Category: Reviews (Page 6 of 9)

Can’t escape the puns… or the MORONS.

We were a little late leaving the house – I’d decided to cook spaghetti and it needs time, you can’t rush it – but as it turned out we were fine time-wise.

The Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas has a very nice 2000-seat venue called “The Joint” which was aptly named considering the *cough* ambience. We had basically the best seats: third tier, which means a way back, but up a couple of levels; but the very front row of that tier. This meant that if we were the kind of people who trek back and forth to the bar every 10 minutes (see MORONS above) then we would very easily be able to accidentally dump the drink contents on the heads of the people in the back row of the second tier. And they get to pay $25 more for that privilege.

We had the two seats nearest the center aisle, so got to enjoy the rest of the row pushing past us to get to the bar. Oh well.

The show kicked off a little after 8:00pm, with the whole band looking kind of tired, as though they’d just got off the plane. A lack-luster version of “Siberian Khatru” started off a little slowly, and never really came together – was it the sound mix? Timing? Hard to say. This is a shame because SK is a favorite of mine and deserves better.

Jon was wearing a bandage on his hand but he took it off at the end of this song. Perhaps all his banging on the tambourine loosened it up?

“Magnification” was next, going straight into “Don’t Kill The Whale”. A nice transition, very heavy and the band was playing tightly by this time.

Uh oh… Next up was “In The Presence Of” which is ok but nothing special. Very languorous piece, sucks the energy out of a concert.

The vocal rounds of “We Have Heaven” – heavily supported with vocal backup tapes – segued nicely into “South Side of the Sky”, another favorite of mine and they pretty much nailed it. Why must people inist on TALKING LOUDLY throughout the quiet piano bit? Why? (See MORONS above.)

Steve Howe played a couple of solo steel guitar pieces and proved he still has the speed and dexterity of a top-class finger-picker.

After a 10-minute intermission, Jon Anderson came out. He was more spaced-out than usual, but played a solo number called “Show Me”.

Rick Wakeman played a solo spot consisting of 16 bars each from all “Six Wives” and some “King Arthur”.

The rest of the setlist was “Heart of the Sunrise”, “Long Distance Runaround/Fish”, and “Awaken”. The encore was “Starship Trooper”.

There was a funny bit during the encore, when Steve switches to acoustic for the hillbilly fingerpicking part, he started playing and no sound came out! Jon was holding the note, “Shared….aaaaarrrred” and then Rick picked up the plinky riff on piano for a few bars, then the guitar tech came running out, gave the acoustic guitar a “boff” with his fist, and the sound came back and Steve picked up the riff again. Pretty funny.

What was wrong? They didn’t play CLOSE TO THE EDGE! They had done so on every other date so far on this tour. Why not here? My only guess is that Jon’s voice was giving him trouble – which it was – and they skipped this to cut him some slack.

Apart from “Long Distance” and “Starship” it was essentially the same setlist from the previous two times I’d seen Yes, so this was kind of a shame. Still – bonus concertgoers can’t be choosy.

How do you detect a MORON? On the way filing out the door they say things like “Well, I actually enjoyed that!”

We are so behind on our movie watch list that we made a special effort today to go out and see a film. We selected “Solaris” which just opened on Friday.

It’s very good, but relies on a careful balance of several things: a) the music, which is very atmospheric and good; b) the actors, who are very good; c) the script, which walks a fine line between boring and subtle. Oh, and d) might be that it expects a certain level of intelligence from the audience, but maybe I’m just being elitist.

I enjoyed it. If you want things explained for you, you might not enjoy it.

Well, we’ve just got back from the Pat Metheny “Speaking of Now” concert at the House of Blues in Mandalay Bay. The House Of Blues is a good venue – if you have good seats. Unfortunately, ours were terrible. We deliberately chose seats from the upstairs price range because the last couple of times we’ve been to a concert there, the stalls/downstairs is standing only. Well, it turned out they’d set up folding seats on the floor, so that would have been fine.

Also, we must have bought our tickets from a complete drongo behind the counter because our supposedly more expensive seats were actually off to the side and we could only see half the band! The venue has these two big video screens, but even then you still only see what they chose to display on them at any given time.

The music, however, was excellent. That Pat Methany, he can play guitar. A whole other league of musicianship.

He played a variety of guitars, mostly his Ibanez signature model (http://www.ibanez.com/pm/) or one of his three (!) Roland GR-300 synth guitars which are practically antiques now. At one point he had a 42-string acoustic harp guitar which sounded astounding. I found a picture of it here (scroll down): http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/5886/met_stru.html.

I would write more about this concert, but I’ve just found this concert review on-line which says it all better than I could: http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~astudent/2001-2002/issue19/arts/04.html.

I’d wanted to see this film for a while. It’s written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the same creative force behind “Princess Mononoke”, which suffered from a terrible dubbing job.

“Spirited Away” is a completely different story (literally) and although we saw the English dubbed version, it was an excellent job that did nothing to detract from the beauty of the story or the charm of the animation.

As we walked out of the theatre, Lisa described it by saying, “It’s like I’ve discovered another Moomin book,” which will make no sense unless you’ve read Tove Janssen’s children’s books about the Moomins.

RECOMMENDED!

We parked in the parking building, and took the escalators down to the walkway and past a winding tunnel of shops, up another escalator and round a corner, and suddenly we were in the vast marble lobby of the largest hotel in the world.

(Some background on the MGM Grand: It’s got over 5000 rooms. If you’ve ever seen panorama views of the Las Vegas “Strip” (i.e. the opening credit sequence of CSI), then be informed that the MGM Grand is the huge green one.  It’s basically a small city in its own right. Factoid: Of the 20 largest hotels in the world, 17 of them are in Vegas, 16 of them on the ‘Strip. What a crazy place.)

The lobby made me think of roller-skating dancers in big frilly dresses. I do not know why, maybe it was somthing about all that white marble. Once we’d crossed the lobby, we entered the casino part of the building. I think the entire ground floor of the huge cross-shaped building is taken up by casino paraphernalia and restaurants. We wandered around for a while, hugging the walls and looking at menus. We finally decided that a place called Grand Wok looked good, reasonably priced, interesting pan-Asian menu, and best of all, it was separated from the casino floor by a glass wall.

Once we sat down in the non-smoking area, we discovered that the glass wall possibly kept the noise from the kitchen *in* rather than the noise of the casino *out*. Hey, I guess that’s as intimate as it gets in a casino…

Dinner was very nice. Excellent won-ton soup. We would eat there again, should we ever have another reason to be in the MGM Grand. (That’s the thing, you gotta have a reason to be there in the first place, I’d never seek it out just for the experience.)

After dinner we wandered around the “Studio Boulevard” area which was fortunately a slot machine free area. Instead, it hosted more shops and restaurants, including important places like Starbucks and Sunglasses Hut, and restrooms hidden behind a facade labelled “Municipal Power And Waterworks”.

We made our way past the shops and through the gates into the Grand Garden Arena. It was quite a transition, from the finery and glitter of the shopping area, to the industrial concrete of the arena periphery. I had a flashback of the Oakland Coliseum in 1994, queuing for our seats to see Pink Floyd on the Division Bell tour….

I had bought the tickets online and therefore although I knew the seat layout, I had figured that our seats were ok, but not special. We were located about four tiers up, the lower part of the raised U-shaped seating , in one corner, with the stage at the other end. Basically we’d have to turn our heads 20 degrees to our left in order to be looking directly at the stage.

Surprisingly, these turned out to be excellent seats. I don’t know if I can describe it correctly, but because we were sitting just after the point where the raised seating starts its curve around the back of the arena, we could look across the top of a reduced number of seats – Lisa could see most of the stage even when she was sitting down and everyone else was standing up!

