyboards.

This YesWorld site will let you take a look at it. Click on " Yes Summer Tour Updates", then at that page scroll down a wee tad. A good clear photo of the group on stage, lit with set up.

I keep thinking, “Damn, I got to hear Southside Of The Sky” and “Sweet Dreams”, not to mention “Turn of the Century”…" Splendid show.

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Oh, shush.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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I caught them a couple years ago when they were doing the “YesSymphonic Tour”, at Radio City Music Hall, and was similarly impressed with how damn good they sound, not just not jaded and not dissipated but fresh and exciting.

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I admit it: 90125, the album that had the progheads tearing their collective wigs out in anguish, is my favorite Yes disc by far. Whereas “Relayer” and other Yes works of its ilk, ehhhh…I’ll stop before I commit some anti-prog heresy.

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Saw them years ago in Vegas. Had great seats for a fantastic show with an embarrassingly small turnout. Maybe only filled 1/4-1/3 of the hall. :frowning: Oh well, some people just don’t know any better.

Worth twice the price of admission just to be in the same building as Steve Howe.

Overheard in the public restroom: “That’ll leave a skidmark all the way to the treatment plant!”

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***Cartooniverse reads repeatedly, hunched over his leather strop. The glint of bright light flying off of the straight razor in little furious dashes. Oh yessssssssss my precioussssss, rob us of our joys they will !!! Ooooooooooooh, the heretics shall payyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ( mouth slowly frothing ) *** :smiley:

To be honest? 90125 was a pretty tasty effort. In the spirit of the band approaching new materials and new ideas with it’s new members, that was a high watermark. Trevor Rabin came in with a handful of completely finished, engineered demos. Owner of a Lonely Heart was only one of those demos. He had firmly established a foothold in the new line-up, and Jon kind of " was invited to come and listen and try out a few of the songs". To show you how they respect the different eras and styles, we heard selections from Relayer, 90125 and ABWH during this tour.

It’s not the nit-picking of a few dud songs on some of the albums, it’s the very idea of a band that breathes. I will admit here that the Ladder left me happy in many ways, Open Your Eyes did not. -shrug- You’ve made that many albums? You get to have a few clunkers. IMHO there are precious few in their catalogue.

Relayer and Tales From Topographic Oceans are without argument bloated efforts. I’ve got an interview / documentary of the Yes Union Tour. In it, Jon basically lays it out. They pushed the arrogance and high concept album thing as far as they could, and Tales was the result. Hey, at least they reached a bit.

Sorry, LoopyDude, but this is a full-blown love affair, and a few nay-sayers and jealous hangers-on cannot tarnish the burnished glow.