One Live Badger vs. Flash

[Progbear]

I really enjoy the first two Flash albums. Out of Our Hands not so much; the tunes just aren’t there. I get the feeling that Banks was holding out his best material on the rest of the band. The eventual surfacing of the first Empire album seems to bear this out. While the first Flash album has the band’s most enduring tunes (radio favorites “Small Beginnings” and “Children of the Universe”), In the Can is my preferred disc. I think the guitar-based prog sound they were going for on that one was extremely fascinating, a shame they didn’t mine that vein further.

I never bothered with Badger. Nothing anyone has ever said about either album piqued my interest enough. Weirdly, I did have an interest for a time in Ramshackled, Alan White’s solo album. In retrospect, letting that go fallow seems to have been the right decision.

Didn't he tour with Bowie at some point? Like maybe Live David album?

It was Roger Powell (Utopia) on David Live.

[Trane]

For me, in the long run, Flash, though that live first album by Badger is killer. The follow-up, White Lady, a pure dud.

Between the two Tony, I tend to prefer Kaye to Banks, and the two albums he played on are the best of these offshoot

In +/- order of preference

One Live Badger
Flash

In The Can


Out of Our Hands









White Lady

Flash was much better than Badger imho, with the obvious exception of the album covers - at least if you're a fan of Roger Dean.

Well the Flash album covers definitely had their own arguments for teenagers

Roy Dyke had certain credentials as one-third of Ashton, Gardner & Dyke - interestingly they had toured with Steve Howe as the backing band for P.P. Arnold on the Delaney & Bonnie + Eric Clapton tour in 1969/70, just prior to Howe joining Yes. That backing band was itself a distant successor to The Nice... whom Howe had almost joined in 1968.

remind me to buy your Yes book directly from you (I never got a reply when I e-mailed you for it)

The live Badger album has a Traffic feel to it. Good enough, but not essential.

Yup, fairly Trafficy

live Badger = Traffic followers
live Flash = Cream followers

Cream wins.

Live both Traffic & Cream, so you won't catch me preferring one to the other.

Anyways, I always felt Tony was sort of undervalued and never fulfilled his potential in bands like Badger or Detective. Although there's probably a lot of musicians back then who you could say that about.

Don't know if Kaye had a bad rep, but Yes (or Squire, since he always acted as if it was his band) was brutal in dismissing both Tony.

This said, I also think that we never got to see the best of Kaye - I believe it would've happened right after TYA. Getting the boot from Yes definitely seems to have cut up his wings and stopping his inertia/momentum.
He may have also missed another step to have remained in Flash, though (not sure if he had a say in that, though).

By the time of Detective, I think his spark and momentum had waned

Well, it was not a "gig" he "got", but a band he formed which grew out of a songwriting partnership with David Foster whom he'd met through Jon Anderson. In the end, I don't think Kaye contributed much music to the album in the end - once Parrish was on board, the material was either Forster or Parrish. Kaye was never a prolific writer anyway - he contributed bits and pieces here and there, most notably on "Big Generator", but no finished pieces that I know of, and I heard he even abandoned a proposed solo album because he couldn't come up with enough good music for it...

Not sure who it was, maybe Jon Anderson, that Kaye was at times very involved with the band (there are several interviews or promotional appearances from the YesWest era where he - not alone but in tandem with one or another member - speaks on behalf of the band advocating their work or new direction, where he appeared to have played very little on any of said albums), and at others apparently more into having a good time, playing tennis, chatting up girls, etc.

mmmhhh!!!... Kaye was mainly a piano and organ man, one of the reasons why he was axed from Yes, if memory serves... and by the 80's, he most likely had to "adapt" to synths , but he's no natural to it... So that "plight" might've also blocked him in writing material.

But wasn't Kaye brought back in the band mainly for being an historic Yes member and give more cred to the different feuding factions during the 80's??

[Joe F.]

It was Roger Powell (Utopia) on David Live.

It was Michael Kamen & Mike Garson on David Live. Powell was on the Stage album.

[progholio]

Let's not forget Kaye in Detective - a band that had Swan Song/Atlantic behind it. Regardless what one may think of the music, people had hopes for the band ...