We were sitting next to a 12-year old boy who was at his first concert with his parents. His Dad lent us their programme so that we could read the blurb and look at the pictures. (We hadn’t bothered to get a programme, only $15 but still…)

Some background for those of you not intimately familiar with the band Rush: They’re Canadian, proponents of what I call “intelligent rock” that intersects with both progressive rock and heavy metal audiences. Their last tour was 5 years ago. They didn’t actually split up, but went into an apparent permanent hiatus after their drummer Neal Peart suffer a couple of personal tragedies and retired from the music business to “rediscover his purpose in life” or something like that. This year, though, the band got back together and recorded a new album, “Vapor Trails”. Now, I didn’t actually like their last effort (“Test For Echo”) much, but I bought a copy of the new long-awaited album just like all the other hard-core fans. Well, I don’t think that much of “Vapor Trails” much either. (Suggested one-word review: “Reeks.”) But that really doesn’t matter, because Rush are known for putting on great performances that showcase selected tracks from various albums released throughout their 30-year career, and this show was sure to include a bunch of personal all-time favorites, many that have musically influenced me over the years.

And they did not disappoint. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

While we were waiting for 8:00pm to arrive, we amused ourselves by checking out the stage. On guitarist Alex Lifeson’s side, we have a big stack of amps and speakers. In the middle, Neil Peart’s impressive sparkly red drum kit on a riser. On the right behind Geddy Lee’s mike and keyboard stand, are…. three large white clothes dryers, individually miked.

Now, as far as I know, you can’t play an amplified bass guitar through a clothes dryer. But it sure looked as though that’s what they were going to do. My guess is that Geddy’s bass amp was hidden off stage, or more likely, just behind the appliances. I’m sure that Geddy was making some kind of point about how much hardware Alex needs to cart around for his guitar amplification…

(I theorised that, in fact, these machines were the three “pods” that Rush would emerge from, a la “Spinal Tap”.)

I looked around the 17,000 seat arena. I’d say there were a bit less than 10,000 people there. The pre-show taped music I think was from a local radio station, playing ‘Floyd’s “Welcome To the Machine” and Yes’ “South Side of the Sky” among other, less identifiable music.

At 7:53, the front stage lights went out. The crowd initially roared its appreciation, but then the sound dies away, as nothing else happens. Then, at about 7:56, the clothes dryers kicked into action, three strange portholes glowing as red and white laundry spins and flops about in each of the machines. Again, the crowd stirred expectantly.

Lisa and I put in our earplugs.

At 8:00 precisely, the “Three Stooges” theme tune played, whilst behind the stage, a huge projection screen displayed a classic poster of the three stooges, with the faces of Geddy, Neil, and Alex “photoshopped” into place, each with its own label underneath: “Ged”, “Neil”, “Brad Pitt”. Rush walked onto the stage as the whole arena roared with excitement, then the stage lights flared and Rush launched into “Tom Sawyer”. (If you know the music, you’ll know what I mean when I say it has a certain… impact.) It was pretty loud.

First the bad news: the sound quality could have been better. I don’t think this was Rush’s fault. The Grand Garden Arena is a big and boomy venue, and the sound guys probably did their best. Our earplugs cut down on the dangerous high frequencies and made the music volume enjoyable but it was a very bassy and muddied mix. Neil’s low tom-tom drums made the whole place reverberate.

Fanboy warning: I’m going to do a song-by-song run-down, so if you’re not interested in the details, you might like to skip ahead. A quick summary: They played two sets *and* an encore, and they were mostly brilliant. The effects and lighting were FANTASTIC. This was the best gosh darn arena show I’ve ever seen, and the only other one was Pink Floyd in ’94 so that’s either saying a lot or very little. I’m not sure which.

During “Tom Sawyer” we found out that there were three large video screens: two square ones on either side, and a large rectangular one hanging up behind the band. The side ones were usually showing close-up shots, and the center one sometimes duplicated the middle section of the side screens, or was showing various song-specific animations.

The next song was a mystery until I identified the swirly burbling sound effect: “Distant Early Warning” from _Grace_Under_Pressure_.

Then, straight into “New World Man” from _Signals_.

Without letting up, we were treated to the title track from the _Roll_The_Bones_ album, complete with skeleton animations and pre-recorded rap voice over in the middle section.

I think Geddy said Hi at this point, and introduced the next number, “EarthShine” from _Vapor_Trails_. Eh, it’s just noise really. But after the suberb opening numbers, I was not complaining.

