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.