I bought that album immediately after hearing the song Superstition on the radio, i need to dig around and see if i still have it.

[jrw]

I bought that album immediately after hearing the song Superstition on the radio, i need to dig around and see if i still have it.

Do you mean “Recognition?”

[calyx]

But wasn't Kaye brought back in the band mainly for being an historic Yes member and give more cred to the different feuding factions during the 80's??

That's the cynical view. If you ask(ed) Squire, he would say that Kaye was perfect for the new direction they are after, where someone in the Rick Wakeman mould would have been wrong (in the context of what the Eighties sound was shaping up to be).

But that's about Cinema, the band Kaye joined in 1982, which was pre-Jon Anderson rejoining and pre-Cinema becoming Yes. Kaye; famously, left a few months into the recording of "90125" because he couldn't get on with Trevor Horn. Trevor Rabin ended up playing most of the keyboards on "90125", with Kaye audible mostly on the instrumental "Cinema" and his signature organ on "Hearts" (which also included his main contribution to the writing - the opening tuned percussion melody), possibly on "Our Song" as well.

Then there is the separate story of his return. Kaye had rejoined Badfinger, which ended tragically in November 1983 with Tom Evans' suicide. This was around the time when Eddie Jobson was preparing to tour at the band's keyboard player. At one point Jobson was told that Kaye would join as second keyboard player, and says the justification was that the band would have 3 original members and would be stronger to face possible opposition by Howe and others to the use of the Yes name. This may well have been the reason, but only that time, when the band was now Yes and not Cinema. In the event, Jobson didn't want to share his position with Kaye, and that's where Casey Young entered the picture... or, rather, his secret lair underneath the stage (actually, it was behind the stage, from what I remember of the footage I've seen where Young appeared).

[gojikranz]

Station to Station tour.

documented officially on the live Nassau coliseum 76 release if anyone is curious.

[calyx]

documented officially on the live Nassau coliseum 76 release if anyone is curious.

Kaye's handling of Wakeman's piano part for "Life On Mars?" verges on the comical on that, to be honest. Reminds one of his handling of Wakeman's parts on "Heart Of The Sunrise". (I hasten to add that his Hammond playing in Yes is much better than Wakeman's to my ears.)

[Scrotum Scissor]

Kaye's handling of Wakeman's piano part for "Life On Mars?" verges on the comical on that, to be honest. Reminds one of his handling of Wakeman's parts on "Heart Of The Sunrise".

To be honest, merely the notion of having to "find out" what the previous handler was doing in his instrumental role lends a cool breeze of comedy to certain things, not least the image of the "highbrow 'prog' composers".

[rcarlberg]

Getting technically-competent musicians to "handle" the parts previously laid down by the original performers leads to various parts of "Yes" being played by other musicians playing the same notes, until "Yes" becomes a sheaf of music notation (or MIDI events) instead of a band.

[arturs]

That's the cynical view. If you ask(ed) Squire, he would say that Kaye was perfect for the new direction they are after, where someone in the Rick Wakeman mould would have been wrong (in the context of what the Eighties sound was shaping up to be).

One anecdote about Squire and Kaye: I remember reading an interview with Kaye where he said that he and Squire had remained friends throughout the 1970s. Squire would often come visit him when Yes was on tour. Kaye was living somewhere in Florida in 1980 and Squire visited when the Drama tour came around. Squire said of the Drama lineup something like "It's dead. We need to make some big changes". So that may be where the initial idea of working with Kaye again began.

[Pekka]

I just read from David Foster's site that he died in last November. I also didn't know about the controversy of his lack of credits for "Yours Is No Disgrace".

I had all the Flash albums once and liked the last one the best. Ray Bennett had a great bass sound and did most of the writing and I agree that the shorter tracks suited the band better. Still the material wasn't that great, at least when compared to Yes and to Yes they were always compared wheter they liked it or not. That might be the reason they never had an official keyboard player, to avoid even more comparison.

I used to own "One Live Badger" but have no recollection other than I was disappointed with it. I expected more raunchy bass ala Squire and more prog rock. Better to listen it again, I might like it now.