The stacatto tinkle of a triangle introduced the powerful instrumental “YYZ” played note perfect and complete – no sequed medley or interspliced drum solo thank goodness.

Next, Geddy introduced a song close to Rush’s heart, “The Pass” from _Presto_. The corresponding video played on the big screen during this number.

“Bravado” was next. Not one of my favorites, I had to look up which album it’s from: _Roll_The_Bones_. They did an OK rendition, I guess.

Kapow! The opening chords of “The Big Money” from _Power_Windows_, one of my favorites and one I was NOT expecting to hear. Hooray! A “Matrix” style video of numbers falling on a green screen accompanied this one.

I have to say at this point it seemed the entire audience was into the music, singing along and everything. Cool!

Geddy announced the next one was a surprise they just added to the set last night: “The Trees” from _Hemispheres_. Excellent. Going back in time to ’78 for that one.

I almost hoped they’d segue straight into “Xanadu” like they did on one of their live albums, but no: Still back in time, though, for “Free Will” from 1980’s _Permanent_Waves_.

They finished up their first set with “Natural Science”, from the same album, possibly one of my favorite Rush tracks ever. Animations of DNA or something going on on the projection screen.

Having played for 75 minutes – seemed longer – Rush took a 15 minute break. Lisa and I took out our earplugs. “I’ve already heard more of my favorite tracks than I could have hoped for,” I told Lisa. Even if they played nothing but stuff from their last few albums in the second set, I’d still feel satisfied.

During the break, technicians were tweaking a big green laser, getting it set up correctly I guess. So far we’d had extremely cool lighting along with the video screens, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The lights slowly fade down, as a video of a sunrise, in real-time, plays on the three video screens. We hear frogs, birds, and things, as the sky slowly brightens on a sheltered lake between tall mountains. Something stirs in the distance – a lizard? Dinosaur? A puff of flame reveals it to be a number of dragons waking up (A brace of dragons? A grate of dragons? I dunno.) One of them stretches, looks left, then right, pulls out a cigar and lights it with a quick exhalation, and puffs away, reducing a theatrical and dramatic build-up to basic comedy. Hmm. Rush have come back to the stage, and as they launch into the opening chords of “One Little Victory” from their new album, giant flames shot up around the sides and behind the stage. Apparently the dragon had set the stage on fire!

OK, the song kind of sucks, but the animation was good – the dragon was flying around and occasionally he’d blow a fireball out of the screen and onto the side of the stage, which exploded in real flames obligingly. I bet Neil was feeling the heat.

“Driven” from their last album _Test_For_Echo_ was next. Too loud and noisy. Didn’t like it, except for the bass solo section which was pretty cool. (Geddy Lee is my favorate bass player, after Chris Squire of Yes.) This was followed by “Ghost Rider” from _Vapor_Trails_. Basically white noise. Stupid animation too. “Secret Touch” was next. More of the same. (Sorry, I really can’t stand _Vapor_Trails_. There’s a lot wrong with it, and people are just so happy to have Rush back as a touring and recording unit, they can’t find it in themselves to be critical, I guess.)

Fortunately for me, things got better. The green laser kicked in to life, criss-crossing the arena with a flickering network of beams along with the opening guitar appegios of “Dreamline” from _Roll_The_Bones_. My favorite track on the album. I love lasers. Cool.

The audience went absolutely berzerk over the line, “She’s got a sister out in Vegas, the promise of a decent job…” Sometimes life is just fun.

I’m losing steam here. Let’s see…. “Red Sector A”, rocking. A sole representation from _Counterparts_: the instrumental “Leave That Thing Alone”, rocked.  

Ah, the drum solo. A staple of Rush shows. Alex and Ged leave the stage while Neil shows us why he is the stick master. His drum kit would spin 180 degrees on demand, as Neil stood up, turned around on his stool, and face the audience again, this time seated at a different kit. It totally rocked, with four distinct sections, and he finished up by accompanying a pre-recorded big band swing number, playing the drum part. Totally cool.

Neil takes a break, and Alex and Ged pick up acoustic guitars for a very low key but beautiful acoustic rendiction of “Resist” from _Test_For_Echo_.

