Yes In The Present - Detroit, MI, USA 26.11.08

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I was in attendance tonight at the Yes In The Present concert at the Fillmore Theater in downtown Detroit.

Following is the setlist:

I. Firebird Suite
II. Siberian Khatru
III. I've Seen All Good People
IV. Tempus Fugit
V. Onward 
VI. Astral Traveler*
VII. Steve Solo-Cat Napping**
VIII. Astral Traveler restarted W/Alan White drum solo
IX. And You And I
X. Close to the Edge
XI. Steve solo-1st half ? / 2nd Half - Mood For A Day
XII. Long Distance Runaround
XIII. The Fish
XIV. Aliens are Only Us From the Future
XV. Machine Messiah
XVI. Soon
XVII. Starship Trooper
XVIII. Owner of a Lonley Heart (First Encore)
XIV. Roundabout (Second Encore)

* Oliver's Keyboards went out for some reason about two minutes into the song.
** Steve played some stuff while Oliver got his stuff sorted out. 

After much internal debate, I decided today to go ahead and attend the concert tonight.  I was curious to see how they would sound without Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson.  I really enjoyed the show and I am very glad that I attended.  Benoit David did a commendable job singing in place of Jon Anderson.  At times I forgot that Jon wasn't there when my eyes were closed as I felt the music pulse throughout my body.  Oliver did a great job playing the keyboards, in spite of a malfunction during Astral Traveller in which they lost power to the keys.  Missing from the show was a Rick Wakeman keyboard solo and thus the wives of Henry VIII.    

I bought my ticket at the door when I got to the show and I lucked out that they had a single ticket available in the 8th row, center stage.  I have probably seen Yes at least 10 times in my life, and this was definitely the closest that I have gotten to the stage.  OMG, it was so amazing being that close to these guys that you could see their facial expressions, and watch them play their guitars up close and personal.  And of course every time that they looked in to the crowd it felt like they were looking directly at me.  

Fans of Close to the Edge will be thrilled with this setlist since they played all 3 songs from here.  Fans of TOTO and Relayer will probably be quite disappointed, as they played nothing from TOTO, and only the Soon portion of Gates of Delirium from Relayer.  Owner of a Lonely Heart was the only song that they played from post-Drama so that should make most later period Yes haters happy.  They did play Machine Messiah and Tempus Fugit from Drama, which in all likelihood are songs that they would never perform with Jon.  Also, Benoit David said that he requested that they play Onward from Tormato, which is probably another song that they rarely play, although it probably doesn't have all that much appeal to prog fans.  

They also played a song called Aliens are Only Us From The Future, which apparently is a demo song that is slated to appear on an upcoming Chris Squire solo album.  This song was fairly decent.  It featured Chris singing and playing bass, and Oliver playing keys.  Benoit David sang backup.  I'm pretty certain that Alan White did play drums on this one; Steve Howe sat this one out.  It was a decent enough song; the lyrics were both strange and funny, as you might imagine from the song title.

All and all, I thought that it was a spectacular night and a spectacular show.  It was so great to see the guys playing again, and although I did miss seeing Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman, I felt that their replacements performed admirably, and thus the music was very enjoyable to listen to.  The crowd seemed to really enjoy it too.

Edited by rushfan4 - November 27 2008 at 08:03