The Music and the Muse

Spotted on Instagram: a couple days back 12 Monkeys showrunner Terry Matalas paid a visit to his composers and brought along one of the inspirations for their ongoing work: Amanda Schull, who plays Dr. Cassandra Railly on the show.  I'm guessing "212 music spot" is a cleverly-referenced (Season 2 of 12 Monkeys) code name for The Jacaranda Room, because you can clearly tell from the background that's where they are - besides a literal reference to the spotting session, that is.  And I must say that Trevor is sporting a very nice version of the typical black button-down shirt which he usually wears...if you're gonna have a uniform, you might as well make it shiny, right?

Special guest at the 212 music spot today. With @amandaschull Trevor Rabin and Paul Linford. #12Monkeys #SeasonTwo

A photo posted by Terry Matalas (@terrymatalas) on Feb 25, 2016 at 8:41pm PST

A Rabbitt and a Roller spotted in London

My thanks to Yumi Toshimitsu for providing the images herein.

Sometime in 1979, the Japanese music magazine Rock Show ran an article featuring a joint interview with Trevor and former Bay City Rollers frontman Les McKeown.  As teen idols both gentlemen enjoyed very enthusiastic followings in Japan and neither were strangers to the pages of such publications.  But it is surprising - to me at least - that Trevor would find himself in the same room with the lead singer of the very band which his former bandmate (Duncan Faure) had been hired to replace.

Small world, huh?

Thanks to some handy translation work from my dear Rabinite BFF fiendish_thingy, it appears the primary topic of conversation had to do with the benefits of a solo career, as by that point both Trevor and Les had departed successful bands to go it alone.  And all the photos - but particularly the ones where they are seated at a recording console - were most likely taken at Konk Studios, the facility in North London owned by Ray Davies of The Kinks, where both Trevor and Les worked that year: Trevor producing albums for Wild Horses and Noel McCalla, and Les recording his solo debut All Washed Up.  Trevor would also record his third solo album Wolf at the studio.

Just a "little thing" to do.

As part of Tidbit Tuesdays on Facebook, an anecdote about Trevor was posted on Varese Sarabande's official Facebook page yesterday, an entry in their ongoing Score Stories series, courtesy of cellist Armen Ksajikian.
https://www.facebook.com/varesesarabanderecords/photos/a.425284527663838.1073741838.190580891134204/479326552259635/?type=3&theater

However, regarding the timeframe of the story, the only gig I could relate this to was Yes' performance at the Hollywood Bowl on July 30th, 2001 featuring the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra as part of their Yessymphonic tour.  But I have never read any other account which indicated that Trevor actually performed at the show, though I can definitely believe he was there.  So if this is correct, that's another example we can add to the pile of: "You can leave Yes, but you can never really leave Yes."

It's time to feel the LOVE again!

Thanks to timely updates on social media from the band, we've been informed GROUPLOVE is now finished with the recording of their upcoming third album (which was referred to as #tonequest), and it will include a cameo from Christian and Hannah's totally adorable daughter Willa (who I'm assuming is the sixth member of the band, maybe?).

Last week an inside glimpse of the production was posted on Instagram, featuring producer/engineer Ryan at the console in his studio, working on vocal takes, multitasking as we all do in the wired world (and here I thought cellphones were usually banned in the studio, but I guess when you own it you can make/break the rules).

busted cell phone guy

A video posted by GROUPLOVE (@grouplove) on Feb 11, 2016 at 5:02pm PST

#tbt: a shred of guitar heroes

Last Thursday, Paul Rodgers shared a photo on his official Facebook page of his star-studded backing band for the Paul Rodgers and Friends show in San Francisco, May 1993.
https://www.facebook.com/paulrodgersofficial/photos/a.1452670728287469.1073741828.1450800035141205/1766450073576198/?type=3&theater

(Sadly, Trevor did not wear his leather pants to the soundcheck.)

And of course this would not be the last time Trevor was featured in a group of guitar-slinging luminaries, so for today's #tbt, here he is at the Guitars In The Round seminar in the company of Steve Vai, Steve Lukather, Tom Morello, Joe Satriani and Stanley Jordan.  The event was held at the Los Angeles chapter of The Recording Academy and Musicians Institute in September 2000 and was a rare rock music-related appearance for Trevor in the early years of his scoring career.

Thanks to Getty Images there are additional photos now available to view - as for many years photographs from the event were extremely difficult to find.

Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

Valentine's special: YesWest's cosmic romance

A rare performance of "Final Eyes" from The BIG Tour, 11/14/87.

As a band, Yes - and the incarnation which I choose to comment upon in this blog - was never particularly direct regarding the subject of human desire in their songs most of the time.  As a lyricist Jon Anderson focused primarily on cosmic concerns and his lyrics are often incredibly metaphorically dense.  But then that all changed, at least somewhat, with the appearance of Trevor Rabin, who was no stranger to love songs in the course of his career.

