The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Bass Zone => Topic started by: wellREDman on May 07, 2016, 05:23:08 AM
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Just loaded Yes into the Brighton Centre, really looking forward to the show tonight.
Chris Squire's tech is looking after the new guy, had a great chinwag with him, He gave me a bag of Chris's old picks for my students,
they are just standard Jim Dunlop grey nylons, but if anyone is sentimental enough to want one PM me and ill post you one.
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that's great!
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Very cool.
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never seen a load in like it, a two truck production of which 45 foot (3/4 of the truck) was backline !
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How were they? Sherwood is doing a good job I think though his bass playing doesn't quite have Squire's natural machismo. Live, (old) Yes were very often to me a very dominating (but entertainingly and musicianly so) bass player with assorted co-musicians, his bass lines were the structure of the music. These days they are a band with a (very good) bass player.
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I really enjoyed it , my first time so nothing to compare them to, but live the bass still pleasingly dominates, Sherwood certainly is an impressive player but then I guess he'd have to be to fill those shoes.
apparently he won't play a Ric though, so he has the most ridiculous pedalboard I've ever seen to make his Warwick's (I think) sound right , its a bonkers 3 tier thing, complete with magnifying glass over the readout
I've got a picture of it that I'll upload when I get home
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Yeah, he plays a Warwick. Not touching the Ric is probably just a sign of respect, he doesn't want to ape Squire.
I like Downes as a keyboard player. He's no Rick Wakeman keyboard god, but I like the way he uses keyboards to embellish the music.
And Steve Howe is still a living breathing artefact of evidence for the apparent contradiction that you can get far as the guitarist in a rock band even if your own guitar style is totally non-rock. 8)
Did they play Owner of a Lonely Heart (after they were done with two of their 70ies albums plus Drama) as an encore and does Howe still grimace when he has to play it? :mrgreen:
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I think he is using Status basses; same thing really. Seems like he uses a few during a Yes set, presumably in different tunings. Active PJ basses, at the end of the day. With all the outboard gear in the world I don't see how he could get Squire's tone from a PJ configuration, but presumably he gets a similar scooped grind using various tricks. From the videos I've seen he doesn't shy away from the effects... fair play to the guy!
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I've seen him with a Warwick - that characteristic headstock is a dead giveaway. It might have eben been a Thumb bass or some other abomination.
STOP PRESS!!!
Alan, we were both wrong, it's a Spector (in my defense: easy enough to mistake with a Warwick given Warwick's early "inspiration").
(http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/2015/media/205646/_original/1439015053/1035x690-_MG_4644.jpg)
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heres the pedalboard http://imgur.com/aZKD1WL
apparently they wanted him to play Ric's but he couldnt get on with the necks, there is one of Squires Rics in his guitar vault that travels round with them as a tribute
they did play Lonely Heart, and Howe introduced it saying they make a point of playing material from every stage of their career
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heres the pedalboard http://imgur.com/aZKD1WL
I'd never be able to figure out how to use that, much less how to program it.
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they did play Lonely Heart, and Howe introduced it
- at gunpoint! -
saying they make a point of playing material from every stage of their career
His disdainful face is priceless when he plays it. :mrgreen:
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Looks like midi bass pedals (in the style of the Taurus), a multi effects unit and some sort of midi gadget? Or is it all midi controllers, controlling outboard effects?
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Who is singing now?
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I believe it is still Jon Davison?
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I believe that is a vocal processor on top, a bass multi-effect unit below that, and a set of Moog Taurus III pedals. Pretty simple really.
Jon Davison singing. I'm a lifelong Yes fan, but I can't get on board with this lineup. No Jon Anderson is one thing, but no Jon AND no Chris is pretty much a deal killer for me. That and when I saw them in 2014, Alan White was barely able to keep up the pace. What I'm really interested in is the upcoming Anderson/Rabin/Wakeman project.
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That last Yes album that Roy Thomas Baker produced - it was nothing short of horrible. Squire would have deserved to go out on something better, his project with Steve Hackett ("Sqackett") was good.
I liked the guy they had on Fly From Here (in the studio, he had a nice voice - live he no doubt lacked frontman qualities and was uncomfortable with them).
This new guy I know from Glasshammer, those Yank neo-Progsters. Certainly an able singer, but not Mr Charisma either.
By now there is not a single original Yes member left and only one from the classic line up (Howe).
