Yessongs

This video is the best live performance I have seen of Yes. It captures these guys in their youth full of fire, passion and technical prowess unseen in rock bands during this time. This video was a no-brainer to make given the talent. It is unfortunate that the camera crew and later the film editors did not have an understanding of the music they were working with prior to the editing of this film.Some of the finest guitar work performed live in our time was left on the editing floor in favor of head shots and rambling artistic scenes. With that said this is a must see!!! I've often wondered if the members of Yes were just too busy to review this film prior to its release or signed a contract excluding them from making changes to the final version. I would love to get my hands on all of the original footage from all of the camera's used and recreate this film. Anybody else out there had the same idea? Got any leads as to were the footage is and who owns it? The blistering solo on "Yours Is No Disgrace" would not be missed! Enjoy, GM

Despite it's rather brief running time (only about 72 minutes),this film will delight Yes fans (especially the ones that were subjected to their lesser material from 1980,onwards). This rock & roll concert film (or rock doc,as they are now being called) was filmed on their 1972, 'Close To The Edge' tour, before Rick Wakeman decided to step down from the band (and would be replaced by Swiss keyboard wizard,Patrick Moraz),and just as Alan White (ex Plastic Ono Band drummer)joined. The band snorts fire through several of their more familiar anthems (including one of the best versions of 'Close to the edge' I've ever seen/heard). I'm told that it was originally presented in four track stereophonic sound (I was not so lucky to have seen it in it's original release---I first saw it on the USA Network's 'Night Flight' program back in the early 1980's). Perhaps if there is any extra footage from that concert,maybe one day it will be made available on a DVD/Blue Ray extended version. Not rated by the MPAA, but contains nothing to offend.

Yessongs has to be one of the best live concerts i've seen on screen. Yes has to be one of the best progressive rock bands around. Their music has touched my heart, and these live performaces are just spectacular. Here we have the Alan White on drums, replacing Bill Brufored during the Close to the Edge tour, Rick Wakeman on keyboards, with his amazing solo of 'Excerpts from Wives of Henry..', Chris Squire on bass, Steve Howe, performing 'The Clap' furiously, and Jon Anderson on vocals, who never fails to prove that he has one of the most unique voices in the business. The best songs here, are 'And You And I', 'Yours Is No Disgrace', and 'Close to the Edge'. The only thing about 'Close to the Edge' is that during the song, images of organisms and living cells and what not are shown, and it gets annoying especially during the awesome parts in the song. Also, songs like 'Siberian Khatru', and 'Roundabout', which was found on the CD, isn't found on this film. Either way, the concert is awesome. Yessongs was also hard to find awhile ago, which was out of print for a time. But recently, Yessongs was rereleased on DVD. All Yes fans must see this film.

When the Goddess was in motion upon the face of the Earth, the young men who vowed to serve her Divine Will as Agents of Consciousness were blessed by her and elevated to Wizards. And then she let loose upon them the Muse; she came into the flesh incarnated as Music. She encarnalized as both a means and a service; a source of inSpiration; a fruit of love's labour and as a thoroughly transformative experience.

They generated music woven by the Elements, cast it into Liberating Spells that permeated through both the established social order and the underground: the musical landscapes they painted, the holographic aural artifacts they gave birth to were at once alive; holistic and ultra-specific; combined the familiar with the utterly alien; blended Emotion, Motion and the Logos. These acted upon us as the universal harmonic keys whose indispensable value transported us en masse during Mass to other dimensions of existence where we repeatedly find ourselves again reborn as Cosmic Beings, as members of La Raza Cosmica, the homeward bound orphaned children of our Sacred Lady of Space and the Mother of All Matter who touched down at Guadalupe and whose perpetuity fills the illusory emptiness between quanta, planets and microseconds, generates Gravity, and whose Divine Love is the medium of both electromagnetic and four-dimensional transtemporal Light.

"Then", they said, "Then according to the man who showed his outstretched arm to space, He turned around and pointed, revealing all the human race. I shook my head and smiled a whisper, knowing all about the place. On the hill we viewed the silence of the valley, Called to witness cycles only of the past. And we reach all this with movements in between the said remark.

Close to the edge, down by the river. Down at the end, round by the corner. Seasons will pass you by, Now that it's all over and done, Called to the seed, right to the sun. Now that you find, now that you're whole. Seasons will pass you by, I get up, I get down. I get up, I get down. I get up, I get down. I get up."

At 72m it's too short but in these days if a concert was filmed it was for cinema release of via a TV company. This is the former.

largely shot in close up and with no stageshow to speak of this lives on the performances - The current DVD (Odeon) has it in 5.1 but as I don't have that I flicked between original and 5.1 - both sound the same to me which takes away from the overall impact.

It's Yes at their finest - and how you read that will colour your view of the film - They are one of those bands you either get or don't.

The DVD has several extras which add value but if your a prog fan you need this in your collection - If not avoid.