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Jon Anderson - Watching The Flags That Fly CD (album) cover

WATCHING THE FLAGS THAT FLY

Jon Anderson

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Guillermo
PROG REVIEWER
3 stars This is an official release from a collection of demos that Jon Anderson recorded after ABWH finished their tour in 1990, with the original aim that these songs could be recorded for the second ABWH album. But, as Anderson himself explains in the liner notes, the other members of the band were really not involved in the songwriting and in the recording of these demos as they were elsewhere working on other things. So, Anderson anyway started working in these demos with the help from other people (including some roadies). Most of these demos have been previously released in some bootlegs, but it is a good opportunity to listen to them in this official release by Anderson. "Take the Mountain to the Water" was the only song from these demos to be later re-recorded for the second ABWH album (which apparently was going to be titled as "Dialogue"), but as history shows, the second ABWH became part of the "Union" album from Yes in 1991 when Anderson and Chris Squire decided to join both bands (ABWH and Yes) in that album which really wasn`t as good as many people could expect. The version in demo form from this song is different in arrangements to the version which was released in "Union". But in a similar form as these demos were done, the songs which appear on "Union" under the ABWH band name were really recorded by Anderson with the help from a lot of session musicians like Jimmy Haun and Tony Levin and others, as the liner notes of that album show. And as long as I know, the only other song which was later re-recorded and released for an official release was "Is It Love?" which was recorded by Anderson for Jon and Vangelis` first version of their album ttled "Page of Life" (1991), apparently without Vangelis involvement, essentially being an Anderson`s solo recording. All these demos are very well recorded and mixed, but they really sound as demos, being not very polished and without more elaborate arrangements, with a very basic instrumentation using keyboards, vocals and drum machine plus some guitars in some songs. Some of them still sound in style like being recorded in the eighties, and most of them are ballads in style. In general the songs are good and this album is a good release by Anderson.
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Posted Sunday, October 6, 2013 | Review Permalink

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