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so the top bit is an autune unit??
my favourite bit is the magnifying glass mounted in front of the display on the middle unit
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I believe that is a vocal processor on top, a bass multi-effect unit below that, and a set of Moog Taurus III pedals. Pretty simple really.
Jon Davison singing. I'm a lifelong Yes fan, but I can't get on board with this lineup. No Jon Anderson is one thing, but no Jon AND no Chris is pretty much a deal killer for me. That and when I saw them in 2014, Alan White was barely able to keep up the pace. What I'm really interested in is the upcoming Anderson/Rabin/Wakeman project.
I'm conflicted, really. Chris wanted the band to go on, but when you just have Steve Howe and Alan as (barely) original members then it does seem a bit odd. Jon Anderson apparently got better, but Squire and company pretty much ignored him. Maybe it comes from that very English fear of personal conflict?
When will Yes become 'A Night with Steve Howe and Friends' for instance. Yes's music is living music, so when you replace all the original musicians with bit players then it does start to suffer. Yes's greatest works, in the main, were devised by over-privileged public school boys throwing the kitchen sink into every composition. The lyrics are obtuse and impenetrable, and the arrangements are needlessly complex, in part to demonstrate that these guys could come up with needlessly complex parts (does anybody actually enjoy Five per Cent of Nothing?). Yes's music is a young man's game, and you need that arrogant false confidence to pull it off, with the most sincerity anyway.
I feel the Yes timeline is synonymous with loss, really. The concerts recorded and included on the 'Progeny' release capture the band at the start of Alan's first tenure. Out goes Bruford's deft off-time jazzy feel, and snappy snare work, and in comes White's paunchy stadium-rock lope. By the time Wakeman was replaced with Moraz they lost another link, or another spark, from their sound. At the same time, White's more explicit, overtly rock drumming perhaps gave the band a slightly wider appeal?
I think the vocal unit is a TC-Helicon VoiceLive 2. Is he using i for harmonies?
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Im a Yes virgin, I only forced myself to listen to them recently because you guys lost your minds when Chris died,
when i was a 16 year old with a mohawk they were the antithesis.
I listened to a bunch of it, Liked it all while it was on but nothing grabbed me enough to make my precious 32GB. it felt very much a soundtrack to an era that I wasn't connected to
I enjoyed the live show more than I expected, I got to watch an extremely acomplished bass player performing stuff written by a Legendary Bass part writer. in a format where the bass was effectively the lead instrument, whats not to like? the singer kept reminding me of the block from supertramp
but my biggest impression of the evening was the body language of the crowd; the venue was only half sold, all seated so I changed vantage point several times,
the furthest forward i could get in each wing, then just behind the sound man(who did an amazing job, the Centre is a slag of a building acoustically which defeats 90% of sound engineers) and there were a lot of men of a certain age, nodding appreciatively, much like I see at Quo, or Moody Blues, or AussieFloyd but there was a certain feeling of desperation, like they were trying too hard to be enjoying it
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^
This review reminds me of what Henry David Thoreau once said--
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
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I believe that is a vocal processor on top, a bass multi-effect unit below that, and a set of Moog Taurus III pedals. Pretty simple really.
I think the middle one is used as a midi controller, his bass "head" was a massive rack, with 3 amps, a handfull of outboards and a 12 channel mixer
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Im a Yes virgin, I only forced myself to listen to them recently because you guys lost your minds when Chris died,
when i was a 16 year old with a mohawk they were the antithesis.
I listened to a bunch of it, Liked it all while it was on but nothing grabbed me enough to make my precious 32GB. it felt very much a soundtrack to an era that I wasn't connected to
I enjoyed the live show more than I expected, I got to watch an extremely acomplished bass player performing stuff written by a Legendary Bass part writer. in a format where the bass was effectively the lead instrument, whats not to like? the singer kept reminding me of the block from supertramp
but my biggest impression of the evening was the body language of the crowd; the venue was only half sold, all seated so I changed vantage point several times,
the furthest forward i could get in each wing, then just behind the sound man(who did an amazing job, the Centre is a slag of a building acoustically which defeats 90% of sound engineers) and there were a lot of men of a certain age, nodding appreciatively, much like I see at Quo, or Moody Blues, or AussieFloyd but there was a certain feeling of desperation, like they were trying too hard to be enjoying it
I know what you mean, when I saw them in Nürnberg on the Fly from here-tour: Exactly the same audience. YES were always a bit the "young math teacher fresh from university, but he listens to the same music as some of his pupils"-band. And those math teachers are now granddads.