Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I have said this before elsewhere in these forums - a guitar which is used gets these kinds of 'character lines'. Kind of cool especially if you were the person helping them be formed. I still think it is wild a left handed bass strung right and played left.

Speaking of character lines, our guitar tech just sent me this photo he took of my mic at a gig. The night before, we'd played a show where a severly drunken woman dancing down front had tripped and fallen, knocking my mic into my face, busting my lip. The mic still has some dried blood on it.

Visions of Brian Crisman!

I think many of Squire's lines are derived, as has been noted, by an often thoughtful approach and alot of blood sweat and tears. Bruford summed it up pretty good in the Dan Hedges book when talking about the CTTE sessions. Something to the effect of: "I'd go to sleep on the studio couch for a few hours, and when I woke up, Squire would be doing the same thing as before to my ears. He might've altered the tone half a gnat's, or strung two notes together. It took forever, but it sounded so good in the end."

I *highly* recommend - for pre-Yes Squire - Peter Banks' "Can I Play You Something?". A particular highlight for me is an unreleased demo (until now, I suppose!) called Get Yourself Together with Squire taking the lead vocal. I love the line (with heavy Brit accent) "engine drivers take their chawnces".

IIRC, Gates is actually the *only* Yes tune I've sat down and learned all the way through - considering I'm a big fan, I don't know why that is! The reason? I was awaiting delivery of my CS, and I thought it would be a good idea to christen it properly. It took my a long time to get it, but that was okay, as the CS took longer. Played it on the Rick a few times and never really had the opportunity to do it anymore. My girlfriend at the time heard it probably more times than she needed while I was waiting for the bass to arrive though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEYgxbusbIw

Does ANYONE know how I can get this video?

Awesome, what else can I say......

DAMMIT Chris, if you are reading ANY of this, I sure wish you would join this forum!!!!

Buy the DVD - Yes Symphonic. That is what the youtube says it's from.

Chris I'm impressed. I did learn parts of the Gates and we tried to play them with the goal of the whole thing. Man getting every thing to happen there is tough.

Cool,

Thanks Tom, I missed that!

Ebay, here I come!

Great thread. A few comments...

"South Side of the Sky" - Funny that this should come up. I hadn't heard this in years until I bought the Live at Tsongas DVD last year. Great to hear it again. Last week, I took the family to Florida on vacation (Sanibel Island). We were out GeoCaching (does anybody here do that...it's awesome!) and all of the sudden I had South Side of the Sky in my head. No reason why, but it was stuck there the rest of the trip and it was great!

Remixed "Tales" - Mark, I emailed you about this. I'm very interested in your version! Like Director's Cuts of DVD movies, wouldn't it be great if Yes went back and remixed this album to a CD length, the way they wanted to from the start? I'm sure they'd just end up arguing and scrapping the whole thing

"Yesshows" - I too have always loved this live album, especially Ritual. It was split in the middle on the album version, and I remember working hard as a kid to make a cassette that merged the two parts perfectly. The CD has it all together, which is great. Chris is awesome on this version of Ritual. He was also trying hard on the version of Ritual on the Tsongas DVD, but he was right on for the Yesshows version. Not that the time and aging between versions made any difference. Kind of like Howe's guitar solo in "Yours is no Disgrace" on Yessongs. It blows away the version in the Yessongs movie.

Greg - got your email.

That's too funny about your cassette splicing of the Yesshows version of 'Ritual.' I did the same thing way back in the day!

Also, funny you mention 'SSOTS' - I took my "digital knife" to that one, too. I'll include it with the edited 'Tales...' versions. I also trimmed down 'And You And I' to see what a 'radio friendly' version might sound like. I got it down to 6:34 - not exactly standard FM format, but about as short as I could get it without completely stripping it of it's soul. Next on the chopping block: 'Soundchaser.' And, oh yes... there will be blood.

Thanks Mark!

I guess I don't understand the slicing up of the Yes tunes... they sounded fine to me in their original versions, especially SSOTS with the middle section that is all Chris Squire(arrangement wise)... I wish it were longer! I never did care for FM radio cut up versions of songs.

I often wonder, however, why they did not work out a 40-50 minute version of TFTO to perform live, one that hits evenly on all four sides and that they can all live with. Then sides 2 & 3 wouldn't be as forgotten as they are now. While on the subject, c'mon, Jon & Rick, get over it and do something from Drama, as well as The Ladder, both great records!

Editing a tune to me is no different than a cover band doing a version of the tune. A different way of looking at it. As long as no one is trying to pass it off as a "Yes version" of the tune to me not a big deal. Yes does a tune different live that it has on the Records/CDs(Your's is no Disgrace comes to mind). Sometimes a producers will tell artists that way a tune is supposed sound and later you hear the way the artist intended it to be. To me this is just another way of expressing an idea. Don't get me wrong I love Tales - The Revealing Science of God struck a chord in me as nothing has done before or since. I just think it is interesting to see how others view these works with their own versions.

I think it's great, I just wish I could edit them longer! It's cool to look at "Yours is no disgrace" and see how the live jam has evolved over the years. (I think the Yessongs LP version is best). I saw all of "Tales" performed live in 1974, I was 13 and still wanted more... So what do you think of all these demo / unfinished versions of songs that are popping up seemingly out of nowhere? As a sound engineer and guitarist /bassist, I love hearing early rough mixes. Sometimes it helps you get a difficult part, other times the part or arrangement is completely different. You can hear a lot of alternate Yes tracks on Rhapsody online, I believe the same tracks are on the Rhino releases.

In concert this year, Rick Wakeman said that when moving last year, he found a box that contained complete outtakes from the CTTE sessions... perhaps the "lost" section (after organ solo & before obvious splice) will be finally found and released. Very interesting!

And though I've taken it upon myself to rearrange the afore mentioned Yes tunes to suit my ear, I offer the disclaimer that I'm in no way implying that my versions are better or more correct than the original versions. And actually, I like the middle section of 'SSOTS' - I just moved it to a different place on the Fragile album so it plays as it's own song.

Thanks Mark!

I appreciate it!!!