Love for Tales from Topographic Oceans

I like YES, Im a fan, but this album is (IMO) complete balderdash.

cstack3 wrote: ^Sounds good to me, Dennis!  You obviously have thought your response through, and I agree with your analysis!   When I saw Jon Anderson's recent "The Voice of Yes" show, he gave us a treat by performing generous excerpts from "The Revealing Science of God," accompanying himself on a lovely polyphonic synth!   Since I never saw the "Tales" tour (grrrrr, due to the oil embargo of that era!), I always enjoyed whenever the band would play some of it live.  However, I've only seen "Ritual" in concert, with Moraz as well as with Wakeman.  Here's Steve Howe playing "Ritual" on the "Relayer" tour, 14 August, 1976!

Steve Howe looks like such a beast in that picture.

dennismoore wrote:   Haha, you are the ONLY one here who thinks I think anything through, thanks Isn't that the Steve Howe picture you posted during our picture wars? You never saw Revealing Science live???  They played that in 1996 (I drove to SLO for that one) and they played in on the national tour in 1999 I think.  I saw that tour in upstate New York of all places....

cstack3 wrote: ^Sounds good to me, Dennis!  You obviously have thought your response through, and I agree with your analysis!   When I saw Jon Anderson's recent "The Voice of Yes" show, he gave us a treat by performing generous excerpts from "The Revealing Science of God," accompanying himself on a lovely polyphonic synth!   Since I never saw the "Tales" tour (grrrrr, due to the oil embargo of that era!), I always enjoyed whenever the band would play some of it live.  However, I've only seen "Ritual" in concert, with Moraz as well as with Wakeman.  Here's Steve Howe playing "Ritual" on the "Relayer" tour, 14 August, 1976!

Haha, you are the ONLY one here who thinks I think anything through, thanks

Isn't that the Steve Howe picture you posted during our picture wars?

You never saw Revealing Science live???  They played that in 1996 (I drove to SLO for that one) and they played in on the national tour in 1999 I think.  I saw that tour in upstate New York of all places....

cstack3 wrote: In many ways, my favorite Yes album.  However, I always find it instructional to seek out the thoughts of the band members on TFTO.  For example, we know Rick didn't think much of the project from the get-go. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1045969/Yes-original-Spinal-Tap-says-Rick-Wakeman-Seventies-prog-rock-supergroup.html#ixzz1Ss5rspNu Sayeth Rick:  "That was not my favourite Yes album and I said so at the time. Maturely, I renamed it Tales From Toby's Graphic Go-Kart." Perhaps Wakeman's lack of interest was a good thing, since the keyboards are not as dominating as on other Wakeman projects.  I believe TFTO was primarily a collaboration between Anderson and Howe, and the rest of the band more or less came along.   Squire plays fretless bass on "The Remembering," which gives it a very special vibe.  Listen for it, he rarely used that instrument to my knowledge.

Tales was the fist major challenge for the band and they failed it miserably(with Wakeman leaving)  The prior two smash albums, Fragile & CTTE were almost perfectly split among the contributors.  Siberian Khatru being a great example of ALL band members contributing, it was inevitable that one or another band member dominate on a future album and that was Tales.  Its right on the record that it was almost completely written by Jon & Steve in a hotel suite.   Squire didn't seem to mind and he wound up adding some great bass work to the album.  Rick's keys were actually some of the greatest orchestral work ever in prog.  Obviously Rick didn't dig that Jon & Steve ran the show.
Give and take I say, ride whoever has the hot hand, on a later ABW&H record Rick had a big part and the album was very weak, so artists can whine all they want but the music stands on its own.  Tales is probably a BiLLION times better than the one ABW&H record which was much more evenly done between band members....

P.S.  I am a HUGE Wakey fan , I have all his records & CDs so I am not anti-Wakeman at all....But Wakey should have hung in there like Squire and kept working with the band, I say...

What do ya think of that Chuckie???

It's at it's best - Nice warm room, get ready to be relaxed - and lie down (get the room ambiently lit)....Put the two Cd's into the player and set it going - and let the music flow over you - don't forget that it's not that much longer than the whirlwind by Transatlantic....

You're right. I must admit that there is a little something of the first movement of the first Mahler's symphony. A perfume, I would say, but nothing more.

moshkito wrote: I would like to suggest that too much of our opinions are colored by "pop music" and "top ten" ... with a mentality that has a tendency to lower its ability and expression to something that we can recognize and (supposedly) understand ... and that is bizarre! The history of music is all about changes ... and that includes instruments ... and here we are saying that it should not be done, and can not be done, or can not be enjoyed! In the studies of a lot of classical music there are a lot of long passages (check out Wagner!) that are to be "descriptive" of the scenery and the "story" ... and basically you are stating that this is not allowed in "progressive" music or that YES, specially abused the priviledge!

And that's your fallacy right there. Just because I don't like something, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done or isn't "allowed". Musicians are free to make whatever music they want to, just as I'm free to like or dislike any of it. I don't have anything against long, ambient, "descriptive" or whatever passages per se, but like with anything they have to have something that interests me. A lot of TFTO, whether it be the sung parts or the instrumental parts, doesn't have that. That doesn't mean I don't understand it, I think I understand it just fine. Unfortunately that doesn't guarantee I will enjoy it.

I like it. Third fave yes album after CTTE and GFTO.

The Revealing Science of God is arguably the best thing they ever composed. The rest of the work is pretty patchy in my opinion, but it's been a long time since I have listened to the whole thing as one work. I'll try and schedule that into my life soon...

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: Epignosis wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I'm just listening to it for the first time right now, and enjoying it quite a bit. I'm finished with it now.  The Ancient is incredible. After finally listening to that, I think I better understand what one of the members of Yes (can't remember who) meant when he said that Yes was like what Stravinsky would have done as a rock musician.  The album is at the avant-garde end of the symphonic spectrum, really.