Yes – Beyond + Before aired July-25-2015 on CiTR.FM.101.9. An overlong and yet rather incomplete three part special dedicated entirely to the band known as Yes. Because founding member and bass master Chris Squire died last month, and respect is due.  Also, July 25th marked the forty-sixth anniversary of the release of Yes’s first album.

Here it is in three Mixcloud streams:

Podcast available here.

PROGRAM NOTES:

Part 1 (To The Edge) starts with track one, side one of the album known simply as Yes, and then moves chronologically through the next five albums (including the 1973 triple live set Yessongs), a time of solid change.

Part Two (In Deep) starts at the edge of the Topographic Ocean, from which point the good ship Yes either hit a reef and sunk, or sustained to reveal the true meaning of pretty much everything, possibly both.

Whatever happened, the next album, 1974’s Relayer, was every bit as ambitious, yet more focused.  Even most of the lyrics at least half made sense.

It would be three years before Yes’s next album, Going For One, which was okay, but Yes’s true glory seemed to be mostly in the past by now.  Or perhaps decades into the future as a rather stunning 2013 performance of Going For the One’s Awaken indicates.

Part 3 (New Language) skips the 1980s entirely and half of the 1990s (a period in which Yes reinvented itself as a massively successful pop act, and then seemingly got bored with it all). But come 1995, something genuinely interesting was brewing again, and it would continue until comfortably into the new millennium.  Did they match their earlier glories here?  Probably not.  But they certainly weren’t guilty anymore of not trying.

TRACKLISTS:

Part 1 – To The Edge

Beyond + Before – Yes (1969)
Astral Traveler – Time and a Word (1970)
Yours is no Disgrace [expanded] – Yes album + Yessongs (1971-73)
We have Heaven – Fragile (1971)
South Side of the Sky – Fragile (1971)
And You And I [expanded] – Close to the Edge + Yessongs (1972-73)

Part 2 – In Deep

Fragments of Topographic Oceans – Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973)
[most of] The Gates of Delirium [expanded] – Relayer (1974)
Awaken – Jon Anderson + Todmobile (live in Iceland, 2013)

Part 3 – New Language

Mind Drive [excerpt-1] – Keys to Ascension 2 (1996)
Can I + Face to Face – The Ladder (1999)
Brother of Mine [fragment] – Anderson Bruford Wakeman + Howe (1989)
Homecoming [excerpt] – The Ladder (1999)
New Language – The Ladder (1999)
That, that it is [edit] – Keys to Ascension 1 (1995)
Mind Drive [excerpt-2] – Keys to Ascension 2 (1996)
Footprints [excerpts] – Keys to Ascension 2 (1996)
Mind Drive [excerpt-3] – Keys to Ascension 2 (1996)
Dreamtime – Magnification (2001)
In the Presence of – Magnification (2001)
Children of Light [part-2] – Keys to Ascension 2 (1996)

BONUS VIDS: