Live at the Apollo (2018)
1. Intro/Cinema/Perpetual Change
2. Hold On
3. I've Seen All Good People
4. Lift Me Up
5. And You And I
6. Rhythm of Love
7. Heart of the Sunrise
8. Changes
9. Long Distance Runaround / The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus)
10.Awaken
11.Make it Easy / Owner of a Lonely Heart
12.Roundabout
I'm not sure who decided that this should be classified as a "Yes" album. That's not a complaint, merely an
observation. In the history of the band Yes, they've managed to exist as two different bands, so to speak, at the same time. That must be
some sort of record. The late 80s-early 90s saw four of the members record and tour under the name Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe. They're
one album was released under the same name. Around 2016 or so, a similar thing happened. Jon Anderson, Rick Wakeman, and
Trevor Rabin toured under the name "AWR". The irony here is that Rick Wakeman and Trevor Rabin never really were in the "same" incarnation, and
most diehard fans would argue that Yes was almost an entirely different band in the 1980s when Rabin "led" the band through the decade.
What was surprisingly pleasant is that this incarnation really worked and was very well received by the masses. True, the "other" version of
Yes was touring as well, yet many fans were squabling over which was the "real" Yes. It didn't help that Chris Squire had recently passed on, as
his absence gave the "other" band a major handicap. So the three guys here toured and put on a mighty impressive show that mainly went back and
forth between the two eras of Yes. If you're a major Yes geek, you will also take note of the fact that there are a couple of songs here that
were recorded before either Rick Wakeman nor Trevor Rabin joined the band, so you were definitely getting a nice overall snapshot of the
band's history
Sadly, as good as the show was, this recording has a major flaw in that, whoever edited the crowd noise into the mix didn't know what they were
doing. Throughout the entire show, even in the quiet parts, there's loud crowd noise (cheering, clapping, etc.) intertwined in the mix, and it really
does make the entire thing sound rather fake. I haven't seen the companion DVD, but I've heard the same mistake happens there as well. This really
does kill the mood for me. It's a bit like trying to watch a movie when someone in the theatre is talking on their cell phone throughout the picture.
It's simply too big of a distraction.
If you can get past that, though, it really is a nice surprise to see such a blended version of the band mix the old and the new (newer?) together so well.
Rumor was that this lineup may go in the studio and record a proper album, but alas, that never happened.
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