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Personally I find it very hard to be objective about bands and specific albums that I like. I accept that a widely held objective view of Tales from Topographic Oceans is that it's overblown nonsense, but to me it is glorious. Jon Anderson's lyrics have nearly always been (and especially during the 70s) hard to pin down. Very few of his lyrics build any narrative and to me it has always been the sound of the vocal tied to the lyrical (word-salad) flow that was key. To criticise TFTO for being lyrical nonsense is fine, but the same can really be applied to pretty much anything great Yes did in the 70s. Some tracks work better than others lyrically, but the pleasure I've taken in the band has been prompted by the overall sound. TFTO provides beautiful melodies, harmonies, and aural excitement, emotion, power and fragility in spades. And although for some it might be too long (you're not first person I know to have made their own shortened versions of the album, Johnny – it seems to have been quite a popular exercise for some Yes fans :lol: ), for me I wouldn't cut a moment of it. Each track has a distinct flavour and themes which works well given the subject matter. And while it's easy to dismiss the subject matter for its source in the questionable Autobiography of a Yogi, the specific inspiration is Hindu scripture (the sastras) as described in the footnote to which Anderson refers. In that regard I suppose it could fairly be called pseudo-esoteric, but the same could be applied to artists of all stripes that have been inspired by philosophies of the East – The Beatles, Herman Hesse, and more. Some of it, being more high-brow or having had a greater cultural influence will be considered profound, some of it will be considered a load of airy-fairy bollocks. But arguments could be made for both. I love TFTO, start to finish and don't care what the widely held (so-called) objective reviews say.
The Lamb, as Johnny says, is a different beast. But is it? We might be tempted to accept it more readily because it can be linked to the Western scientific delving into the mind, the subconsious, the surreal that has been given credence by Freud, Jung and the many more brilliant pshychoanalysts all the way up to Zizek and beyond. It sounds more serious because it has a link to scientific analysis. Fair enough. But religious philosophies have also been studied seriously for thousands of years even though the route to understanding has been different to that used by scientists and psychoanalysts. It has been an inner journey – certainly open to abuse and being promulgated in ways that are intended to bamboozle. Personally I love the Lamb probably as much as TFTO, but in this case, there is a narrative (that you don't find in TFTO) and that narrative is highly compelling. But they have a common ending, a common resolution. IT. Nous somme du soleil. Both give us a sense of having come out the end of a transformation, but the endpoint of that transformation is a place beyond space and time, beyond duality. The presence of both these albums and their endpoints, remarkably, make it clear that it is not the specific process we go through that gets us there, but that the point beyond duality was always there and merely has to be grasped.
Dear oh dear, what a load of guff! Ha ha. Anyway. I think Dark Side of the Moon, with it's exploration of the human condition offers a similar conclusion in Eclipse.
As for Motorpsycho's contributions to the world of concept albums, I'm going to have to go for a long walk in the woods to meditate on it. :wink:
@ suntripper. Nice of you to mention Alan White here. I first saw Alan play with Yes in 1977 and have seen him with them a couple of dozen times more since then. As much as I preferred Bill Bruford's style, Alan was a truly great drummer who made those early Yes songs his own and thereafter really put his own stamp on the band's sound on Tales, Relayer, GFTO and everything since. Not a lot of people know that before Yes he played with both John Lennon and George Harrison! Sadly, shortly before his death, his storage was raided and the kit he played when he was with Lennon was stolen. Apparently he was a really lovely man as well as a great drummer. RIP.
I haven't read it yet (I've only seen the headline and the first couple of lines) but there is a short article in the latest Prog magazine titled MOTORPSYCHO GO FOUR FOR FOUR!
Review copies are landing. I met a music acquaintance at a Magma concert last night who said he'd received one for his progressive rock website.
Personally I'd be more than happy to pay for official bootlegs (so to speak), if the band decided to start releasing them, either via a monthly subscription or on a recording-by-recording basis. But some kind of easily accessible database/archive of live recordings would be brilliant.
[POST EDITED as my first comment was already proven incorrect.]
@Blashyrkh – The only thing that bothers me a little is the inconsistency in song titles. Sometimes Uberwagner and The Pilgrim are listed as separate songs, sometimes as Uberpilgrim. Also there are several different variations for the Hell songs, including Victim of Rock, but not Hell 7. These are minor issues and the work required to standardise the titles might just not make it worth it to satisfy one or two nerds :wink: Given the amount of work you all have put into it, I can only praise and thank you for this brilliant resource/archive.
@ Blashyrkh – Thanks for sorting all this out. I also registered yesterday but have not yet received an email.
At the moment I am not listening to Lady May, which was not played at The Forum because apparently Bielefeld does not exist. As a consequence I am not in the throes of ecstasy, because it is not bloody amazing!
I'll play
Concerts visited: 13 (2017-2022)
Locations:
Gloria Cologne x 2; Islington O2 (London), Bürgerhaus Stollwerck (Cologne), Viktorie (Alkmaar), Roadburn Festival (Tilburg), Zakk (Düsseldorf), Union Scene (Drammen), 229 The Venue 2 (London), Flashback Records (London), Vera (Groningen), Het Depot (Leuven), Schlachthof (Bremen) all x 1
Different songs played: 67
Song played most often: The Tower (9)
Song anticipated most: 577
Specials (too many to mention :wink: ):
Un Chien d'Espace – Köln 2017
Lacuna/Sunrise – Leuven 2019
Seeing Kenneth Kapstad leave the venue after Elephant9 played and before Motorpsycho came on – Drammen 2018
Flashback Records acoustic show – 2019
@Juergen – thanks
