Celebrate 40 Years of Yes-Going for the One

Sorry to jump the gun a few months before the July 2017 official 40th anniversary of this great album. But who else out there loves Yes-GFTO as much as I do? This album first came out as I graduated high school in the US, and I do believe I wore out the vinyl on the turntable - and the magnetic tape on the cassette-player - playing this album over and over - and over again! Such a great tour de force at that time with Rick Wakeman coming back to the band. All these years later, I boot up the mp3 files on my computer media-player (gone are the vinyl records, the cassette tapes, and the audio CDs) and re-live the original magic of those five great songs!

Good one but I surely won't celebrate.

The tour was the first time I saw Yes as a 15 year old (Stafford Bingley Halls, Nov. 77)!  I loved it.  Still remember the excitement of the first few chords of Parallels - I think they played the whole album, closing with the magnificent Awaken.  I was glad to see them at the height of their powers (the next time I saw them was the 90125 tour...)

mechanicalflattery wrote: I suppose there's an irony to celebrating the album where Yes ceased to be worth celebrating...  That entire album is basically the group running on autopilot

"Oh, that's a bunch of bull!"
                                                                                                                                                    -Tommy Lasorda

mechanicalflattery wrote: That entire album is basically the group running on autopilot

I find the album OK. Mostly I love "Turn of the Century" and "Awaken", while I can do without the rest fine. Actually, I find the title song rather annoying, and "Wondrous Stories" just bland and unexciting. However, "Turn of the Century" is really beautiful, and it's been growing on me since I heard it first. "Awaken" is among my very favourite songs from the band, though I usually hear the live version from Keys to Ascension, which I find to be the perfect version... or almost so. I just heard the original again a while ago, and I do enjoy the church organ very much, and it is missed on the live version, and the vocals do sound somewhat better... plus, Howe sounds kind of slower on the live version. But the extra minutes on the middle section are very nice live (though I could do without them in order to have the real organ there)... still, the one thing that still has me prefering the live version is the piano intro, which was vastly improved by the time it was played on Keys to Ascension.

Any album with Turn Of The Century and Awaken is okay in my book.

I love the album

I'm having a party right now.

My second favourite Yes, after CTTE and just before Fragile.

The title track, I can take or leave but the rest is fantastic. Awaken is, to my mind, the best piece of music they ever recorded.

It really seems to polarise opinion. It's a far superior album to Tormato, which, in parts is unlistenable for me.