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Yes - Yes Acoustic: Guaranteed No Hiss CD (album) cover

YES ACOUSTIC: GUARANTEED NO HISS

Yes

 

Symphonic Prog

3.63 | 106 ratings

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Guillermo
Prog Reviewer
3 stars This video and "mini-concert", is, in my opinion, a "strange" thing in YES` discography and videography. Why they decided to do this kind of "unplugged concert" in a Film or TV production studio in Los Angeles, on Monday 26-January-2004, which looks like it was played before very few people, and was broadcasted to a few cinemas in several cities in the U.S? Maybe it only was an experiment, and a very informal experiment. I have to say that since this DVD was released I have seen it a lot of times being sold in record shops in my city, even at reduced prices, and i never have been really interested in buying it. It was until recently that I saw it in a "suggestion for watching it" list in youtube that I finally decided to watch it to write a review about it. Unfortunately, the "behind the scenes" extras from the DVD are not included in youtube, so I can`t include in my review commentaries about them. But reading in previous reviews that Rick Wakeman contributed funny things to those extras, I can think that it really could be funny and interesting to watch to them some day. Wakeman is a funny person as Jon Anderson has commented sometimes and as I have seen in some videos that I have watched in youtube on which he appears interviewing some other very famous Rock musicians for some TV and on line web video programmes (one interview done to his son Adam is very funny and you can also watch to it in youtube if you want). But I am going to write a review about the music in this DVD.

The "unplugged" albums and videos series was really a fad from mostly the nineties. So, in my opinion, with YES doing this kind of "unplugged concert " in the early years of this century really was a bit "strange", in my opinion. Anyway, they decided to do this kind of thing in a very relaxed way, The duration of the concert is really brief (nearly 38 minutes), and it starts with what Jon Anderson calls "a soundcheck" with them improvising a bit with a musical piece called "Tiger Rag", with particularly Wakeman and Alan White looking like having a lot of fun. Anderson looks in most parts of this video like "directing" the band, doing his job as "leader of the band" and "communicator" with the audience. Chris Squire looks a bit tired and maybe not as interested as the other members of the band in doing this "unplugged" thing. Alan White plays very well as always. Steve Howe looks a bit tired too, but playing very well too. But the most "inspired" musician in this mini-concert is Wakeman, playing very well the piano in all the songs, particularly playing and improvising very good piano parts in "South Side of the Sky" (with even Anderson and Squire praising his playing as "that was very beautiful" at the end of the song). "Show Me" and "Time is Time" are vey well played too. It is also interesting to watch to and to listen to some old songs played with different arrangements ("Long Distance Runaround", "South Side of the Sky", "Roundabout" and "I've Seen All Good People").

In conclusion: while this "unplugged" video is not very interesting for my taste, it has some very good musical things . It also shows that maybe this was the best line-up of the band, with every musician doing their jobs very well, showing a lot of experience from the years that they have played together and in their individual musical careers. They are very good musicians. But this "unplugged" experiment still looks for me as an "atypical" thing from them that they even did in their next tour in 2004 (their "35th Anniversary Tour"), but fortunately not as a whole concert. So, this video is more for the most dedicated fans of the "unplugged concert series ".

Guillermo | 3/5 |

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