It seems a missed opportunity that someone couldn't have provided a bit more research than was expended to prepare the liner notes but, as I noted in my previous entry regarding the reissue, the show which was recorded for Live In LA took place on December 13, 1989, at The Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles. The tour to promote Can't Look Away was a three-week jaunt from late November to early/mid-December of sixteen dates; all clubs, some of which were quite well-known and some of them - such as San Diego's Bacchanal Club - no longer exist. One of them, Chuy's in Tempe, Arizona, was owned by bassist Jim Simmons and his jazz-singer wife Nancy.
One other date - December 5th at Boston's Paradise Club - was also professionally-recorded for FM radio broadcast on WBCN. Trevor states in the liner notes interview that the Roxy was the last date played, but actually the last date of the tour was two days later, in Sacramento at the Crest Theatre.
In an article published in the Phoenix New Music Times as the tour was making its way West, Trevor explained his reasoning for keeping it on a smaller scale:
"Management's idea was to get some bigger names," Rabin says from his home in Los Angeles. "They said, `You know all these well- known guys. You should get this one and that one, and we'll sell tons of tickets.' But I said, `No. That's not what this album's about. We should get people who are right for this thing, good players who are simply into the music.'"Trevor noted the value of not only Jim's playing - as an excellent fretless bassist - but also his business acumen as a club owner.
"I'd never actually done a club tour," admits Rabin. "And for the past eight years with Yes, obviously I've done nothing but major arenas. So Jim, owning a club, really helped me scale my thinking down. He's been very useful."To qualify that statement, Trevor had never done a club tour in the United States. And is it probably likely that he could have filled theatres and sheds if he had chosen to tour on a larger scale and with a Yes-heavy setlist, or even arenas on a double-bill with another act, but it's to his credit that he desired to focus on promoting the album and thus performed the majority of the new songs on the tour he did undertake. And as long-time fans know, Trevor did so with the support of world-class musicians who are immortalized on this release.
I can't help but believe Trevor possesses the master recordings of the entire Los Angeles performance, and that's a bit of a letdown in terms of this release because it was a solid setlist packed with fan favorites and great musical interludes. This is the full setlist based on the bootlegs of the tour I have in my collection.
Entrance: Lift Me Up (intro)
Cover Up
Sorrow (Your Heart)/Birdland (excerpt)
Heard You Cry Wolf
Changes
Etoile Noir (with Jim's bass solo)/Eyes of Love
Solly's Beard
Something To Hold On To
You Know Something I Don't Know (with Mark's keyboard solo)/Promises
Sludge (featuring Lou's epic drum solo)
I Can't Look Away
Encore:
Make It Easy/Owner of a Lonely Heart
Love Will Find A Way
Later in the tour Trevor changed the order of STHOT and LWFAW in the setlist, hence their positions on the Live In LA tracklist.
"Birdland" is a track written by famed keyboardist Joe Zawinul and performed by the jazz fusion ensemble Weather Report. "You Know Something I Don't Know" is a song which dates back to at least the writing sessions for Cinema, although it may have actually been one of the songs Trevor brought to Chris and Alan for the project, but this is an instrumental version - the rehearsal demo which has circulated among traders features vocals.
Trevor's onstage patter was largely the same for every date, and in one of them he gives thanks to the road crew for hauling the professional-calibre PA system used on the tour:
And as Trevor noted in the aforementioned article:
Trevor's onstage patter was largely the same for every date, and in one of them he gives thanks to the road crew for hauling the professional-calibre PA system used on the tour:
"Before we go any further, I'd like to thank a couple of people for a couple of things[...]when we started this tour, the business people said, 'You can't take a system on the road, it's too expensive,' and I said, 'Yes I can!' So...but I would like everyone to give a big hand to the road crew for carrying it. Thank you!"The DJ at WBCN who did the live remote for the Boston show verified "there is an amazing amount of equipment here on stage tonight."
And as Trevor noted in the aforementioned article:
"I went whole hog," Rabin says. "We're now taking a semitrailer full of gear on the road. It's like a mini-arena tour in clubs."The full story behind this comes from Jim Simmons:
"...So when we first started getting together with the management and the production staff and talking about what we were doing, I found out they were planning to go out on the road without taking any of their own equipment. 'Cause the clubs were telling them, `Oh, don't worry about gear. We've got a P.A. We've got lights.'" Simmons lets loose with a hard-bitten laugh of experience. "I said, `Wait a minute here. There's something you don't know about.'"
"I had to tell them that if you're going out to back up an album and you wanna get people talking about the music and wanting to buy the record, you don't go in and use the club's P.A. 'Cause in ninety percent of the cases, it's junk. Even Chuy's system is not big enough to handle Trevor Rabin and the way we're gonna be playing. And ours is better than most."
And that philosophy/strategy is what ultimately lends the recording its unique aura: it seems so big and yet intimate. The band is performing and projecting at an arena level in terms of musicianship and presentation, and the sound system they used allows all of that to come through, but the mix retains the immediacy of performing to a smaller audience of enthusiastic fans (especially in Boston!).
I think it would have been interesting to have included in the liner notes an insight into the evolution of "Lift Me Up" and why he chose it as entrance music - though this is also an example of how Trevor was thinking big, by opening with an overture of sorts. If nothing else it makes me wonder how old the song is and whether he had originally developed the piece for Can't Look Away.
