What is it about 'Talk'?

[JKL2000]

It's not anything to do with the album "Talk."

You have a brain tumor.

Get thee to a neurologist, pronto.

Dude, come on.

[jamesmanzi]

Talk never did anything for me... Every time I listen to it, the fade out of every single track haunts me. They couldn't finish a single song on that one. They needed another producer on that one so badly.

You're thinking of Calling All Stations.

[SteveSly]

I like The Calling, Walls, and Endless Dream. The rest of the album I don't remember being very good. ke.

Those are my 3 favorite tracks as well and think they are all quite good. The rest of the album, not so much. I am one of those odd people out there that really liked "Big Generator", but I know most won't agree.

[SteveSly]

i know there is much to read online about yes but are any of the books about them worth getting?

Marin Popoff's book "Time And A Word" is pretty good. It is a bit generic, but covers the basics pretty well. There was a book back in the mid -90's called "Yes - In Their Own Words" which was all snippets from interviews over the years with the band, but it was a pretty good history of the band up to that time.

[arabicadabra]

I like 5/8 of the Talk album a lot. The Calling is amazing. Alan White sounds like God. I Am Waiting is huge, Real Love experimental, State Of Play like an old The Yes Album song on the chorus. The Walls is a used Kleenex, the reincarnation song a mess, but it ends with Rabin's idea of a Yes epic. So 5 really strong tracks for me.

[Wah3]

I enjoyed "I Am Waiting" on the ARW tour last fall, it's a Trevor Rabin feature

[Big Ears]

I read or heard somewhere that the record company tried to persuade the Rabin-era Yes to record longer tracks, as they had in the early seventies. Hence the Talk album, although it neither matches the classic era or the commercially successful period with Rabin. If you enjoyed Talk, you might like Open Your Eyes, although Rabin was not involved. I like everything up to Big Generator, including the 9012Live video (is there an audio version, apart from the solos?), except Yes Tor-mato.

I also read that Chris Welch knew the band very well; he has been around a while - I remember reading his articles as a teenager. I haven't read his Yes book, but it was always my intention.

The ARW project has the potential for new material, which combines the Wakeman and Rabin eras, but we will see.

If you are a Trevor Rabin fan, he worked on the excellent Manfred Mann's Earth Band album, Watch, and I often wonder why he did not work more with them.

[SongForAmerica]

I give Talk a solid B. I like "The Calling" (though prefer the long version; why wasn't it on the CD?), "I am Waiting," "Endless Dream," and, to a lesser extent, "Where Will You Be." None of these songs fades out. The presence of Chris Squire and Tony Kaye is, to put it mildly, unclear to these ears, and a better producer would have given the aforementioned songs greater room to breathe.

By the way, if Yes wants me to do their next album cover, I can do a better job than the one on Talk, and I'll do it for half the price. And I'm not at all artistic.

I have two excellent books on Yes: Chris Welch's book Close to the Edge and Tim Morse's book Yes Stories. Edward Macan's book Rocking the Classics is also outstanding and his eleven-page analysis of "Close to the Edge" superb.

[rickm]

Talk? I like it much than Big Generator...and much better than "Open your Eyes" .

[mozo-pg]

I don't think "Open Your Eyes" is a fair comparison.

[BravadoNJ]

the best studio album put out by Yes in the 90's. so what's the problem?

(i know someone will bring it up, but the K2A studio tracks were not released as a studio album.)

[arturs]

The presence of Chris Squire and Tony Kaye is, to put it mildly, unclear to these ears, and a better producer would have given the aforementioned songs greater room to breathe.

You list three good reasons why you should pick up a couple of boots from the tour. Maryland Heights and Binghamton are two good ones to start with. Chris and Tony are clearly audible, Chris plays well, and the songs breathe.

By the way, if Yes wants me to do their next album cover, I can do a better job than the one on Talk, and I'll do it for half the price. And I'm not at all artistic.

LOL! There are a few that are worse: Tormato, Magnification and Big Generator come to mind. But yeah Talk is not a good cover and I bet they paid Peter Max a fortune for that POS...

[SongForAmerica]

LOL! There are a few that are worse: Tormato, Magnification and Big Generator come to mind. But yeah Talk is not a good cover and I bet they paid Peter Max a fortune for that POS...

I would have done it for half a fortune.

I think Magnification has a good and appropriate cover: it's elegant, befitting the music, which incorporates an orchestra.

If you think about it, the Tormato cover is also appropriate: it's awful, just like the music.

Big Generator: I can't defend the cover here. The music is pretty good, while the cover is not.

[SteveSly]

I enjoy Talk the most compared to 90125 and Big Generator. I'm quite fond of Endless Dream. They're not all gems but there is enough good Yesness to keep my interest. I saw the tour in Montreal and it was excellent.

