Thread by @EsotericCD

It occurs to me I've never done a tweetstorm about the band Yes, which feels like something I should rectify, because no matter how incomprehensible Jon Anderson's lyrics or natural countertenor range are, Yes was legitimately great:

"Starship Trooper" has no real lyrical meaning (though it's still probably more faithful to the spirit of the Heinlein book than Verhoeven's movie, lol), but who cares. That music. THOSE MELODIES. "Speak to me of summer, long winters longer than time can remember..."

Also, Yes killed it live, absolutely killed. I don't even LIKE this song in its (famous) studio incarnation. But done live? It's their single greatest stage song:

As you know if you've listened to @Political_Beats's "Great Cover Songs" episode, I consider Yes's utterly hilarious demolition & reconstruction of Simon & Garfunkel's "America" to be one of the truly great covers of all time. TEN AND A HALF MINUTES:

Confession: this song led to one of the funnier moments of college, where my sophomore suitemate, hearing me sing along to it at the top of my lungs, actually pulled me aside to ask me how it was possible for my voice to get that high. He wasn't appalled...he wanted *to know how*

My explanation, if I remember correctly, was something like "50% natural talent, 50% total go-for-it shamelessness." You gotta fear absolutely nothing to sing that high in your chest voice.

It's still the best side-long song ever written/recorded in the popular music era. I like Genesis more, I like King Crimson more, I like Can more, but look: if we're talking about a side-long slab of vinyl, nothing will ever top "Close To The Edge." Ever:

Irony: the recording of this song -- the noodling around in the studio, the edits, the lack of any agreed-upon song form requiring endless assemblies of spliced tapes -- is what led Bill Bruford to quit Yes and join King Crimson. And yet it's Yes's greatest song.

"Close To The Edge" also contains one of the most stupefyingly bad Jon Anderson lyrics, RIGHT AT THE JUMP:

A seasoned witch will call you from the depths of your disgrace
And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace.

Imagine how great a song has to be to survive THAT.

You open your sidelong opus with a couplet like that? You damn well better have written the greatest rock concerto in the history of the format.

Luckily, for Yes...well...

Long after Yes were officially supposed to be Not Good they were still, in fact, Extremely Good:

I don't care what your preferred genre is. Pop, soul, hip-hop, R&B, prog, math-rock, whatever: you cannot resist that opening bassline into those soaring 1980-era synths. Geoff Downes was so underrated.

Yup, that's right, I'm the sort of Yes fan who dislikes TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS but is 100% standing ready to go to bat for DRAMA.

"Fusion" is a badly abused term in rock music, but I'm not really sure what else to call this song, which is half honky-tonk gutbucket Elmore James and half High Church Prog, other than "fusion." The best, most hilarious sort of fusion:

The thrill of hearing the song "Going For The One" is the the precise thrill of hearing something that you know, from second one, that *has never been done before*. And will never be done again. It may be the single most inspired moment of Steve Howe's entire life.

It's song that hits you so hard, so fast, and in such a blazing rush of glorious WTF incomprehensibility that you're left wearing all your clothes backwards by the time it's finished.

Only solution: put it on a second time to flip 'em back the right way.