It was sometimes in the eighties: the younger and less disillusioned version of Ecki found the fold out version of the Yessongs album in a used record store. It cost me 150 Deutsche Mark or so but this was the most wanted version of this legendary recording. A nice addiction to my collection! At home I was very disappointed. The music was brilliant but the sound just bad bad bad.
About 10 years ago someone at Warner Music decided to look at a bunch of tapes marked "Do not use!" in the Yes archive. Surprise, surprise, these were multitrack recordings of 8 shows played in autumn of 1972 in the US and Canada. These tapes were recorded and used for the famous Yessongs album! Yessongs was a virtual show, "best versions" of the songs that were played every evening. Plus overdubs and a studio recording of a song that had not been performed live. Very polished or "overproduced". A masterpiece nevertheless but the sound was (very) disappointing.
Warner went through the process of mastering these newly discovered shows to evaluate whether they were worse publishing. Unfortunately they had the same bad sound as Yessongs. It was found that the Dolby settings during the recording had been wrong. Thanks to the digital domain, various ways and "tricks" can be used now to correct some of the shortcomings in a tape so the Dolby catastrophe was contacted as good as possible. In an act of wisdom (maybe as an excuse for the botched Yessongs sound), Warner decided to release 7 shows in good quality. Much much better sounding then Yessongs. No overdubs, no studio. A bit raw here and there but fantastic music.
Does anyone need 7 shows with the exact same setlist? Probably not! Will your life be better with 7 versions of Yessongs? Definitely yes! For me, this release is a collector’s dream and a long-overdue win after the disappointment I felt when I first bought the Yessongs album over 45 years ago.
Tidal album link
Enjoy the music,
Ecki