I saw the tour at Summerfest in Milwaukee and it was an outstanding show. In fact I rate it right up there with the best Yes shows I have seen (seen them around 20 times over the years). I remember the venue had a lot of empty seats (I remember it being about 2/3rds full), but the crowd was really enthusiastic and the band really rocked that night. Billy Sherwood was on stage as an extra musician, but none of us knew who he was at the time. He played a little bit of everything over the course of the night if I remember correctly.

[Jubal]

When this album came out, a couple of "shock jocks" on 96 Rock in Atlanta interviewed Jon Anderson. Jon was raving about how great it was, and that it was the first major recording done entirely on the Mac. The jocks were asking him his opinion of those critics saying it was a piece of crap that shouldn't have been released. I never thought I'd ever hear Jon blow his top like that. This was a live radio interview, and Jon went through George Carlin's 8 words you can never say on TV or radio in about 10 seconds flat, cursing out the jocks. The interview was over in about 30 seconds. If that wasn't bad enough, the jocks were afterward cracking jokes about Lucky Charms and Gilda Radner's "Tiny Kingdom" story.
I have the album. Honestly, I think The Calling is a great track, and the rest of the album is a total waste of listening time.

I also noticed that 96 Rock stopped doing live interviews for quite a number of months after that. The shock jocks lasted maybe a year after also.

[GuitarGeek]

By the way, if Yes wants me to do their next album cover, I can do a better job than the one on Talk, and I'll do it for half the price. And I'm not at all artistic.

Uh, that cover was painted by Peter Max, who is a very well regarded artist.

[GuitarGeek]

You list three good reasons why you should pick up a couple of boots from the tour. Maryland Heights and Binghamton are two good ones to start with. Chris and Tony are clearly audible, Chris plays well, and the songs breathe.
.

Didn't I read that they had some sort of mini-radio broadcast deal, that they had to clearance from the FCC, for that tour? I've forgotten the details, but it had something to do with running feeds out to the PA using some kind of wireless technology, which was then in turn picked up on by tapers, who made some great sounding tapes by picking up the audio feeds.

[moecurlythanu]

Jon Anderson actually sounds like he has hair on his... chest on that album.

It was a wig.

[rich]

Talk? - Huh, I own it, but I do not recall any "great melodies and lovely passages" I must revisit it. I picked that album up as an "Autobuy" and never really spent any time at all with it. Cool! thanks for the recommendation!

Maybe its another "Ladder" - I cant tell you how much I am delighted by that album! Jon Anderson actually sounds like he has hair on his... chest on that album.

I'd say for my taste's Talk and the Ladder are the two best LP's they made outside the 60's/70's. They were both excellent tours as well.

[yamishogun]

If you enjoyed Talk, you might like Open Your Eyes

[Yodelgoat]

Why the ???

Is there some rule against enjoying deeper cuts and less popular albums from Yes? These guys really are very much some of the best there are, and even a perceived "weak" song by them is worthy of at least some attention. We are not talking about Blue Vino here.

[yamishogun]

Why the ???

Is there some rule against enjoying deeper cuts and less popular albums from Yes? These guys really are very much some of the best there are, and even a perceived "weak" song by them is worthy of at least some attention. We are not talking about Blue Vino here.

Well, it is true that I've recommended Celeine Dion to my friends who love Close to the Edge due to the striking similarities that few seem to appreciate.

[kid_runningfox]

I think for me 'what is it' about Talk is that it's just not very good. Hell, it's not even a good Trevor Rabin solo album, which is essentially what Talk consists of, with the occasional moments of participation from other members of Yes. Despite having bought it on the day of release, I think I may have listened to it all of four times in my life, which was at least three too many. Another nadir to add to the Yes back-catalogue in a seeming endless procession from the late 80s onwards.

On the books front, the Hedges book is nice, but it's probably the Welch one that is the one to go for. In addition to his long, illustrious history as a music journalist, Welch doesn't pull his bunches when necessary, though it's equally clear that he has a distinct bias towards the somewhat jaundiced, Brufordian point of view on most things Yes. One word of caution: if you DO read this book, it certainly doesn't reflect all that well on certain members of Yes, either past or present, and brings home very clearly the sheer degree of dysfunction that has accompanied the history of the band - even at their very peak. Hopefully, this won't interfere with anybody's enjoyment of the music too much, but it is a bit of an uncomfortable eye-opener...

[Kcrimso]

Good album mostly. Endless Dream is great.

[3LockBox]

I like Talk. I don't love it. I think I Am Waiting and The Calling are killer tracks. State of Play and Real Love suck. The rest is ok, but suffers from Rabin's heavy hand. I agree that a different producer would have made this album better, including the material I liked, but then again I felt that way about Big Generator as well. Too bad Yes let him run off Trevor Horn.