YES albums are lousy. In fact, most progrock from that era is lousy, especially the synth stuff.
"Oooh, what a lucky man" you are…if you can still find a sucker to buy an Emerson Lake & Palmer off you!
At this point, now that the drugs have worn off, it's time to admit that the music was never very good. Mostly, it was obnoxious: some clown at the keyboard playing fast-fast-fast like a rabid chimp screaming for bananas…a lead guitar idiot savant choking the neck of the guitar and issuing one strangled high note at the wrong pitch for 30 seconds…the grubby drummer just waiting for his sweaty solo; sounding like a rhino being thrown downstairs.
Back then, most any simpleton set of lyrics would do. Dorm dimwits solemnly sat around mouthing the moronic words like they were giving a prayer for wine...not stuffing junk food down the munchie-hole. But check the words! So often, it was just an inane collection of Alice in Wonderland bullshit, all full of mushrooms and hogweed, or platitudes that thick-as-a-brick bozos were all supposed to live by.
"I've seen all good people turn their heads each day so satisfied I'm on my way!" Gad. And how many times did they REPEAT that damn line? "Take a straight and stronger course to the corner of your life. Make the white queen run so fast she hasn't got time to make you a wife. 'Cause it's time is time in time with your time and its news is captured...for the queen to use!"
Profound, huh, Mr. Natural?
You need more? Here's "All Good People," a cappella from the appropriately named VASSAR DEVILS. These babes made some sort of deal in Hell: no wayward synth. No dimwit drums. No loopy lead guitar…just the lyrics carefully chanted with almost enough magic force to "surround yourself with yourself….'Cause it's time is time in time with your time and its news is captured...for the queen to use! Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda…""
um, you are dumb
ReplyDeleteDumb for disliking Yes? No!
ReplyDeleteAll seriousness aside, this is (or tries to be) an opinionated funny blog. Millions of people have bought Yes songs. I wouldn't call them dumb.
There are other words, though.
I heard Yes on SiriusXM yesterday and was asking myself - what are people thinking?
ReplyDeleteMusic for the sophisticated douchebag.
YES is really talented. Ever heard "Roundabout," "Starship Trooper" or "Heart of the Sunrise?" Those songs rock! Chris Squire is an excellent bass player. I could never play like that. YES uses variations on a theme and links seemingly unrelated musical riffs with melodic bridges. They use counterpoint. It's like baroque and classical plus prog rock. Even Yngwie Malmsteen, the best guitar player of all time, likes YES.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, B.P. - Yes, I've heard "Roundabout," it was unavoidable. All the DJ's were playing it (except me). I was also not a big fan of E.L.P. - I thought a lot of what they did was Music 101. In a previous generation there were people who insisted Liberace was actually a fine pianist who at least could be mentioned in the same breath as Van Cliburn. Generally I don't slag easy targets, and there's plenty to tolerate with a lot of progrock acts. Or as Randy Newman sang it, "I love that E.L.O.!" I don't question the musicianship of these people. "I could never play like that" either! The particular Yes song in question...I suppose a lot of good people love it. Am I one of 'em...no.
ReplyDeleteThey were very well trained and used a variety strong compositional techniques. In the end, their writing, while complex was weak, hookless, and without charm. I lived through it somehow. It was just pompous, self-centered and awful.
ReplyDeleteSo to be honest, I did find this post very funny. My Yes/ELP time was long ago and it's time for younger bands to make music for people that like the styles and BUY that music. When all this YES/ELP music came out it just 'was' the music we had. Just like now is the music that people in this generation have. In twenty years, it's likely someone will poke fun at today's music; so what. Cake be good eating.
ReplyDeleteThanks...a lot of our older music holds up. Maybe in small doses. YES is actually headlining their "Cruise to the Edge" cruise in the summer of 2020. (Yes, today's YES fans are the geezers who made fun of their parents for going on cruises!) I agree, it's kind of mean to make fun of what was popular back in the day, but some critics were making fun of YES or ELP back in the day, too! Today, lots of people shout about how awful Taylor Swift is, and there are parodies of her, Adele, Miley Cyrus...Weird Al did a good one on Lady Gaga. CDs like this are just a favorite quirk of mine. You take a weird genre (Gregorian Chant, yes...this stuff, not so much) and then try to make it work with rock songs, and you can get something pretty novel. Although "novelty comedy" isn't what they usually are going for!
ReplyDeleteI always thought Yes was overrated and that a good portion of their fans didn't really like them but claimed to because in certain circles it signaled that one was more sophisticated in their musical tastes than most.
ReplyDeleteThe only one of their songs I actually like is the meditative instrumental Wurm.
Other than that there are parts of one or two songs that I think are pretty good but the signal to noise ratio is piss poor and the lyrics are really bad and kinda kill some of their more promising moments.
Of course like so many bands of that era they degenerated into a generic synth pop band by the early 80s. I didn't care for them at their peak but at least they had a certain originality and authenticity.
Of course committed fans never admit when their beloved bands go to it's always the same rationalization ("The new album isn't as bad as it sounds! It's just a very layered, textured album; don't expect to 'get it' on the first listen. You need to listen to it at least 64 times, and even then you won't get it if you're not sophisticated" etc).
When people start saying your favorite band's latest album is 'layered' and 'textured' and requires multiple listens to 'get', watch out.
Also, I heard their original lead singer in an interview and he's a complete moron who believes space aliens are monitoring the earth and all sorts of New Age bullshit.