YESFEST - Camden, NJ on Aug. 3rd w/ YES, The Musical Box, Renaissance, & Carl Palmer

[arturs]

I'm still basking in the glow of how great the performances all were. I arrived a few minutes into Carl Palmer's set due to bad traffic on the NJ turnpike.

Carl was a lot of fun. Someone near me said he was "all technicality but no musicality". I think that is unfair. Their arrangement of Pictures was very musical, excellent actually.

Annie/Renaissance were also on the top of their game. Annie was in tune throughout and dazzled with her operatic chops. New songs very good.

Musical Box was what it was. A well executed theater show. Demonstrated how good the Foxtrot LP was. Haven't spun that one in a long time. Will need to revisit.

And Yes were just stellar. I'm not going to say they were as great as the 2003-2004 shows by the classic line-up, but you know it was close to that good. They were so nice to play all three albums even though all the concert promo said they would only play two. No one would have gone home disappointed had they only played tYA and CttE. And I'm sure it had been a long day for them, so playing G4t1 was an amazing bonus for the fans. Awaken was the highlight of the whole evening.

The event was quite well attended too. The covered area of the pavilion looked about 80% full. Maybe 5000 people?

[Dan Marsh]

Yes still came on at 9.15 as scheduled. I didn't see it until after the show but they posted on Facebook they were doing all 3.

Again, it was just a great day!

Even at the SBC Dump.

[Tony O]

Carl Palmer's ELP Legacy performing Nutrocker at Yestival

[Sean]

Any other reviews? Amazed this thread is so quiet.

[Jimmy Giant]

Mostly reviews were right on. After seeing Yes 3 years ago, I vowed not to see them again, they were THAT awful. That was early in their reconstruction after kicking out Ollie and getting Downes back and Benoit singing. But what a difference it makes when they got back in the groove and had Jon Davison singing. They were stellar. Nearly all my favorite material from Yes (sans GoD) done perfectly. Was just spectacular at 2.5hrs.

We got the ferry late at 3pm so we missed Scale the Summit, who I hated at Progday anyway. Guess they played 20 min on the main stage. They finished right when we walked up to the venue.
(We never ventured out to see the School of Rock, but heard they were rather horrific)

Volto! was great. Wasn't expecting much from them, but I loved it. The long version of the No Quarter cover was fantastic.

Carl Palmer had a good set. I don't really care for the trio version here (being a keyboardist and all!), but the guys are tight as hell and Carl is always entertaining.

Renaissance was very good, but Annie did have some flat spots. Guess her ear monitors were crappy. That being the case, she did very well. I love their material and the new one (title cut) was really great live.

The Musical Box had another great set. Keys were too low where we were though. Nice set list but thought they were going to play all of Foxtrot. No Knife at the end. Booooo! And I really wanted Can Utility. Oh well. Greatly enjoyable.

Yes......uh.....YES! Nearly the best I've ever seen them. Davison's voice is strong as hell and he's such a ringer for Anderson. What I really noticed was that the tempo for a lot of these songs were closer to the studio albums rather than more upbeat as they usually play them live. They really tried to recreate the albums here as close as possible. I don't know if they ever played Venture live before either. Really great to hear Perpetual Change, And You And I, and Siberian Khatru. Especially great to hear CttE and Awaken. And Parallels kicked ass. Thought I'd finally get through a Yes show without Roundabout, but no. Encore with loads of Orange and Green balloons released from above. And the shower from the confetti fountains prior to that.

This is an Annual event now. We will surely return next year as we had a fantastic weekend.

[Echoes]

I've got a complete review of Yestival with a bunch of photos: http://wp.me/pgATL-2fc
In summary, a cynic of Yes was silenced.

[Progmatic]

I've got a complete review of Yestival with a bunch of photos: http://wp.me/pgATL-2fc
In summary, a cynic of Yes was silenced.

maybe the cynic was not there at all...

[Sean]

Someone did a fairly cool "best of" vid that gives a good taste to the rest of us...