Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary - Madison Square Garden, New York City, 5-14-1988, Part 5: Yes, Rufus Thomas & Led Zeppelin

Here's the fifth and final part of a six-hour long version of the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert. 

Yes had big success in the 1980s, especially with their massive 1983 hit "Owner of a Lonely Heart," so they were given a 25-minute long time slot in this concert. According to some accounts, such as setlist.fm, they also did the song "Changes." But I've seen claims that isn't true. I suspect they didn't, because 25 minutes already made their set the second longest set of the night.

I find it very odd if it's true that Rufus Thomas performed the song "Walking the Dog" between big sets by Yes and Led Zeppelin. The acts tended to get more and more famous the longer the concert went on, but Thomas was nowhere near as popular as the acts around his performance. It could be that he actually sang that much earlier and it was only shown on TV during a break between sets. I know this rearranging did happen some with the HBO TV broadcast. But all the sources I've seen have his song here, and I haven't seen anything to contradict it, so I'm leaving it here (for now, at least).

The thing this concert is best remembered for, by far, is the 32-minute-long reunion of Led Zeppelin. The band broke up in 1980 after their drummer John Bonham died. They reunited to play three songs at the massive Live Aid benefit concert in 1985. But that was widely considered a fiasco. Lead guitarist Jimmy Page was in a bad way with drug addiction at the time. Also, Phil Collins tried to play drums, but he was just winging it and discovered the songs were more complicated than he'd realized.

The band's reunion for this concert has also been criticized. Later, lead guitarist Jimmy Page called it "one big disappointment," and lead vocalist Robert Plant later said "the gig was foul." But I disagree. The band certainly played better than at Live Aid. A key change was the drums. This time, deceased drummer John Bonham's son Jason Bonham was old enough to replace his father in the band, and he did a good job of it. I saw some article reviews of the concert just after it happened, and the Led Zeppelin performance was praised. I think in retrospect opinions soured a bit because the performance was badly mixed. For instance, the bass playing of John Paul Jones could barely be heard at all for the first song and half of the second song. There were some other problems too. I attempted to fix this with the editing program UVR5. I think I made some improvements. However, the bass was so low for "Kashmir" that I couldn't make a fix there.

Also, I think one reason Page and Plant have bad memories of the concert is due to bad vibes happening off stage. Apparently, Plant was really, really sick of the song "Stairway to Heaven" by 1988, and didn't want to play it at the concert. But Ahmet Ertegun, the founder and long-time president of Atlantic Records, heard about this in advance and talked him into playing it the night before. Then, hours before the concert began, Plant changed his mind again and had big arguments with Page about it. Ultimately, the song was played, and understandably so, since it's one of the best and most popular songs of all time, overplayed though it is. And if you look at the cover photo I've chosen for this album, Plant and Page seemed genuinely happy during the concert.

The original idea was to have a final song with everyone from earlier in the concert brought on stage to perform together, which is the usual tradition for concerts like this. But ultimately it was decided that nothing could top the Led Zeppelin reunion, so there was no big finale after that. 

After this concert, Led Zeppelin reunited twice more. Once was for the band's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reunion in 1995. The other was a full concert in 2007. Interestingly, that was for a tribute concert for Ahmet Ertegun. Note Ertegun was one of the people to introduce Led Zeppelin in this concert. The 1995 and 2007 reunions were considered much more musically successful than the 1985 and 1988 ones.

Oh, by the way, I didn't mark it as such, but I severely edited down the introduction to the Led Zeppelin set. The bootleg version I found had Robert Townsend, Phil Collins and Ahmet Ertegun talking for five minutes, mercilessly teasing the audience about who was going to be the final act of the concert, when everyone already knew it was Led Zeppelin. They dragged things out so long that it was downright painful to hear, so I cut the intro in half. Even then, it's probably still too long. I'm guessing that the band wasn't ready - maybe last minute arguing between Plant and Page? - so they were stalling for time to a ridiculous degree. 

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

088 Hold On (Yes)
089 Make It Easy (Yes)
090 Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes)
091 I've Seen All Good People (Yes)
092 Roundabout (Yes)
093 talk (Paul Shaffer)
094 Walking the Dog (Rufus Thomas)
095 talk (Robert Townsend, Phil Collins & Ahmet Ertegun)
096 Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)
097 Heartbreaker (Led Zeppelin)
098 Whole Lotta Love (Led Zeppelin)
099 talk (Led Zeppelin)
100 Misty Mountain Hop (Led Zeppelin)
101 talk (Led Zeppelin)
102 Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
103 talk (Led Zeppelin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oWK5DxhD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3Qsjm78mYpHJKct/file

The cover photo of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin is from this exact concert.

