RAMSHACKLED

After the release of the Relayer album, the members of Yes decided to all release solo albums. Jon Anderson released his Olias of Sunhillow, Steve Howe his Beginnings, Chris Squire his Fish Out Of Water, Patrick Moraz his The Story Of I and Alan White released this. While none of these solo albums are similar to the style of Yes music, Ramshackled is definitely the least Yes-like of them all. This is a laid-back, very funky, jazzy and soulful album! Ironically this White album has a very black sound!

This is not poorly performed or badly recorded; Alan enlisted a number of talented musicians and helpers here. However, this is just not my cup of tea at all. Also, the role of Alan himself is very dubious. He played drums for sure, but everything else, including all the writing as far as I understand, was handed over to other people. This is an Alan White album in name only.

All this make this album into a typical example of an album that is for completionists only - people, like myself, who wants to have everything Yes related just because it is Yes related and for no other reason. But this album stretches the boundaries even of how far even I am willing to go for Yes related stuff.

Alan was smart to enlist Steve Howe and Jon Anderson to perform on one track making the album more interesting for Yes fans. But even with this song included it is not enough to make this album really interesting for more than one listen. All five 1975-76 solo albums by the Yes members took fans far away from Yes in many diverse and interesting directions, but this album simply took us too far away!

This is perhaps not a poor album, but the Prog quotient is very poor indeed. And the relevance of this album to Yes is almost none. Therefore, one star only.

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