YES
ROYAL OAK MUSIC THEATER (DETROIT)
11-19-1999
YES
ROYAL OAK MUSIC THEATER (DETROIT)
11-19-1999
|
A smaller hall was booked, 1500 total capacity, and a sellout was had despite the rather non working class ticket price of $42.50. A night out with the mate and you could be looking at a nice chunk of the weeks pay packet eaten right up so after all the credit card bills come in will the memory have been worth the expense? Yep. Avoiding the predictability of opening the set with something from the new album, which would have been just fine with me, YES dug way back and offered a powerful and, thankfully, unabridged version of "Yours is no Disgrace." The audience stood motionless and expressionless during the entire song, something that rarely changed during the remainder of the evening. Awe is what it appeared to be but then again I couldn't dance much in my own two feet of beer soaked floor space either. This doesn't need to be said but I will say it anyway, Steve Howe is simply extraordinary to watch perform. It's not that he moves around much to rave up the crowd, it is his unparalleled ability to translate all of that high-brow aristocratic talent of his into a fine art for the masses that makes most not want to blink for fear of missing something. Unfortunately, Howe was visited by technical gremlins on nearly every instrument and nearly every song during the evening and the frustration showed on his face a time or two though it never appeared in his playing. The frown he gave while three chording to the band's first encore, "Owner of a Lonely Heart," was priceless. The two hours and twenty minutes of YES stage time was a combination of hit hopping and new record showcasing with all coming off excellently or at the very least, acceptable. There was only one real spot of bother for the evening, that being the increasingly disappointing fact that Igor Khoroshev is no replacement for Rick Wakeman (who is?), or for that matter, Tony Kaye. Koroshev's performance of the Wakeman/Kaye material was functionary at best and distracting at its worst. Most of the time it was just absent. Khoroshev did manage a small bit of excitement in the flourishes of "Roundabout" but that was the final song in the set so, too little too late me thinks. This was advertised as an evening of YES music and the lack of an opening band left time to explore the group's latest disc, "THE LADDER," which is exactly what the band did, playing better than half of that album's compositions. "Homeworld (The Ladder)" should find its place among the best of the bands output and was well received by the audience who seemed to be familiar with the tune, though it was hard to tell because everyone was so stoic. A trio of tunes from "90125" represented the eighties YES sound with Billy Sherwood nailing all of the Trevor Rabin parts. "Hearts" was a major surprise and fit in strangely between the new "Face to Face" and the classic, "Awaken" still, it worked nicely. The high, and you could use the word in a couple of contexts, was a full twenty minutes of "Ritual-Nous Sommes Du Soleil." Simply performing a number this long in the A.D.D. afflicted late nineties was amazing enough but for it to sound as good as it did, well, it was incredible and worth every penny of the otherwise criminal ticket price. Visually, this was simply YES on stage and little production value save for a confetti bomb that served little more purpose than to soak up some of the beer and vomit on the "dance" floor. There was a projector rolling sporadically but most in attendance were content to watch the band, particularly Howe, so there was little if any added value there. The tour program claimed that this was just the beginning of a tour that will last until late 2000 and should it roll through a town close enough, you could do much worse than witnessing Steve Howe and Jon Anderson trade licks on Guitar and Harp respectively. Worth the ducats? You bet and then some. Forgiveness for "OPEN YOUR EYES" is so much easier now. DAVID LEE WILSON |