Yes - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: QPR Football Stadium, London, Britain, 5-10-1975

First off, a minor administrative note: I had previously posted a 1978 BBC by Yes and called it "BBC Sessions, Volume 4," because I thought that one was the fourth. But then I discovered this one. So I've renamed the 1978 concert "Volume 5." Here's the link if you want to get it with the correct cover art and mp3 tags and such:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/07/yes-bbc-sessions-volume-4-friday-rock.html

Now, let's get to this bootleg album. In 1975, Yes was riding high. Their most recent album, "Relayer," released in 1974, was a critical and commercial success. Prog rock was all the rage. That would come crashing down in 1977, with the rise of punk rock, but that was still in the future. This was still the time of complicated epic songs often over 20 minutes, and there's no less than three of those here ("Ritual," "Gates of Delirium," and "Close to the Edge.")

It turns out this was a good time for a BBC concert, because there's no official live album from around this time period. This might be the best concert recording featuring keyboardist Patrick Moraz, because he was only with the band for one album (due to the guy he'd replaced, Rick Wakeman, wanting to come back).

The sound quality is very good, though not perfect. I helped a bit by using the audio program UVR5 to boost the vocals relative to the instruments.

This is a long concert. The album is two hours and 22 minutes long.

01 Sound Chaser (Yes)
02 Close to the Edge (Yes)
03 talk (Yes)
04 To Be Over (Yes)
05 talk (Yes)
06 The Gates of Delirium (Yes)
07 Your Move (Yes)
08 Mood for a Day [Instrumental] (Yes)
09 Long Distance Runaround (Yes)
10 Moraz Solo [Instrumental] (Yes)
11 The Clap [Instrumental] (Yes)
12 talk (Yes)
13 And You and I (Yes)
14 Ritual (Yes)
15 Roundabout (Yes)
16 Sweet Dreams (Yes)
17 Yours Is No Disgrace (Yes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/38TaCq3r

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/b2sQ4iLEUjhJTPi/file

Sometimes when I make album covers, I'm torn between accuracy and quality. Meaning, should I choose a photo from that exact concert that's low-res, or another one from something else that looks a lot better? I'd be curious if people have a preference in situations like that. In this case, I went for the low-res. This cover is a screenshot taken from a video of this exact concert.

Yes - The Crystal Palace Bowl, London, Britain, 7-31-1971

I've previously mentioned on my blog that there's very little music from the British prog rock band Yes prior to 1972 with excellent sound quality other than their studio albums, plus the two albums of BBC sessions that I've posted here. In 1972, their popularity exploded, and there are a whole bunch of official live albums from that year (and after). Aside from the BBC stuff, there are some excellent sounding 1971 live recordings. I've gathered them all together here to make one concert album out of them. 

I call this "The Crystal Palace Bowl, London, Britain, 7-31-1971," because a majority of the music here - 46 minutes - comes from that show. But there are two other sources. The first three tracks were recorded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in January 1971. The last three tracks were recorded in New Haven, Connecticut, in August 1971. Together, those two sources add up to another 37 minutes of music. So if you add it all up, you get one hour and 24 minutes, which is enough for a typical concert.

I've put these three sources together because they all sound truly excellent, while all other live recordings from 1971 or before - generally audience bootlegs - sound significantly worse. The Crystal Palace Bowl and Gothenburg recordings come from an official box set of live performances called "The Word Is Live." It's a shame they didn't release more from these two shows. I don't know if that's because this is all there is, or if some editing choices were made. These shows haven't been bootlegged otherwise. As for the New Haven show, that's a soundboard bootleg. That bootleg is also only part of the show. There are a couple more songs from that source, but I didn't include them because they're versions of songs already featured here.

This is the last Yes album I plan on posting (although that might change if I find something worthy). There's lots of material with excellent sound quality from 1972 and beyond, both officially released and on bootleg. I wanted to highlight the little there is from before 1972. Although this comes from three different sources, I think it sounds like a coherent single concert.