You can tell you’re nearing the end when the opening swirly synths of the mega-opus “2112” from the album of the same name. Oh, man, the anticpation. The whole arena was ready for this. Da-dum! The “Overture” begins.

There’s a section in the Overture where everyone stands up, yells and pumps their arm in time with the music. Kind of 1,2,3 – “Hey!” 1,2,3 – “Hey!” I know, it’s a real rock-in-roll cliche. But these guys were pumping this stuff out in 1976. This isn’t Cliche. This is the Real Deal. Nostalgia? Who cares, I’m turning the volume up to 11.

Geddy proves he still has vocal chords capable of belting out the tune of “The Temples of Syrinx” ultrasonically as 2112 conitinues.

Just in case we thought they were going to give us the full 21 minutes and 12 seconds of 2112, they stop, switch gears, and go straight into “Limelight” from _Moving_Pictures_. That’s the *other* track I didn’t dare hope to hear. Oh, Yeah!

Well, knock me out and call me a throw rug, we get ALL of the instrumental showpeice from _Hemispheres_, “La Villa Strangiato”. Where do these guys get their energy? We’re dying of pleasure here.

“Spirit of Radio” was the second set closer, everyone screaming at just the right point in the song, “The words of the prophets are written on the studio walls – Concert Halls!” (Crowd noise)

Of course, we demand – and get – an encore. Or three.

“By-Tor and the Snow Dog”, “Cygnus X-1” (is Colin dead? Aparently he died of contentment.) and lastly, “Working Man” from their very first album, which I have never actually heard.

Before Rush left the stage for the last time that evening, they switched off the clothes dryers and pulled out some tour shirts, which they then flung into the audience.

OK, I give in! I’ll probably see Rush again next tour.

Officially Bonnie Raitt was headlining, but it was really a double headliner, I think. Lyle Lovett came out first, still hobbling a bit from an accident that happened earlier this year (http://www.nyrock.com/worldbeat/03_2002/033002.asp). He was dressed conservatively in black, with one trouser leg split up the side to allow room for the metal frame supporting his lower right leg.

This was Lyle’s “Big Band” show, and he has some truly first class musicians included in the line-up. Musically his songs where kind of cross-over: country blues swing big-band kind of stuff. Lyle sat down cradling his acoustic and in his distinctive voice,  sang his own songs filled with intelligence and humour, interspersed with self-deprecating and humble, amusing conversation. I’m a total convert. Lyle Rocks.

Then Bonnie joined the band and they sang a duet, before a short intermission after which Bonnie came out with her much smaller and conventional rock group, and wowed us with her skills on the slide guitar. Yes, Virginia, she can play guitar.

For the occasional song, members of Lyle’s band would come out and join in, and for the last few songs Lyle himself joined in on a couple of duets.

This double-barreled shotgun blast of a concert made for a long evening, but I’m very glad we went. I’m gonna add some Lyle Lovett CD’s to our collection – we already have plenty of Bonnie.

At around 9:30 I changed into my “Topographic Oceans” T-shirt and we jumped in the car and drove to the Hilton for the Yes concert, which was due to open at 10:30.

This was the last show of the current tour, and I think it is fitting that Lisa and I saw the first one in Seattle, and the last one here in Vegas with Teresa and Derek.

I had some initial worries that the show would be a reduced 90 minute one due to performance policy restrictions in place at the Hilton theater. However, the newsgroup reported that the previous night’s show was a good 2 hours and 10 minutes, and that the Hilton people were understanding and adaptable. (Apparently the 90 minute limit is a minimum to prevent acts from short-changing the audience…)

Derek & Teresa aren’t dedicated fans of the band, but they like good music and can respect and enjoy excellent musicianship when they see it, so I’m pretty sure they had a good time.

The show was pretty much the same as the one we saw earlier in Seattle, except that they dropped the solo numbers and one piece (The Revealing) and added an additional encore, Yours Is No Disgrace, which frankly I enjoyed more.

It was after 1:00 am by the time we flopped into bed.

