Yesterday's Yes Today

Some initial thoughts about the Yes show I saw two days ago with Henry Warwick, a fount of knowledge and well connected fellow.

-Steve Howe was shredding his guitars. Far more than on recent live albums.

-There was a genuinely massive turnout.

-The guy two rows in front of me to the left looked like Philip Larkin. That would have been weird on acid.

-Roger Dean et al. had produced a beautiful series of projections. They underscored the cosmic Shelleyan quality of Yes. I had not quite reckoned on “Starship Trooper,” for instance, being quite so explicitly space-journey-like, despite its title, bamboozled as I had been by Anderson's strange, pastoral lyrics (“Speak to me of summer...”).

-“Tempus Fugit” is a great opener.

-The surrealist montage of Anderson's lyrics is one element that keeps this band totally fresh.

-Geoff Downes is a very nice guy and a very good keyboard player, beautifully complementary with the others in the band.

-The Yes Album is a goldmine of live-worthy material.

-OMG I saw Yes at the Shoreline Amphitheatre!