01 Everydays (Yes)
02 talk (Yes)
03 Astral Traveller (Yes)
04 Yours Is No Disgrace (Yes)
05 talk (Yes)
06 I’ve Seen All Good People [Your Move - All Good People] (Yes)
07 talk (Yes)
08 America (Yes)
09 talk (Yes)
10 It’s Love (Yes)
11 Clap - Classical Gas [Instrumental] (Yes)
12 talk (Yes)
13 Perpetual Change (Yes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701233/YESS1971_CrystlPlaceBwlLondnBrtin__7-31-1971_atse.zip.html

Yes played the Crystal Palace Bowl in 1972 as well as 1971. I found a good color photo of them in that venue from 1972, but none from 1971, so I used the 1972 photo.

Yes - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Friday Rock Show, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 10-28-1978

I explained in previous posts that the British prog rock band Yes performed for the BBC frequently from 1969 to 1971. But then the band's popularity soared, and they seemingly decided they didn't need much BBC promotion anymore. However, they did have two full concerts played on BBC radio in 1975 and 1978. I'm posting the 1978 one here.

In 1976 and 1977, music trends shifted dramatically with the rise of disco, punk, and new wave. Most prog rock bands like Yes struggled to stay popular and relevant. Yes put out a commercially and critically successful album in 1977, "Going for the One." But in 1978, their next album "Tormato" flopped. Lead vocalist Jon Anderson and keyboardist Rick Wakeman left the band after the tour supporting that album. Yes would have a big resurgence in 1983 with their huge hit "Owner of a Lonely Heart," but they would have a few years of poor sales and personnel changes before getting there.

Given that background, it's understandable to see that if the band thought they were too big to need much BBC promotion from 1972 to 1977, they changed their minds in 1978 and approved the radio broadcast of this concert. Although "Tormato" isn't considered one of the better Yes albums, it did have some good songs on it, and only three songs from it are included here: "Circus of Heaven," "Don't Kill the Whale," and the medley "Madrigal - On the Silent Wings of Freedom." So it's actually a good time for a live album from the band, featuring the best of their 1970s material right before two key members left and the band went through some significant changes.

Two of the performances here have been officially released. "Don't Kill the Whale" was included on the live album "Yesshows," and "I've Seen All Good People" was also on that album, but only as a bonus track. Although everything else is unreleased, the sound quality is so high that you can't tell the difference between the released tracks and the others.

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 Intro - Siberian Khatru (Yes)
02 talk (Yes)
03 Heart of Sunrise (Yes)
04 Circus of Heaven (Yes)
05 Time and a Word (Yes)
06 Long Distance Runaround (Yes)
07 The Fish [Instrumental] (Yes)
08 Survival - Perpetual Change (Yes)
09 Soon (Yes)
10 Don't Kill the Whale (Yes)
11 Clap (Yes)
12 Starship Trooper (Yes)
13 Madrigal - On the Silent Wings of Freedom (Yes)
14 Piano Intro - Awaken (Yes)
15 I've Seen All Good People [Your Move - All Good People] (Yes)
16 Roundabout (Yes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CrdGr8L8

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/I3Mjbgn64YpgOQl/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/kF9ii

The cover photo comes from a 1978 Yes show, but a different one, in Hamburg, Germany.

Yes - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1970-1973

When musical acts get really famous, they often stop bothering with BBC sessions. That, unfortunately, is the case with Yes. They didn't stop all at once though. This album has them trailing off. There's some very good versions of songs here, while it's also frustrating that other songs from this time period are not included.

The first two songs date from early 1970, at a time when Yes could barely dent any musical charts. They both appear on the band's official BBC album "Something's Coming." But then the band hit it big with two albums in 1971, and pretty much stopped their BBC sessions.

The third song is credited to Yes, but it's really just the band's guitarist Steve Howe doing a solo acoustic performance of the Yes song "Clap" in a medley with the popular hit "Classical Gas." This was done for the BBC, but wasn't included on the band's official BBC album for some reason.

There is said to be a 1971 BBC version of "Starship Trooper," but the versions I've heard sound terrible, so I didn't include it here, not even as a bonus track. Besides, there's some debate about where that came from and if it was a BBC version at all.

Not only did the band stop performing for the BBC, they rarely performed for other TV or radio shows. Luckily, there's one exception here. The fourth and fifth songs come from a 1971 appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club." However, I cheated with the song "I've Seen All Good People." For some reason, the band only played the second half of that two-part song, the "All Good People" part. I didn't like that, so I found an alternate version of the first half (done in the studio and released as a bonus track), and merged that with the Beat Club second half.

