LIVE 1975 AT Q.P.R. VOL. 1

This live DVD is a MUST for Yes lovers or those who love early prog music. I think this is the only video that cast a full concert with Yes "Relayer" line-up, i.e. Patrick Moraz on keyboard. That's actually my chief reason why I chased this DVD when it was released couple years ago. Well, the sonic quality is not good as it does not deliver a stable sound but the picture is quite OK and acceptable. One thing that I could not deny the value is the performance of Mr. Moraz! Yep! What a great show man! I had never imagined how the boiling water sounds of keyboard backed with jaw-dropping percussive in "Sound Chaser" being played live! Yeah . live, my friend .!! The band demonstrated it excellently with excellent stage act by Mr. Moraz at the opening of the show attended by thousands people, open air. The stage itself is quite uniquely set with sort of brazillian style.

What follow is another magic seeing the Rick Wakeman original work at "Close To The Edge" being played by Moraz. Can you find this in other video set? Nope, I don't think so. And here we go, you can see how Mr. Moraz interpret the work of Mr Wakeman into his style. It's a great work, I would say. The next two tracks are from "Relayer" with the mellow one "To Be Over" followed with the best Yes song ever: "The Gates of Delirium". WOW! It's an awesome performance as I can see how this brilliantly crafted epic is performed on stage with the guys who did it in the studio album. This one has no orchestra like "Yessymphonic" of course but it projects the spirit and the energy of Yes in the glory days of 70s. I can see how Mr, Squire plays his bass guitar solo as part of the epic's interlude. Really two thumbs up!

Overall, I highly recommend you to have this memorable live performance DVD especially if you really love Yes. I tend to give this DVD a masterpiece (five stars) rating but due to inconsistent (unstable) audio quality I would give it a four star rating - an excellent addition to any prog music collection. The concert itself is a gem! Nothing likes it man .. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild! - GW

I felt lucky when I found this at the record store. This dvd is a registration of a stadium tour of 1975. To my opinion the band was at its peak of musical creativity during this time. While retaining its sound the band broke their musical boundaries on their 1974 album Relayer. I always find there's some resemblance between the music of Relayer and Close to the edge. Apart from the 3 track format, the songs are rather accessible and contain many memorable melodies but Relayer goes on where "Close" stops. The jazz influence is noticeable on "Sound chaser" , the most adventurous track the band ever conceived. The track listing on this dvd contains the 3 tracks from Relayer and also a version of "Close to the edge" which sounds very close to the original. While "sound chaser" and "to be over" are excellent tracks, they never became concert classics so there's not much opportunity to catch a live performance on video. The stage show that they used was exceptionable. Yes used stage attributes to capture the atmosphere of the Roger Dean cover art. The camera work on this registration is perfect, the screen quality of the movie is top notch, hard to believe these images are more than 20 years old, although it becomes believable when realising how young the members of the band look on this DVD. There's plenty of close-ups of all members. A bit funny to see a bearded Jon Anderson. This is the first part of the concert. I suppose you can find the the rest of the gig on volume 2 if such thing has been released in the dvd format yet. Too bad most of these recordings have been made in the daylight. I suppose it must be more exciting too see the show in the dark when the stage lights are coming through properly. The bad sound quality on this dvd spoils a lot. There's something terribly wrong with the mixing of the instruments. On most of these performances the sound of the keyboards overshadows all of the other instruments. Most of the time for example you see Steve Howe playing very enthusiast without actually hearing his guitar parts coming though as it shoulds. Same thing could be said about the drums, the percussion work looks extremely interesting too bad you can't hear what's it like. For what I can hear of the Relayer tracks sounds pretty decent but in these circumstances you can't really tell. This dvd only stimulates my longing for decent live recordings of this tour. Still a must have for the fans

I have always been a fan from the Relayer album so I was very happy to purchase live footage from the Relayer tour! But I have mixed feelings about the music. On one hand it is very exciting and great to see the way Swiss keyboard wizard Patrick Moraz adds an extra dimension to the distinctive Yes sound, especially the tracks Sound Chaser and The Gates Of Delirum are mindblowing, so dynamic and alternating, top notch progrock! On the other hand I got the idea that Patrick Moraz his keyboard work was not always in tune with the other members (understament of the year?), he often sounds more jazzy than the others and his soli are ... very solo ! Nonetheless, this live footage is higly recommended to every proghead who is up to the great Seventies sound!

This video was available in the Laser Disc format some years ago, in two Laser Discs sold separately, which were expensive, being made in Japan.

The Laser Disc version was the one that I saw. Someone lent this two Laser Disc version to one of my brothers. I expected to see a very good quality video, but as previous reviewers commented, the audio mixing is not very good in some songs. I don`t know if YES has the rights of this video, but maybe the owners of the rights could have improved the quality of the mixing, but unfortunately the mixing wasn`t improved. But, being a complete concert from YES with Patrick Moraz, it is still good to see it.

This concert was filmed at a stadium, in the open air, of course, which I don`t like very much, because concerts done in this kind of places lack good acoustics, IMO. The concert was started with daylight, but at the end of the concert, it is nightime and the lights that were used by YES then are better to be seen in the video.

The songs in this Volume One:

1. Sound Chaser: with Moraz`jazz piano at the beginning of the song, plus White`s drums without sound effects like in the studio version. A very complicated song in tempos, IMO.

2. Close to the Edge: Moraz added his style to this song. Some of the keyboard parts at the beginning of the song are very different in comparison to the original parts played by Wakeman, but Moraz`parts sound very good and sometimes very "crazy". This version is heavier in comparison to the original version. During the "I Get Up I Get Down" part, a tape of backing keyboards (which also appears on the "Yessongs" video) is played while Moraz plays other keyboard parts (so, Wakeman was still "present" as some of his backing keyboards were also used in this song during this tour). Moraz also plays a different organ solo in comparsion to Wakeman`s. Alan White shines with his playing.

3. To Be Over: Anderson plays electric guitar in this song. I prefer the studio version.

4. The Gates of Delirium: Anderson plays electric guitar and percussion in this song. This is a very good version, but badly mixed.

5. I`ve Seen All Good People: a good version, too, but if I remember well, they only played the "Your Move" section of this song with acoustic guitars.

6. Long Distance Runaround: an acoustic version, played by Anderson, Howe and Squire on acoustic guitars. This is followed by a very good piano solo section by Moraz, on which he played parts of some songs he recorded with his previous band "Refugee".

7. Clap: another live version of this song.

I continue my review of this concert in my review for the Vol. 2 of this video...

My low rating is not for the performance of the band, which might have been excellent. My rating is for the extremely low quality of the finished product. The picture quality is awful, the sound quality is far worse, the mix is bad (or maybe just the best you could do given the source material) the packaging is unimaginative (in both versions) and the fact that it was released as two different discs - when the whole show easily would have fitted onto one disc - are typical features that piss fans and record buyers off.

To me these releases are strictly historical documents and not for listening/viewing pleasure. I can recommend them only to Yes scholars and serious collectors and even to them only after having invested in all other Yes DVD's out there. I have quite a few Yes DVD's myself and these QPR ones are easily the worst in terms of musical enjoyment (opposed to the pure curiosity of seeing this short lived line-up perform).

I warned you!