The plan for today was to go see a movie at the Suncoast and then possibly pop across the road to the Regent/JW Marriot to introduce Josh and Anna to the Irish Pub there.

We modified the plan slightly. After seeing the film “Signs” and then foraging at Trader Joe’s, we went straight home and I cooked a pasta sauce using some of the grilled chicken breasts from last night, on penne.

“Signs” was good. I think we all enjoyed it a lot, although being the product of M.Night Shyamalan’s active imagination, we weren’t sure what to expect. It’s not quite a science fiction story, although things happen in the film that you would normally associate with that genre. It’s more a story about how an ex-Episcopalian priest (who has lost his faith through personal tragedy) and his family react and deal with extraordinary world events.

What makes the film really good is great casting, wonderful acting, and a fantastic soundtrack – I’m not just talking about the music, I mean the sound effects, everything.

I had fun cooking, then after dinner we watched a Rugby game we’d taped earlier – NZ vs. Australia for the Bledisloe Cup, part of the Tri-nations tournament.

People who know me will know that I am not a sport afficionado, and do not normally seek out Sport on TV. But maybe because Josh was here, or maybe I was just feeling nostalgic, whatever – I really enjoyed the game. It was really exciting!

It helps to find the page in the TV guide where they list dates and times by game type. I can look up “Rugby” in the list and see exactly when a game is on, then tape it. Josh says he’ll watch any rugby game I can tape, so I’ll probably try taping the rest of the tri-nations stuff and send them to him.

Cluching our print-at-home-from-PDF ticketmaster tickets, Lisa and I entered the Paramount Theatre amongst a mixed-age crowd of happy yesfans. Inside, I looked for a stand with T-shirts, programmes, and other miscellania but I couldn’t see anything obvious. Oh well, first show of the tour, probably like the last one, the merchandise wouldn’t be available until later on in the tour.

We had pretty good seats on the second mezzanine level, it would have been excellent except for the hulking guys sitting in front of us. Can’t complain too much, we still had an excellent view of the stage…

Until YES walked on to the happy sounds of the “Young Persons Guide To The Orchestra”, at which point everyone stood up for a standing ovation to the guys. Now I am average height and could see ok if I stood up, but my wife is slightly vertically challenged to the point that she didn’t even try standing up to see over the shoulders of the guys in front.

A brief satorial word about the Yes-men:

Steve – thin, with stage lights glinting off his spectacles, wearing dark pants and a black-and-white silk shirt. This time around he has limited his arsenal to 4 guitars: The ES-175D; The yellow “fat” telecaster; the pedal steel, and a classical guitar (I’m wrong – also the “close to the edge” 335 came out once or twice, as did the Steinberger 12-string.)

Jon – In terrific voice, better than ever. Not sure about the lime-green track suit though. He played backup guitar a lot on his strange-looking custom instrument – it looks a bit like a “travelling” acoustic, only with scrolls attached to the body, knobs for volume and MIDI (?) and, a nice touch this, the “Olias” pentangle thingy in the sound hole.

Chris – he’s gained some weight, Lisa thought he looked a bit unhealthy, and he’s grown his hair out so that the floor fan he has down by his pedal-board blows it around. Shades of Spinal Tap videos, but I guess it keeps him cool. No boots this time – neat black leathers with a bit of a shine.

Alan – same as ever. He’s a dynamo.

Rick – A bit plump around the middle, but actually looks great, with flowing blonde locks, a sparkly silver “Matrix” overcoat over a white turtle-neck and black pants.

Let me say up front that the lighting was HORRIBLE! Spots wrong, cues missed, I hope this gets fixed later on.

On to the set list:

Siberian Khatru – A great but predictable opener. Everyone stood up an cheered at the Wakeman keyboard flourishes. Damn it, but that man has presence. I can’t help it, I’m getting excited at the classic line-up. Steve has pretty good guitar tone, but the end solo lacked a little fire. Still good though.

America – I didn’t expect this, and I must confess I was thinking “uh oh, it’s going to be a replay of the same set list from last time Rick Wakeman played with the band, in San Luis Obisbo ’96”. By the time we got to the middle part of the song where Steve gets all fired up, I’d changed my mind. It’s an exciting piece. Wakeman was clearly reading from a score/chord sheet on a stand in one corner of his keyboard array.