In 1973, Yes released the album "Tales from Topographic Oceans." It's become kind of Exhibit A for prog rock bands going overboard, because it's a double album where even the shortest song is nearly 20 minutes long! The album faced a lot of controversy, and mixed reviews, when it came out. It seems the band decided to put some more effort into promotion as a result, and played alternate versions of all the songs for the BBC. Unfortunately, only the recording of one of the four mega-songs has survived, which is the sixth track here. This too was forgotten by the official BBC album, even though the sound quality is as good as the songs that went on it.

There are a few other BBC recordings the band did that I didn't include even as bonus tracks because the sound quality was bad or even downright horrible. However, I've made one exception: "For Everyone." This original song was never released on record, except for the BBC version, which is included on Volume 2 in this series. That version has pretty decent sound quality. This version sounds worse. It might not even cut the mustard as a bonus track, except I figured it's worthy due to its musical content. This version is twice as long as the other version done for the BBC and has significant differences.  

Amazingly, it seems the band never did any live version of their classic 1972 song "Roundabout" for any TV or radio show. At least in this era, that is. In the late 1970s, with the band's popularity declining, they would do another concert for the BBC, so I'll post that later.

This album is 50 minutes long, not counting the bonus track, which is 10 minutes long.

01 Sweet Dreams [Edit] (Yes)
02 Then [Edit] (Yes)
03 Clap - Classical Gas [Instrumental] (Yes)
04 Yours Is No Disgrace (Yes)
05 I've Seen All Good People [Your Move - All Good People] [Edit] (Yes)
06 The Revealing Science of God - Dance of the Dawn (Yes)

For Everyone [Edit] (Yes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15190984/Yess_1970-1973_BBSessionsVolum3_atse.zip.html

The cover art shows the band on a TV show in 1971, maybe "Top of the Pops." I assume they mimed the performance.

Yes - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: John Peel's Sunday Show, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 3-17-1970

I'm not a super Yes fan, but as far as I can tell, there are very few Yes concert recordings, official or bootleg, that have sound quality worth hearing, before 1972. With 1972, there's the official triple live album "Yessongs," as well as seven complete concerts, packaged together in the box set "Progeny." In terms of live concerts from the band's first two years, this is pretty much the only one. Once again, we have to thank the BBC for their bothering to record this band with their usual high quality control at a time when they had barely made a dent in the charts.

For Volume 1 in this series, which contains early BBC studio sessions recordings, I used the X-Minus audio editing program to improve the sound quality by boosting the lead vocals. I don't know why, but it seems having the vocals too low was a frequent problem with early Yes recordings, but I felt the need to do the exact same thing here. Every song has "[Edit]" in their titles because of that change and not the usual BBC problem of DJ's talking over the music. 

The one disappointment about this show is that it's relatively show. The concert mentioned in the title is only 28 minutes long. It appears to be complete, because the BBC only gave the band a half-hour spot. Those songs all come from the official BBC album "Something's Coming." Since it is rather short, I had two songs from later in 1970 taken from a Belgian TV show that was just about the only other recording from 1970 or earlier that has good sound quality. These versions were done in a TV studio with no audience, but they fit better here than on any other BBC volume because they're different songs than the others, so I stuck them at the end.

Three of the songs are covers: "Every Little Thing," "Everydays," and "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed." "For Everyone" is an original that never made it to any Yes album.

Including the two extra songs, this album is 37 minutes long.

01 Astral Traveler [Edit] (Yes)
02 Then [Edit] (Yes)
03 Every Little Thing [Edit] (Yes)
04 Everydays [Edit] (Yes)
05 For Everyone [Edit] (Yes)
06 No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed [Edit] (Yes)
07 Sweet Dreams [Edit] (Yes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15190976/Yess_1970_BBSessionsVolum2SundayShwParsTheatreLondnBritain__3-17-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a Yes concert in the Netherlands in January 1970.

Yes - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1969

Do you like prog rock, a.k.a. progressive rock? If so, you're in luck, because I'm going to be posting a lot of that in the near future as part of my big BBC project. Quite a few British prog rock bands played lots of sessions for the BBC in the early 1970s especially. I still have a bunch of late-1960s based artists to deal with as part of this project. But I figure I'll get started on some of that 1970s stuff at the same time.

Yes is one of the most famous of all the prog rock bands, up there with Pink Floyd and Genesis, I'd guess. Yes was formed in 1968, but they didn't have much commercial success at first. Their first album, 1969's "Yes," didn't make the charts in the US or Britain. Their second one, "Time and a Word," only made it to 46 in the British charts and not at all in the US charts. None of their singles made the charts anywhere. 

