YES - Tales from Topographic Oceans

^ I actually think Moraz was the best and that's coming from a massive ELP fan but TFTO as you said was not brought down by Wakeman in any way. It's okay to like other things and I believe Six Wives is a total masterpiece which is why I was irate at Mosh's comments about it being a 50 cent album and only worthy of the bargain bucket end of prog even though he may have been meant a bit tongue in cheek. Yeah move on if you prefer other things. Personally I prefer BSS, Six Wives and Air Cut from that same year but hey ho ''different folks different strokes''. No harm no foul. Wakeman moves on but there may already have been some bad blood between him and Howe at this time (personality clash?!). It doesn't feel like a band album where everyone is on the same page to me personally and I don't like that.

TFTO always stirs controversy, as a teenager I instantly liked both Fragile and CTTE... on the other hand TFTO took longer to digest, to understand... over time I ended up liking it, and for me (and I clarify that it is personal, and it may vary for each one) it is, along with Relayer, the last of the classic Yes where they were a group playing together with feeling and desire as if their life depended on it. Jon Anderson himself recognized that by the time they got together again in 1977 each one was in their own world, some with personal addictions, in an environment like Switzerland if I remember correctly, and obviously the conditions were not the same as in the early 70s.
Going back to 1973... I also remember reading that Eddie Offord had problems with alcohol and accidentally lost the tapes with the good recordings, leaving some of poorer quality, which would explain the lack of clarity compared to the previous records.

And getting into a purely musical analysis... I think it contains a lot of Yes' most experimental material of their career. It has stylistic points in common with their previous works, but also new, classical and oriental influences, the Hindu ragas and talas, both Anderson's personal search and Howe's, as well as the trio tandem of Squire, White and Wakeman. The four sides contain such a vast harmonic richness that multiple listens are needed to fully appreciate them all, and the number of ideas put into play exceeds any previous effort. Compositionally, it even seems to me to be a step forward compared to CTTE, since the bridges and connections between the parts of the long songs have a homogeneity that CTTE lacked, despite being as great an album as we all appreciate it to be.

It requires an effort in listening, yes, like all artistic productions of the 1970s, cinema, literature, the viewer/listener participated in the work through their interpretation. That makes that era so rich and valuable, so different from our days, doesn't it?
And regarding Rick Wakeman... I have mixed opinions, his entire discography leaves a lot to be desired, he's repeated himself to the point of nausea and has gotten lost countless times without even caring, and yet he's amazed me with his first two albums, because I think that's where The Six Wives of Henry Viii discovered gunpowder, when in Jane Seymour Bruford's drums join the organ I think it was something new. And the funk sensibility along with the romantic and Renaissance influences of Journey to the Center of the Earth I think are enough to earn him a well-deserved place, was Keith Emerson more versatile, touching from classical, rock and roll, jazz to more avant-garde terrain with his adaptations? We agree, but I think Rick Wakeman was honest in his search until No Earthly Connection, where, successfully or not, he tried changes with wind instruments and a certain medieval psychedelia, if I may use the term.

Keith Jarrett and Hermeto Pascoal, among others, have taught us that you can even improvise not only in jazz, but even in classical music!

There's only one art, right? And it can't be fully encompassed, in an encyclopedic endeavor... but we can try to remain as open as possible, challenging human nature itself, which tends toward the opposite as the years go by.

Proggle wrote: I came to it very recently (I’m a latecomer to 70s prog and never heard Yes in their own era). A friend and I have a deal that we alternate choosing an album each month that we then both have to listen to 5 times and discuss. He chose Tales.. recently. So I came to it without history, and liked it quite a bit. ...

Hi,

There is a physics axiom that applies here ... that we all love to forget, and think it is just hodgepodge meaningless words.

QUALITY IS INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL TO QUANTITY

And we had a huge wake up moment in the Advanced Acting class when it started. We came in Monday, and given an assignment due Wednesday at 1PM in the lab portion ... what we all did not know was that if you didn't make it through, you are not going to be a member of the Advanced Acting Class at all! AND, it wasn't a simple nothing ... it was more than 100 lines long and you were supposed to deliver it, and I think the point was ... you come to this class READY, or you are done, which is, we could say, how the business works for all actors ... you can't be a goof off ... you have to have at lest one or two strong redeeming abilities, and one of the best is the ability to learn and memorize quickly.

So here goes ... how to study for that long thing, and "make the class! We have an option!

