90125 and Big Generator: YES

^ Yeah, Domino whips anything on Big G.

I much prefer the B sides of both of these albums.

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: Big Generator is a big guilty pleasure for me.  I love it.  Start to finish.  I know, I'm weird. 90125... meh.  The more proggish songs are some of the worst proggish songs in their catalog for me.  The not-proggish songs are both predictable and not catchy.  Oh well.   (I strongly prefer a lot of their later work to this one, like The Ladder, Talk, Magnification - though '70s Yes is where I'm really at).

Edited by richardh - December 15 2014 at 01:29

Star_Song_Age_Less wrote: richardh wrote: BG actually carries a fair amount of punch. I only bought it recently and I was surprised that I didn't hate it given the generally expressed opinion about it. 90125 has some sparkling moments especially Leave It and Cinema but the long tracks just plod along desperately searching for some inspiration. It never happens although I like some of the organ playing , but then I like organ on pretty much anything! Yeah, my dad has tried for many years to convince me that Cinema is a diamond in the rough, but it just doesn't work for me.  Oh well!

I like both 90125 and Big Generator, with a particular soft spot for certain tracks---"It Can Happen" and "Cinema" from 90125 and all of side 2 of Big Generator (Yes, including "Love will find a way")

Good, well-written and performed/produced stuff that was actually great at the time, as there wasn't too much as proggy as Yes in the mainstream in the 80's. ELPowell, Pink Floyd/Momentary Lapse and the longer tracks on Genesis records were around, plus the 80's Rush, so along with these two Yes albums, that's pretty much what you could hear that was proggy in Canada. (OK, some of the Cancon bands like Gowan--to a lesser extent and Saga--to a greater extent had some prog too) The UK had more with the neo prog of Marillion (which did make it over here to a degree and I got into it--I wish I'd heard IQ back then too, but didn't until years later) but as a teenager just discovering prog, the 80's Yes albums were important, and still hold up quite well today in my opinion.

Yeah, some of it is pop music with not much progressive elements, but keep in mind we were listening for ANYTHING that had a middle section that did something musically different, or vocally unusual etc. Really anything that sounded different or more musically ambitious than the rest of the top 40 of the day.

Added later to avoid confusion: This pop/prog of the 80's radio and video world then led me and my buds back to the 70's prog that we all know and love. So I was able to go back and discover albums like Relayer and Foxtrot/SEBTP/everything else including other bands like Renaissance or Vdgg etc which were life changing albums! But that doesn't mean the 80's stuff all stunk, it just wasn't as far reaching and as certainly not as musically free!


Edited by january4mn - December 17 2014 at 08:09

I love most of 90125, except Owner Of A Lonely Heart and City Of Love all the rest are great songs. Perhaps it helps that with my mates' band we played some of them, mostly Hold On and Changes, and we had great fun playing them.

Gerinski wrote: I love most of 90125, except Owner Of A Lonely Heart and City Of Love all the rest are great songs. Perhaps it helps that with my mates' band we played some of them, mostly Hold On and Changes, and we had great fun playing them. It Can Happen, Cinema, Leave It and Hearts are also great songs imo, of course not The Gates Of Delirium but very fine music for the time it was released, a nice balance between accessibility, headbanging but with some quality, and a few proggy elements here and there to keep the listener's interest awaken. I still play 90125 now and then. Big Generator on the other hand never grabbed me, it's OK but if I listen to it it's because someone else has put the CD to play, I myself it's ages that I have not played it.

Yes, I was never too keen on "City of Love". The chorus was a bit too much like Kiss for my liking with the chanting "We'll be waaaaiting for the night to come" part. I like "Owner" though, but it's not my fave from the album. Big Generator doesn't go down too well with many it would seem, but I've always liked it, especially side two as I said.


Edited by january4mn - December 19 2014 at 05:42

Edited by jayem - December 16 2014 at 17:40

For the record, I think Herb Alpert was pretty awesome, although a mediocre trumpet player at best, he knew how to write a great tune!

Gerinski wrote: BTW does anyone know how the solo in Owner of a Lonely Heart was played? is it Rabin's guitar synthesized? or Kaye's synth sounding guitar-like? or both together? which effects could be used on a regular guitar multi-effects rig to try to approximate that sound?

It's definitely all Rabin-- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMFP-aN8rPs