Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Squire's driving bass solo in "NSDS" is one of my favourite Yes bass moments.

Fantastic album...perhaps the only reason I prefer Close To The Edge (and only slightly) is Bruford's drumming...not to take anything away from White. I saw the 'Topographic' tour, and it was absolutely stellar in every way, but the critics panned it and quite a few 'fans' walked out on shows around the country. Oh, well...

The band I was in at the time played the excerpted bass/drum solos from NSDS...a tremendous and equal amount of fun for the drummer and myself.

Yeah, I'm one of those people who adores "Tales From Topographic Oceans". I don't even know why. I just do. There just isn't anything about it that I don't like, yet I also like other albums that are completely different, so it's not like I only like sprawling, 20-minute compositions with obscure-yet-beautiful lyrics.

I understand why people didn't like "Topographic Oceans", because it's really, really dense, and not so forgiving. Yet I can't see how critics who loved "Close to the Edge" and "Fragile" hated it. Frankly, I think music critics are all morons anyway, so I don't listen to them to find what music I should listen to. But still . . . the whole prog-hating phenomenon that started in the mid- to late-70s was incredibly hypocritical. It still is.

The first two were my favorites (love PB), then the Yes Album. I seem to have liked them a little less with each release. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Yes fan, but the early stuff just appeals to me more.

If "Close to the Edge" was close to the edge, then "...Topograhic Oceans" was over the edge." It could be just because I'm an old guy. I was 19 when the first album came out -- it ROCKED -- it blew me away.

Yeah...there's only so much time available, and everyone needs to reserve their hate for when it really counts...

I heard Jello Biafra the other night on a PBS documentary on 'protest songs' (hosted by Chuck D)... Jello was going off on being in high school in the early seventies, when it seemed to him that the music industry belonged to stuff like, as he put it, "Yes and the Electric Light Orchestra"...

I really like listening to some of what's classified as 'Prog'. As with 'Science Fiction', about 10% of it's cool; the rest is self-indulgent goof-ball garbage. The emergence of Punk as a natural social response to over-priced tickets to watch millionaires spin nine-foot Steinways in a circle thirty feet above the stage while playing like Franz Liszt on Peruvian Flake was inevitable...

I must be getting old I had to google Peruvian Flake. I had no idea what it was.

Thanks Dane you have expanded my knowledge once again. I am not sure how useful it will be, but just the same I learned something today.

Sorry...I had to go back and fix my misspelling of Franz Liszt's name...if there is a 'Frank' Liszt, I'm picturing him a plumber in Brooklyn...it wouldn't be any prettier a picture combined with Peruvian Flake.

Gee, how come the Forum spellchecker didn't catch that?

I'd much rather see a psychotic, self-indulgent display by ultra-talented musicians than a punk band screaming and playing simplistic junk. If prog is 90% "goof-ball garbage", I would venture that punk is 99% goof-ball garbage. There are so few punk bands that make good music, it's not even funny. For every good prog band, there are maybe six or seven bad ones. For every good punk band, there are hundreds of terrible ones. This might be a function of punk being a hell of a lot more popular than prog.

As much as I agree with punks' usual political protesting, I dislike very much their protest against music. The idea that a band sucks the moment it signs a major-label contract, or that complexity and technique are equivalent to pretentious trash, or that lyrics should be straightforward are just not things I can agree with ever. Prog isn't about being as grandiose as possible, though sometimes it sure seems like it, but punk actually IS about screaming mindlessly and energetically at things you don't like. Or at least, that's what it is now. I wasn't around when punk started (I was born in 1987) so I don't know if that's what it was originally meant to be. I, for one, would only have protested against arena rock, which is basically the living caricature that punk made prog out to be; arena rock is what happens when you take prog and remove everything about it that makes it worth listening to.

In your opinion.

Yes, in my opinion. Which happens to be very important to me.

I'm sorry. I'm sure my statements came off as very abrasive. I'm just very opinionated about music, and I tend to get shouted down when I voice my opinions. I guess I was going on the defensive against an attack that wasn't coming.

Basically, what it boils down to is the 90% rule. 90% of everything is junk. I happen to like the top 10% of both prog and punk. How about prog-punk? Some bands that might fit that genre: Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Camper Van Beethoven, the Minutemen (although you might consider them jazz punk).

There ya go, Ted...I'm with you. But we're not about to shout you down, Bobcat...I'm also in agreement with you that Punk, a 'populist' art movement that started out to combat Prog's hubris, quickly turned into a way to call yourself a musician (and help yourself to the millionaire lifestyle) without actually having to acquire musical skills...definitely the opposite of 'progress'.

If I think about the 'Prog-Punk' genre, bands like The Talking Heads, The Suburbs, and Martha and The Muffins come to mind...The more obscure 'Punk-Prog' category might include bands like The Art Bears, Thinking Plague, Hail, and Public Image, Ltd...Ultimately, musical categorizations don't really serve anyone well except the guys who stock the shelves at K-Mart et al...

You gotta admit it's just political inevitability: too much psychotic self-indulgence on the part of the 'haves' leads directly to screaming and simplism on the part of the have-not 'masses', or humanity, as I like to refer to them. Remember that a lot of these prog bands, much as I might respect and enjoy their work, were rich kids to begin with. Genesis was a great band (once upon a time), but they all met at an exclusive private boys' school in London. I didn't get to mess with no mellotrons when I was in high school. By the time guys like Patrick Moraz who were born zillionaires started entering the prog scene, it began to look strictly like a rich kids game...globally and locally, just trying to keep up with the 'gear wars' was exhausting and nearly impossible for us regular folks. This is, I think, what Jello Biafra was getting at, in addition to whatever his aesthetic arguments might be.

Yeah..... what he said!! Getting back to Yes, certainly 'Close To The Edge' and 'Topgraphic Oceans' were/are my favourites, but 'Tormato' was junk!!! (in my opinion)

I have the album and it's been played once! (I bought it on spec, thinking it would be good).

Howard - I agree !! How they could follow Going for the One (superb IMO - listen to Parallels) with Tormato is beyond me!