1. Quiet place, no radio, no people, no interruptions. You will probably have it all down in three or four hours, and now you can work on the thoughts that the words bring to mind for you to act on. You will be ready on Wednesday, maybe the wording is not acted out right, but you have all the words down, and that's VERY valuable and important.

2. Noisy place, roommates, radio or tv on ... brother and sister being noisy outside ... and you try to memorize that thing ... You will NOT make it to the Wednesday deadline, you might get past 2/3 rds or 3/4ths of the whole thing but there is no continuity and quality that is going to save your effort.

Now transpose this to listening to music.

Which is more efficient for picking up all kinds of details and bits and pieces of the music? The one with the better attention. And you find/learn quickly that this is one of the great points in meditation and teaching yourself about concentration.

I have never, had to listen to something several times, and I think that it came from my younger days, when dad first got a record player for his classical music and (eventually) some 200+ operas from Italy to Russia, to heaven knows where! I didn't need to hear Renata Tebaldi and Birgit Nilsson duking it out in Turandot, to know that this was special and far out, and I can still hear it in my head 60 years later! You didn't need to even see Fantasia, to know that the Sorcerer's Apprentice was a silly kid story basically telling you to not do something you shouldn't ... like you know at 6 or 7 or 8 ... such BS! And then you hear Ravel's Bolero ... far out ... and then you get your brain scrambled ... and hear The Rite of the Spring or the Firebird Suite done by Bernstein. All it takes is one listen, and you are done for ... you don't need 3 or 4 listens. In fact, extra listens will only make things worse and more confusing as different parts grab your attention!

Now, the one thing in rock music that makes things tougher is the problem that opera has had for hundreds of years ... that we think the music is what the lyrics tells you, and the simple fact is ... that the idea is so illusory as to confuse you more than help you. However, that is not to say that there are no works out there where things fit really well and some composers are better than others in those moments. Thus, when listening to rock music and some of its folks, 50 years ago it was easy to listen to Ian and his stories. But when it came to "meaning" of what was being done, that's another story.

You and I can say that Ohio (Neil Young) was powerful and you don't need to hear it twice. You didn't need to hear It's a Beautiful Day sing White Bird again. You didn't need to hear Grace sing about the White Rabbit. And you didn't need to hear Jim say when the music is over turn out the lights ... you did it automatically for him ... and you knew right there and then, that is the power of poetry and words, and not everyone has that gift.

Now we can go to Jon Anderson. The ideas and concepts of TFTO are very adventurous, and for a rock fan, more than likely a problem ... the lyrics are not easy, and for you to be able to follow this set of lyrics and on to the next step, you have to step back and think ... and that is hard on a listener ... it's always best if one can flow with it, but if Jon had done that I think that one member would have left sooner so he could go have his curry! Sitting down and reading the lyrics to TFTO is also not exactly fun, and I wish that Jon had a better definition for it all, but I have a feeling that so much of it was improvised so fast that there was no chance to go back and clean up some parts of it, which many would suggest that Sides 2 and 3 really needed it ... though I don't think so, but a bit more clarity with the lyrics helping the music out, would have made it easier to live through for many riff minded rock fans. Instead, folks trash half of the whole thing and think it is all too much filler, and they will immediately say that it is no wonder that a curry was ordered! And how cool that was ... not realizing that it would fit well in a PDQ Bach composition, but not in a serious piece like TFTO ... so that made room for a lot of fans to trash the whole thing.

One last thing ... you can sit here and read mystic books, and none of them will speak to you in a way that you can relate to and understand ... some of that might be the translations, and the ideas based on very different cultures, but in general, the understanding is always a problem ... and folks think of the doors in one book guarded by a dragon as actually real problems that you do not have a good chance to get past! You just don't realize right then and there, that what is stopping you is your own lack of clarity and courage, and instead being afraid of taking that next step.

Rock fans, in general, you and I could say they don't care what anything is about, as long as the lyrics tells them ... which is exactly the opposite of what literature has been about for many years, and while it was not exactly meant to be "hidden", sometimes it ended up being marked up as different and difficult because it did not make it clear ... let's not even go to biblical texts that have the worst translations and images ever created, by making it all come off like a child's story ... and you and I too stupid to ask questions!

Now that you are even more confused ... let's see if you figured out the physics axiom and how it can apply to listening. You depth of perception and ability is the issue ... and how much of it do you want to apply?

The rest is not hard to decipher at all ... but how awake are you?


Edited by moshkito - July 11 2025 at 19:16