ROUNDABOUT: THE BEST OF YES - LIVE

A year before this, Yes fooled his fan database in releasing the album "Extended Versions" which was a compilation of their marvelous "Keys To Ascension I". They do the same here again with this "Best Of Live". One could think that this is a patchwork of their best tracks out of their best concerts, right ? Well, it is actually a downsized version of "House Of Yes". They cut off the three very short tracks ("Time & A Word"and "Ritual", which were excerpts which is not a bad idea.

All the songs (five) from "The Ladder" are also skipped. This leads to a CD clocking at 60 minutes of indeed very good live tracks. From 1997 till now (January 2007) Yes has delivered a total of thirty eight products (let's call it that way) or so.. Compilations, live albums and DVD's all together. To be honest, I reckon that at least half of it is very good material. Their management (or their record company, or themselves) are very clever : they know there will always be a YesMarket amongst the hords of YesFans (like I am) to buy these products. After all, I guess that the average life time of a classic Yes fan is close to fifty years of age (I base myself on the three live concerts of Yes I have been attending to between 1999 and 2003 during which I noticed this fact). So, these people have some money to spend, no ? Having said this, these live tracks are very good. I have rated "House Of Yes" as a four star album. So, musically, I will also rate this one four stars (but their commercial approach is quite disgusting).

Yes - Roundabout: The Best of Yes Live

I have never been too bothered about checking Yes out before, even though they were one of the most prominent prog rock artists of the 70s. It was mainly down to a major dislike of Anderson's vocals for what I heard of the music sounded quite good, even excellent on occasions! Still, however, I never decided upon buying anything from Yes' backcatalogue.

That was. until I came across this low budget live compilation. Seeing that no harm could be done I decided to give it a try and quite remarkably I found myself enjoying quite a bit of this live disc! I still cannot stand I've seen all good People and Roundabout is slowly becoming rather more tedious by the listen, but songs such as And you and I or most noticeably Awaken are just great! They showed a side of Yes that I hadn't noticed before! I think more highly of Anderson's live vocals than the way he sounds on the studio recordings, he seems to have more volume when he's singing live; definitely a pros!

Apparently these songs here are taken from a previously released live disc so I can imagine that the true fan already had the original recording, which makes this one a bit pointless, still it did manage to bring me a bit closer to Yes' music!

House of opportunism

"Roundabout" is nothing more than a condensed re-packaging of the 2001 album "Live from the House of Blues". While that album included tracks from the then current album "The ladder", these are unceremoniously dumped in order to fit the tracks onto a single disc. This effectively leaves seven classic Yes numbers, all of which have featured in the band's live set over many years and appeared on other live albums.

The ommision of the more recent songs will be considered by many to be no great loss, although "Homeworld" is a fine piece in the best traditions of the band. The performances here are of course superb, but one cannot help but feel that this is nothing more than blatant opportunism.

There is nothing obvious in the packaging to indicate that these renditions are already available and are in no way rare. The selection of just "classic tracks" (although some such as "Close to the edge" were not included in the gig) makes for a track listing which will catch the eye of any Yes fan.

If you do not have the "House of blues" album, this is a cheap way of obtaining the old songs included on it. If you do have it, there is nothing for you here. By the way, in a real stroke of irony, the title track is faded before it concludes, and not for reasons of space!

I don`t have this CD, but I have the "House of YES-Live from House of Blues" double-CD package, from which all these tracks were taken. I can say that it is a good compilation. They really selected very good songs to be included in one CD. But it is a bit strange to only release songs from the past and no songs from the album they were promoting in the tour:"The Ladder". I think that at least they should have included "It Will Be a Good Day (The River)", which in my opinion it is the best from that album and one of the best fom the "House of Blues" album. But now it seems that there are a lot of YES`compilations, and several re-packagings of previously released material, like the 1969-70 BBC recordings which were also relased under different titles, different covers and in just one CD packages. As the title of this CD says, the songs are very representative from the best and most popular songs from YES`musical catalogue, so this compilation is good anyway, despite this line-up of YES is more forgotten now since the return of Rick Wakeman to the line-up in 2002. But if you want the more complete recording of this concert I think that it is better to chose the "House of YES" double-CD package or even the DVD of the same title. This compilation is more for the collectors or casual listeners.