Background So why would a blog site ostensibly about Yes include a review of the reborn Home Service's new project. The seed was planted in 1975 with Gryphon, a kind of renaissance progressive rock band, supporting Yes's 1975 Relayer Tour. My interest was peaked by the astonishing "Rising Up Like the Sun" LP from the Albion Band which had a breadth and audacity which took the term "folk rock" to a new level. Many of the members of the core band morphed into Home Service with an expectation that journey begun on "Rising" would continue. Now 30 years after the excellent "All Right Jack"comes a reborn band with new players and a new CD. "New Ground"  Overall Impressions The introduction of John Kirkpatrick as vocalist, replacing John Tams, reminds me how important it is to have a singer who has their own identifiable style. John sits snuggly inside the "Home Service" ethos but is entirely his own man with a soli...

The second part of the Anderson Trilogy has now been released. It is an inter-net collaboration between Jon Anderson and Roine Stolt the guitarist with the Flower Kings and Transatlantic. Jon sent Roine a number of his music files of demo’s recorded with various collaborators and Roine, with the help of band mates and musical accomplices, fleshed out those demos and the results were traded back and forth until they were happy a final result had been achieved.     Part 1 A Prog - Rock Musical Soundtrack Olias comes to Hollywood.   The first suite of three movements begins evoking the spirit of the re introduced beginning of Tales From Topographic Oceans, before a neat flurry from Tom Brislin (Keyboards). The main melodic riff is a variation from Yes’s ”The Ancient” which Roine Stolt constantly borrows quotes from as the piece proceeds, indeed the quotes from The Ancient are passed baton like between Jonas Reingold (Bass), Tom and R...

Yes UK Tour 2016  Glasgow - The Power and the Glory For the first concert on the UK tour in 2016 the band began in Glasgow. I was fortunate enough to attend the concert and my overwhelming impression was of the renewed energy and commitment of the band, which was given full reign on the first ever complete performance of Drama, an album which itself was an attempt to reconnect with a more direct and powerful vision for Yes.  This was the first UK date since the CEO of Yes Chris Squire had passed away and so the much loved Billy Sherwood, Chris's acolyte, had a number of challenges and not all purely musical ones. Billy played with gusto and drove the material he was charged with from Drama, like Does It Really Happen, which is lead by the Bass, with exactly the right amount of focus and pace. But Yes is not just about great instrumentals it is about great vocals and I was fascinated to see how they would build on bot...

Malcolm Birkett September 2014. “I have to go to Aspen, this maybe my last chance to see Jon” Jean Luc Ponty August 2014 “…. and will film our very first concert in Aspen. This way people can find out what to expect when we tour in 2015. It’s better than trying to explain with words”.  Jon Anderson August 2014 ”It’s going to be a live show, because that’s who we are. We’re a live band. Right away, we said, “I don’t want to go into the studio and make an album. I want to do a live show.” It’ll be a two-hour live CD/DVD. It’s what we are. We’re not trying to make a hit album. We want to make a damn good live show, and that will transform itself into a video and sound experience” So with Jean Luc’s and Jon’s remarks ringing in my ears it seemed only right to experience the DVD first as it would explain what we can expect in the coming touring cycle better than any words would do. It also helped to have read   Sean McKee’s sober assessment of the challenges of...

The Bruford Years Chris and Bill made six albums together culminating in his solo album "Fish Out of Water",  the latter was recorded three years after Bill had left Yes, an interesting statement about their artistic relationship. They both have said see they saw their relationship as one created out of musical differences. What I see  is a substantial meeting of musical minds both determined not to be shackled by the orthodox principles of the rock rhythm section.  Once they really got up a head of steam and found their own vocabulary on a piece like "Long Distance Runaround" they made Yes sound like an electric string quartet. The rhythm and momentum of the piece comes from all the players short runs, staccato bursts and melodic interjections were as likely to come from Chris's Bass as Ricks keyboards. It gave the music a lightness, warmth and colour and sense of joy that can often be missing from a more sexually driven, angst ridden rock and roll perspec...

Smile its Steve Howe on Guitar Whenever I sit waiting for Steve to come on I do wonder how one man and his guitar can make for a special night. He began with the Martin M38 which gives a bright sound and in that first phase played a couple of Trio pieces including the Holly's cover. The Trio album is apparently now finished. "Diary of A Man Who Disappeared" and then he brought this section to a conclusion with "To Be Over" I thought a good deal about Malcolm during this piece. The music making was fantastic and being able to sit and listen to this timeless piece of music in its naked form works perfectly. He switches to the Kohno for my favourite part of the concert. The sound is so warm and musical and pieces from the Steve Howe Album and Grand Scheme of Things and the re imagined piece Corkscrew sounded superb. Intersection Blues with that constant return to the rotating central motife was proceeded by Little Gilliard. I do love all of his music in conce...

There is a light halestone shower as we drive up out of Todmordon, birth place of Keith Emerson and move in to Lancashire 20 miles North is Accrington birth place of Jon Anderson and 20 miles south is St John The Divine Church Sale. No sign of spring on this grey overcast day as we all converge to say our good byes and come to understand a little more of the remarkable life of Malcolm Birkett. Sale is an attractive leafy superb of Manchester and the church a wonderful piece of architecture built in the hey day of the first economic miracle to sweep the dales and valleys of the North of England. Isn't life strange, I have a life long interest in an unorthodox rock band from the sixties and seventies and I am sat in a church listening to the bands music surrounded by some of the nicest people you could wish to meet with one of the great success stories of the current lineup immediately behind with his lo...