In The Presence Of – Wakeman made this work, even without the original orchestra. His piano introduction sounded like it was always meant to be that way. Wakeman was still reading the cues off a chart, with glasses, but he did ok. A few missed cues, but overall I didn’t miss the orchestra. Jon Anderson forgot the words to the second section, but the band kept time in a holding pattern until he remembered them. The audience laughed along with him and shouted out suggestions.

South Side Of The Sky – They nailed this. What took them so long? THIS ROCKED. The alternating duel back-and-forth between Steve’s guitar and Rick’s minimoog on the outro in South Side Of The Sky was totally cool.

The Revealing Science – Um. This threatened to become a train wreck at more than one point. I hope this gets tightened up by the time I see them again in Vegas. Wakeman has a good solo in him somewhere towards the end, I just wish it would come out right!

Steve Howe Solo – the other guys left the stage, with Jon saying “We’ll leave you in the capable hands of Mr Steve Howe!”. Chris and Rick looked _very_ chummy at this point, arms round each other’s shoulders.

The roadies brought a chair right out front and center, and Steve came up the front with his classical guitar and played two numbers:

– the acoustic section of The Ancient
– The Little Galliard.

When he’d finished, he came back to a mike and said, “Yes will take a short break, see you back here in 15 minutes!” and left the stage as the house lights went up.

An intermission at a Yes Concert? Does this mean a longer set, or does it mean they’ve gone backstage to figure out what to play next? Or to practice?

Fifteen minutes later, Jon wandered back on stage (this is a very casual, laid back, low-energy concert so far!) and picking up his special guitar, played a lovely tune I’d never heard before, I guess it might be called, “The Child With Everything”. It was really good, I look forward to hearing it finished on a future Yes album, or on The Big If, Jon’s solo project.

Towards the end of the peice, Wakeman wandered out and added additional keyboard textures.

Jon introduced “Mr Rick Wakeman” and Rick played a solo medley, including:

– Wondrous Stories (theme)
– And You And I (first part). It was strange hearing the 12-string part played on keyboards, but it worked, with Jon singing the verses.

Heart Of the Sunrise – The band came back and kicked into this, a competent redition of a largely predictable addition to the set list.

Magnification – this is a truly great song, the more I hear them perform it, the more I think it has the capability to become a true yes standard. Rick adequately replaced the orchestra, but there were a few somewhat inappropriate notes happening in their somewhere. Again, there was a cue sheet involved.

Don’t Kill The Whale – the heavy metal version! Quite the heaviest song Yes played all night. At this point, though, I was beginning to feel that we weren’t going to hear either On The Silent Wings Of Freedom or To Be Over…

“Here’s a song about a fish!” said Chris exuberantly, and played the repeated harmonic riff of “The Fish”. Chris and Alan proceeded to perform an exciting Bass and Drum solo, at one point going directly in to the intro of Silent Wings Of Freedom. “Excellent!” I thought. I could just see Rick and Steve coming back on stage to add their parts and for the band to kick in to the song proper…

…but I guess it doesn’t really happen. Alan and Chris veered off into other territories (including SoundChaser and Tempus Fugit) and eventually Rick and Steve came back to finish up The Fish. I was quite disappointed.

Out came Jon’s harp, and Yes finished up their set with “Awaken”. This also needed further rehearsal, with serious threats of train-wreck tendancies. I’ve heard better…

Hopefully, they’ll pull a surprise out of the catalogue for the obligatory encore. I shouldn’t have been optimistic. They came back and played the short version of “Roundabout”. Bah. I really think they should retire that for a while. Perpetual Change or No Disgrace or even Starship Trooper would have been good.

On the way down the stairs with the crowd, I noticed some tour T-shirts, the best one being the cover from Topographic Oceans (ironically, Rick’s least favorite Yes album) on the front and the tour itinerary on the back. I still couldn’t see the merchandise stand. I figure I’ll get a T-shirt at the Vegas show next month.