YES, FRIENDS AND RELATIVES

Five years before this, ur… - ‘thing’ released, Yes put out their first ‘friends and family’ project, cleverly titled Affirmative. That is a pretty good album, and I especially liked the Badger track. This is not that album. You have been warned.

From the top….

Jon Anderson decides to do a disco-sequenced version of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” for some reason, and further corrupts the already poor rendition of a poor song by adding female backing that sounds like something Prince would have considered tasteful. This isn’t bad, it’s just boring.

On “Ice” however, Rick Wakeman borders on appalling. The keyboard sequence is actually not all that bad, and the bass line is at least passable. But the uber-cheesy dance beat and pop vocals bring this one down in a hurry. Unfortunately, the song continues for nearly five minutes after it becomes apparent that it shouldn’t.

Steve Howe at least put out a technically good performance on “Red and White”, although the point of the lyrics quite escapes me. And it goes without saying that he should never sing – ever. This is actually a short version of the Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe song “Birthright” from their self-titled album. It sounds more like an old Icehouse song overdubbed with a decent guitar track (“Fat man, fat man, give me the gun…”).

“Zone of O” is an Esquire track featuring Chris Squire. This is actually a decent song, and might have made a decent b-side to an 80’s-era Yes single, except that Squire sounds like that chick that sang for Roxette.

Bill Bruford gets his turn with “Up North”, an Earthworks jazz number that has some nice horns but is hopelessly out-of-place on this collection.

“The Pyramids of Egypt” is about as ostentatious as Wakeman ever got on his solo stuff, with a bit of a spoken-word history lesson telling us what we all already knew about the origins of the pyramids, followed by some nice keyboards that border on being a bit over-the-top. But then, what does one expect from Wakeman? Alan Parsons was probably jealous.

For some reason the producer decided to include a very brief acoustic-and-vocals extract from “Roundabout” by Mr. Howe, just long enough to remind me why he shouldn’t sing, and short enough not to make me eject the CD.

“Sync or Swim” is yet another pretentious Wakeman cut, but not annoyingly so at least. Great keyboards actually, but again the pseudo-dance beat is distracting.

But for some inexplicable reason Wakeman follows himself with a live version of “Arthur” that is every bit as good as the original studio version. Go figure.

And the hits keep coming with a very decent live rendition of “Close to the Edge”. I’m not sure where this recording came from but it actually serves to give this collection some value at least. Anderson’s vocals are a bit ragged, but hey – it’s live.

Wakeman again with “No Expense Spared”, I suppose from the album of the same name. I’ve never heard that album, but this is a decent track, except that it kind of sounds like what Rainbow would have sounded like with Squire on vocals instead of Ronnie James Dio. Try and visualize that for a few minutes.

Anderson follows with “Say”, some kind of techno-rap bit that seems inspired by parachute pants and the year 1993. I wonder if he wrote this for a club scene for a Miami Vice episode?

“Walk Don’t Run” is a very old tune, I can’t remember from who, but Howe covers it with acoustic guitar. Hmmm…

“Tron Thomi” is another Esquire song, and is just as decent as “Zone of O’. Again, I’m not a big fan of his vocals, and the drums are pure 80’s, but it’s a catchy beat and not altogether unpleasant. For a bit toward the end the tempo actually slows down and teases the listener with a hope of leaning into progressive territory. But alas – it degenerates into some sort of chant-response love song or something. I dunno’.

“10 Million” is another Anderson singles-bar dance number. Ugh!

Howe serves up another chopped-up version of a classic, in this case several extracts from Tales From Topographic Oceans, actually kind of nice although mostly just Howe and not much accompaniment to liven things up. One thing about this track – it reinforces for me that Tales was an album full of decent compositions, as this sounds good even without the lush keyboards and rhythm. But that damn voice!

Anderson offers “The More You Know”, as in – the more you know about 80’s music, the less you like it. This song included…

“Journey”, as in – to the centre of the Earth, is another Wakeman excerpt, and strong enough although I’m not sure why I wouldn’t just play that album if I wanted to hear this track.

But the whole band salvages this album on the final track with a very strong live recording of their awesome Paul Simon cover “America”. This is the longest version I’ve ever heard, largely because Howe and Squire are busy digging each other’s groove for large portions of the performance. I might have bought this collection just for this recording, even if I had known beforehand how much the rest of the album sucked.

Personally I much prefer the Affirmative ‘friends and family’ collection over this one. This would have been a decent album if all the Anderson dance crap would have been left out, and if someone would have had the decency to mute Howe’s microphone on his tracks. That said, this is not total garbage, just not actually very good either. I hate to give this two stars just because the “America” track is excellent, but when considered with the rest of the album I’m afraid that’s all it deserves. Buy Affirmative and Keystudio instead.

peace