Yessongs - 40th Anniversary Blu-ray

[GuitarGeek]

The Yessongs film is from the Rainbow. Most of the album was from the US, which has been covered by the Progeny box. This accounts for the differences between the film and the album.

Well, no not really. The differences between the film and the album are:

1. The album has two things that were recorded on the Fragile tour, those being Long Distance Runaround/The Fish and Perpetual Change.

2. They clearly didn't use the entire set from the Rainbow show in the film.

One wonders if the performance from the Fragile tour was actually recorded with the intent of doing a live album, or if that's just another thing where the pulled something off a radio broadcast (as per Genesis Live, which is derived entirely from recordings done for King Biscuit) or a soundboard tape or what happened there. I wonder if they wanted to put the entire Close To The Edge setlist on the live album, and realized it was too much for a double LP, but not enough a triple, so they stuck the Fragile era recordings in as filler, if you will.

What I'd like to know is how they came to choose the music that does appear in the film. It seems strange to have it start with Seen All Good People, rather than Siberian Khatru. And I always thought it was weirder that the film ends with just Wurm. I'd have wished for them to use the full Starship Trooper. There again, one wonders if there isn't a story there, like maybe the cameramen had to change reels after Yours Is No Disgrace or something, so they didn't get to film the first part of Starship Trooper.

[GuitarGeek]

I suspect that the audio tapes were previously used before the audio was recorded. Some of this is the Rainbow show, but there are definitely parts from other shows as well. I asked several people in the music biz back then why there weren't more video concerts. The most common reply is that some people would just watch the tape and not bother going to the concert. The record company exec from RCA said that they just don't sell well enough to justify the production costs unless it was a huge name like Elvis or the Beatles or the Stones.

Actually, there were a lot of "video concerts". Off the top of my head, there's:
The Grateful Dead Movie (also the last night at the Winterland, which was broadcast on KQED at the time)
Pictures At An Exhibition (also the Montreal Stadium show from the Works tour)
Yessongs
Genesis In Concert
Welcome To My Nightmare
Pink Floyd At Pompeii
Ladies And Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones
Let's Spend The Night Together
Electric Light Orchestra Live At Wembley

There were (and still are) lots of TV shows that featured live music, like Beat Club, Old Grey Whistle Test, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, ABC's In Concert, Midnight Special, Soundstage, and Austin City Limits. HBO and Showtime used to regularly show concerts (the first HBO concert, actually, was Kiss at the Budokan in 77, and the Grateful Dead did a concert in 1980 for Showtime).

Now, I do agree, there was probably a lot of trouble getting people to put up money and invest in doing concert films for some bands. Concerts only got filmed or videoed for specific projects, eg the BBC was going to show one of your shows, or you make a concert movie.

A lot of footage that exists, actually, of concerts from the mid 70's onwards, are actually video screen feeds, which tend to be just two or three cameras, with soundboard audio (better than audience, but not as good as a properly mixed multi-track) and limited camera angles (typically focusing on tight closeups of the performers).

And if the band felt their live show didn't translate to film well (reputedly Pink Floyd never shot any of their mid 70's shows because they felt the low light levels onstage would mean the film would come out poor looking...supposedly that's why the footage of the London 81 Wall shows was suppressed, because the finished material looked bad), they might not even consider doing anything at all.

It's not like now, where technology allows you to shoot and record anything, just for posterity's sake, and if the performance comes out great, the band can think about releasing it.

[happytheman]

One wonders if the performance from the Fragile tour was actually recorded with the intent of doing a live album, or if that's just another thing where the pulled something off a radio broadcast (as per Genesis Live, which is derived entirely from recordings done for King Biscuit) or a soundboard tape or what happened there. I wonder if they wanted to put the entire Close To The Edge setlist on the live album, and realized it was too much for a double LP, but not enough a triple, so they stuck the Fragile era recordings in as filler, if you will.

You mean like..
1971-11-24
New York City
NY Academy of Music
One of the cleaner recordings I've heard from that era.. set list included..
Firebird Suite
Roundabout
All Good People
Clap
Rick's Bit
Long Distance Runaround
The Fish
Perpetual Change
Yours Is No Disgrace

[GuitarGeek]

You mean like..
1971-11-24
New York City
NY Academy of Music
One of the cleaner recordings I've heard from that era.. set list included..
Firebird Suite
Roundabout
All Good People
Clap
Rick's Bit
Long Distance Runaround
The Fish
Perpetual Change
Yours Is No Disgrace

So you're suggesting the Academy Of Music concert was recorded for a theoretical live album? Is that the show the tracks from Yessongs came from?

[happytheman]

So you're suggesting the Academy Of Music concert was recorded for a theoretical live album? Is that the show the tracks from Yessongs came from?

Henry might know that answer.. this is a very clean recording so who knows.. It's been said before if Yes were more like Zep they would have long ago reached out to their fan base and collected stuff like this and released it legit vs. letting it get passed around via trades etc.

[syncopatico]

You mean like..
1971-11-24
New York City
NY Academy of Music
One of the cleaner recordings I've heard from that era.. set list included..
Firebird Suite
Roundabout
All Good People
Clap
Rick's Bit
Long Distance Runaround
The Fish
Perpetual Change
Yours Is No Disgrace

it's been suggested that the Yessongs tracks featuring Bill Bruford were recorded at the Academy Of Music from a (later) February 23, 1972 date. It makes (more) sense to me as the recording of 1971-11-24 that circulates among collectors is clearly from the audience: you can hear constant audience chatter throughout the entire tape; while the tape that circulates from 1972-02-23 is much better sounding with much less audience interference, and Bruford's drums are Very crisp sounding!

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Yes
Academy Of Music
New York City, NY
February 23, 1972
(partial reel? recording)


01 Firebird Suite >
02 Roundabout
03 I've Seen All Good People
04 Clap
05 Heart Of The Sunrise (fades out at 5:27)

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