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.