During these years they were struggling, they played for the BBC a fair amount. But once they made it really big, after the "Fragile" album was released in late 1971, they dropped the BBC like a hot potato, and almost never played for the BBC again. So the first three BBC albums I'll be posting all focus on those early years. (They played one concert for the BBC in the late 1970s, so I'll be posting that one too.)

All the songs here are from 1969. All but the last three are from proper BBC studio sessions. Of the last three, two were played for the "Beat Club" TV show in Germany, and one was done for a French TV show. All but one of these songs were included on an official BBC compilation album called "Something's Coming, The BBC Recordings 1969-1970." Note that means that even two of those non-BBC TV show appearances were included. The only unreleased song is "Survival" from the "Beat Club."

While putting this collection together, I read a bunch of reviews of the official BBC album, and I saw lots of complaints about the sound quality. Multiple people said it didn't sound as good as other BBC albums by other artists from the time period. I had to agree the sound was often just okay, not great. Normally, there isn't much I can do about that - the saying about polishing a turd comes to mind. 

But in this case, there is something I could do that I think helped a lot. I noticed that probably the main problem with most of the songs on this album was that lead singer Jon Anderson's vocals were too low in the mix, for whatever reason. So I used the audio editing program X-Minus to boost them relative to the instruments. I did that for all the songs here, except for one from the Beat Club that didn't need it. So for once, the "Edit" mentions in the titles refer to that edit instead of the usual BBC DJ banter problem. (There were no cases of that here.) 

I think this simple lead vocals fix helped a lot. A couple of songs, like the last one, still sound a bit rough, but overall it's much more listenable.

Most of the songs here are originals from the band's first two albums. But "Something's Coming" was originally from the "West Side Story" musical and only appeared as a B-side. "Everydays" was first done by Buffalo Springfield, "Every Little Thing" by the Beatles, and "No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed" by Richie Havens.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Something’s Coming [Edit] (Yes)
02 Everydays [Edit] (Yes)
03 Sweetness [Edit] (Yes)
04 Dear Father [Edit] (Yes)
05 Every Little Thing [Edit] (Yes)
06 Looking Around [Edit] (Yes)
07 Beyond and Before [Edit] (Yes)
08 Survival (Yes)
09 No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed [Edit] (Yes)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15190983/Yess_1969_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a promo photo session in 1969.

Yes - An Acoustic Evening with Yes (2004) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

You may  remember a couple of months back, I started posting some albums created by my musical friend Mike Solof. He's got some more ready to go, so I'm going to try to post more of them soon. If you recall what I wrote about his albums previously, he's more into some musical artists than I am, so he can fill in some gaps in my music collection.

The prog rock band Yes has been around for ages, but they were never known to play acoustically. However, around 2004, they did some acoustic shows for the first time. Mike has put together a kind of ideal acoustic concert from them, mostly using two concert recordings from 2004, but also a few other bits and pieces.

Mike has a habit of making PDF files to go with his albums that contain extensive comments and even some photos. So rather than have everything explained twice, I'll leave the rest of the write up to him. But be assured that if you like Yes and you like acoustic music, this will be right up your alley. The sound quality is great throughout.

Mike also has a habit of creating a single mp3 file for his albums. So, like we've done with his previous posted albums, there are two versions. One has each song as a separate track, as usual, and the other is the single mp3 file. Since this album isn't that large (about 50 minutes long), I've put both versions in one zip file (along with the PDF file he made).

01 We Have Heaven [Acappella Version] (Yes)
02 The Meeting (Yes)
03 Long Distance Runaround (Yes)
04 Intro to South Side of the Sun (Yes)
05 South Side of the Sun (Yes)
06 Show Me (Yes)
07 Wondrous Stories (Yes)
08 Time Is Time (Yes)
09 I’ve Seen All Good People (Yes)
10 Roundabout (Yes)
11 Owner of a Lonely Heart (Yes)
12 Leave It [Acappella Version] (Yes)
13 Tiger Rag [Soundcheck Bonus] (Yes)

NOTE: THE SINGLE MP3 FILE VERSION HAS THIS NAME:
An Acoustic Evening with Yes (Gapless) (Yes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AUCF4yNz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yVKlDMTBdb7NBEt/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/iTJ7U

I'm not sure where the cover art is from. Hopefully Mike can explain. The only thing I did was add the text at the bottom.