What is rock-and-roll music? What defines what is rock and what is not? How has the evolution of rock throughout the decades really changed this core definition? Do those of us listening really understand all the differences, modified sounds, and looks? The truth in my musical youth through adulthood has been that Rock and Roll will always fall directly and favorably into a precious home in my heart and headphones. Rock and Roll in its many flavors and styles supplies me with endless triggers, each a nugget of escape from daily doses of reality. Each is a solution to whatever might be a problem. Each is a soothing addition to an already happy, joyous, and free day.
Rock is and has been something that helps me to interpret where I want to be. It is a medicine from the beginning of my musical introduction. But rock is not only about the bands with the longest hair of the era playing guitars and jumping up and down. After all, doesn’t the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame cover ALL different forms that have been categorically dissed or left out of the discussion because some who have defined the genre don’t feel they belong?
The genre, as broad as it may be over the years, is not enough to describe the musical triggers produced when I hear the band Yes. This is a band that has produced music from the late 1960s through the present day. My triggers are the earliest releases with albums like “Yes,” “Time and a Word,” “The Yes Album,” “Fragile,” “Close to the Edge,” and “Tales from Topographic Oceans.” I have always loved rock music, from the earliest styles I can recall, for stretching my imagination taking simple music and lyrics, and throwing in intensity with volume, guitars, bass, and drums. But when I first heard the British “progressive rock” band Yes, they were a brand of rock all their own. A unique fusion of orchestrated instruments, original voices, and a strong character I had never experienced previously.
Mostly I remember the borderline falsetto and ethereally harmonic vocals of Jon Anderson. When I think of the moments I spent with the different music put out by Yes early on I remember intrigue at the composition and the additional orchestrated backgrounds each song presented. The song “I’ve Seen All Good People” uncovers a memory of being at concerts and the band playing longer extended versions of this and other songs which seemed to bring the audience through a mellow build-up with a furious sway on the way to a head bouncing lyric that was impossible to sing along to without closing your eyes and smiling. Yes represented a style of rock that didn’t require tight leather pants but still sported the long hair so commonplace in rock or rock-styled groups of the era.
One of my distinct Yes triggers comes from a concert that they headlined at the University built around the neighborhood I lived in at the time in Stony Brook, Long Island. I was either 13 or 14 and I can’t honestly remember if I even had permission to go. What I do remember is that it was easy to get to and several of us made our way onto the campus and did the show without any issue whatsoever. Drugs were involved, naturally, and definitely alcohol, but I distinctly remember the freedom of music, their performance, the songs we as Junior High Schoolers were so familiar with, and the proximity and ease of the venue.
With Yes I also remember seeing them a second time at Madison Square Garden in New York City a couple of years afterward, likely in 1974. This was more of the adventure all around the Garden as much as it was for the music. Getting off of Long Island was key to being able to live on Long Island at all. Thank God for the friends I had at that time in my life. Absolutely everything we did was all about escapism and distaste for school, and the suburbs I, for one, could not wait to get away from the moment I knew I could.
Yes was never really very big on the charts that I loved so much in their earlier years. I do recall their big hit being “Owner of a Lonely Heart” several years after the concerts I had attended. While the band remained popular with us in the earlier part of the 1970s they were more of a club music band and the music you would hear in parties and sometimes in the basements while hanging out and smoking something or other.
“I’ve Seen All Good People “was (and likely still is) a very good tune to enhance the high. I can remember being in so many concerts vibing one-on-one with whatever the artist was playing, singing along loudly or to myself. With Yes, and this song in particular there is a trance-like beginning and a certain sway that takes over the body and almost forces you to move, usually with your eyes closed. This is a drug trance, the best sort of trance to experience. At one with the world. At one with all the people around you no matter who they are or despite all the many differences between us all. Music and these moments are what bring back the triggers from time to time when I am wearing the headphones and reliving the experience in a different space, a much different time, and a spiritually (versus chemically) induced mindset.
I have many triggers of concert experiences, especially in the earlier years when I was able to partake in mood-enhancing undertakings to heighten what was already a whole lot of first-time adventures. Yes, with their beautiful symphonic and orchestral songs aligned with the magnificent progressive rock sensibilities they played. As I mentioned earlier, the band is still around today, I do not listen to the newer music as I once did the original albums and cuts. But when I do hear that music I remember when and what comes next can and will certainly be the next musical trigger.
Don’t surround yourself with yourself
Move on back two squares
Send an instant karma to me
Initial it with loving care
Don’t surround yourself
‘Cause it’s time, it’s time in time with your time and it’s news is captured for the queen to use.
Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda (All we are saying)
Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda (Is give peace a chance)