What I immediately notice about the remaster is that the sonic picture seems brightened and further developed in regard to details, I'm hearing things I didn't necessarily hear or appreciate from the original version. Lou's drums are massive, every fill and accent very crisp and present, really doing justice to his style. And Jim's bass is equally warm, nuanced and expressive. The top end is a bit squashed for my taste, but I expect this in releases nowadays so it's not totally egregious. The only drawback for me is I wish there weren't fades/gaps between songs, it would be nice to have crossfades to provide that "live" intensity for the listener.
This record has a special place in my heart because - as I've written previously - it contains one of my favorite performances: the extended version of "Sludge," which is an amazing display of fusion fervor and masterful chops. And positively epic versions of "Heard You Cry Wolf" and "I Can't Look Away" which illustrate everything we love about Trevor as a musician and performer.
The singalong strategy for "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was used for every performance, so there wasn't necessarily a need on Trevor's part to demur in the liner notes interview - in my opinion it was a good piece of stagecraft: the lead vocal was above his range, so to have the audience sing the verses allowed them to be a part of the show and saved Trevor the strain on his voice which three solid weeks of singing surely had placed upon it. And that spirit of singalong carried over into "Love Will Find A Way" and "Something To Hold On To" as well, making them fun to listen to beyond the enjoyment we get from such well-crafted hook-laden songs.
The version of "Solly's Beard," included as a bonus track is, as Trevor notes in the liner notes interview, not from the '89 club tour but an earlier Yes tour - as the version he played in 1989 was evolved from the version he played in 1987 and the precursor to the version which he played in 1991 on the Union tour (and also a little over a minute longer that previous versions), which would also be the last time he performed his signature solo piece, as he replaced it with a piano solo on the Talk tour. However, this particular recording definitely has a better mix than the one used on the 9012Live: The Solos release. But it's too bad Trevor couldn't have included the performance from that night as it had a very funny intro: "Thank you, we're gonna bring it down a little bit now and do something called 'The Clap.' Oh that's the other guy's! This is 'Solly's Beard.'" That last part where he says the name of the song is delivered in what I believe is Trevor's imitation of Jon Anderson. So this particular performance was likely from 1984.
There are nods to Can't Look Away in the packaging, including the font used for Trevor's name and choice of an outtake from Lisa Powers' shoot for the album and promotional photos as the front cover, as well the image on the CD itself - it is a recreation of the old Elektra Records red-and-black LP label design used in the 1980s and for that album specifically.
This remaster is hopefully the first of other reissues and/or archival releases, as it seems Trevor is now officially aligned with Varese Sarabande as a distributor for non-soundtrack works. For loyal Rabinites, Trevor's legacy is precious and deserves a good home and careful curating. And this document of a little,big tour in 1989 looms large among those recordings we love.
I think it would have been interesting to have included in the liner notes an insight into the evolution of "Lift Me Up" and why he chose it as entrance music - though this is also an example of how Trevor was thinking big, by opening with an overture of sorts. If nothing else it makes me wonder how old the song is and whether he had originally developed the piece for Can't Look Away.
What I immediately notice about the remaster is that the sonic picture seems brightened and further developed in regard to details, I'm hearing things I didn't necessarily hear or appreciate from the original version. Lou's drums are massive, every fill and accent very crisp and present, really doing justice to his style. And Jim's bass is equally warm, nuanced and expressive. The top end is a bit squashed for my taste, but I expect this in releases nowadays so it's not totally egregious. The only drawback for me is I wish there weren't fades/gaps between songs, it would be nice to have crossfades to provide that "live" intensity for the listener.
The singalong strategy for "Owner of a Lonely Heart" was used for every performance, so there wasn't necessarily a need on Trevor's part to demur in the liner notes interview - in my opinion it was a good piece of stagecraft: the lead vocal was above his range, so to have the audience sing the verses allowed them to be a part of the show and saved Trevor the strain on his voice which three solid weeks of singing surely had placed upon it. And that spirit of singalong carried over into "Love Will Find A Way" and "Something To Hold On To" as well, making them fun to listen to beyond the enjoyment we get from such well-crafted hook-laden songs.
The version of "Solly's Beard," included as a bonus track is, as Trevor notes in the liner notes interview, not from the '89 club tour but an earlier Yes tour - as the version he played in 1989 was evolved from the version he played in 1987 and the precursor to the version which he played in 1991 on the Union tour (and also a little over a minute longer that previous versions), which would also be the last time he performed his signature solo piece, as he replaced it with a piano solo on the Talk tour. However, this particular recording definitely has a better mix than the one used on the 9012Live: The Solos release. But it's too bad Trevor couldn't have included the performance from that night as it had a very funny intro: "Thank you, we're gonna bring it down a little bit now and do something called 'The Clap.' Oh that's the other guy's! This is 'Solly's Beard.'" That last part where he says the name of the song is delivered in what I believe is Trevor's imitation of Jon Anderson. So this particular performance was likely from 1984.
There are nods to Can't Look Away in the packaging, including the font used for Trevor's name and choice of an outtake from Lisa Powers' shoot for the album and promotional photos as the front cover, as well the image on the CD itself - it is a recreation of the old Elektra Records red-and-black LP label design used in the 1980s and for that album specifically.
This remaster is hopefully the first of other reissues and/or archival releases, as it seems Trevor is now officially aligned with Varese Sarabande as a distributor for non-soundtrack works. For loyal Rabinites, Trevor's legacy is precious and deserves a good home and careful curating. And this document of a little,big tour in 1989 looms large among those recordings we love.