For evidence, consider "Changes" from 90125, which on the surface seems to be about the last days of a romance.  But Trevor doesn't always write about what we think he's writing about (in a 1989 interview he noted "sometimes I edit my lyrics down, when I go a little inside myself or get too self-indulgent"), and in past interviews he's stated that the song is really about the career chaos he was experiencing at the time he wrote the song - in the early 1980s - as well as concurrent world issues.

As quite a fan favorite in the YesWest catalog, the song "Final Eyes" from Big Generator is an interesting example of a merging of aesthetics, expected or otherwise.  On the surface it is a love song, or rather, a breakup song - perhaps a song in which the protagonist seeks to attempt to avoid that terminal destination.  On an album which contains a number of musings about love and sex, it developed in an entirely different direction from its' original work-in-progress version (which can be heard on the bootleg compilation The Alternate Generator) but it's quite possibly the first true example of this version of Yes emulating the classic sound.  Given Jon's expanded role in the songwriting (but not as involved as he would have preferred, the resultant power struggle a primary motivation for his departure after touring concluded in 1988) it's not so unusual as much as interesting to consider how and why the elements combined in the end result.

"Final Eyes" is really two songs in one, and if you listen carefully you can see - or rather hear - the seams.

Trevor expressed his reservations about the track back in 2003 when interviewed by Mike Tiano:
TR: "Final Eyes" I don't think quite worked...
MOT: Really? I like that song.
TR: No, I like it, but I think it could have gone further. I think more could have been done. I mean, there's a part where I kind of cringe a little bit, because... how do I put this politely, but it starts sounding a bit like Journey, which I mean I've liked a lot of what they've done, but I don't think it's right for Yes to sound like Journey.

And I understand what Trevor means by that, but I would say he is the greatest offender in that some of his soloing in the song sounds more than a bit like Neal Schon from a tonal perspective.  The song itself is far more developed that anything Journey was doing at that time.  As I noted some years back in a particular discussion at Yesfans, Trevor had been approached in 1984 to co-produce a Journey album (which would have been Raised On Radio - a production apparently fraught with as many difficulties as Big Generator, and the band ended up utilizing engineer Jim Gaines as an associate producer) so one supposes there was at least a sympathetic stylistic vibration happening on some level.

"Final Eyes" was the third single from Big Generator, going as high as number 20 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts, which definitely supports its' particular charm among listeners.  I believe one of the best things about the song is its' title, it's so evocative and relational - I imagine any number of us have either looked at someone or been looked at by someone through final eyes, that moment when you know a relationship has reached its' end.  It's a question I think would be interesting to ask Trevor: did this clever phrase just come to him out of the inspirational blue, or did he hear it from someone else, and was it something he carried around in his brain for a while, or was it an immediate assignment to a particular musical idea?  Because the initial foundation of the song is his, a song Trevor presented to the band which then was elaborated upon by Jon with different verses, though in the original idea the refrain is sung by Jon in a sort of call-and-response type of arrangement.  Musically there were further contributions by Chris Squire and Tony Kaye.  Just slightly shorter than the two "epics" of the album - "Shoot High, Aim Low" and "I'm Running" - it features the same stylistic philosophy of those tracks in terms of the structure of the arrangement and dynamics of the overall sound.   But when I consider the song, I think of it more in terms of the mood it means to convey rather than the subject of the lyrics.  During the musical interlude which begins at 4:47 I never fail to feel as though I'm walking in a sunlit glade, the air itself shimmers around me and the possibility of encountering the fae is never far from my thoughts.  In other words, a typical Andersonian experience.

In the final "Final Eyes" we are greeted with beautiful acoustic guitar and Jon's high clear vocal which is then augmented with New Age-y percussion and keyboard textures as well as harmonies.  After the second verse and chorus, the song then takes a turn into what was the original version, so in the transition at 1:37 you can hear the exchange between Jon and Trevor, as the phrase begins with Jon's voice and ends with Trevor's, you can actually hear the key change at about 1:41.  The figure Trevor plays on guitar is exactly the original chord sequence, and frames his refrain, though in the original the transition is the same, just less pronounced.  It creates the same dynamic we hear in other tracks (most notably "Shoot High, Aim Low"): the marriage of earth (Trevor) and air (Jon).

And this consideration is as essential an aspect of what made YesWest successful as any other: Trevor's deliberate creations of juxtaposition between himself and Jon within the arrangements, contrasting both their vocal and compositional styles.  I tend to think "Final Eyes" is an especially obvious example of this strategy in that it takes what was a somewhat anthemic song about a rift of some kind (and knowing Trevor as we do, it's not necessarily a romantic one) and transforms it into a musical statement which borrows from both old and new to create its' evocative landscape.  And also a song which is truly, deeply far more romantic than its' origins suggest.  The mix of the primal and the ethereal is entirely wonderful.

And then there is that bravura transition at 3:32 which is admittedly a bit of studio trickery but still quite thrilling to hear.

It's an interesting consideration that Jon's musical persona could inform the arrangement of a song, but it is apparent to me that Trevor might have been crafting the mood and movement of "Final Eyes" to encompass those musical values which Jon represented not only within Yes, but his career as a whole.  And thus much of what fans may love about the song is also what reminds them of why they love Yes.  Critic Mike McGuirk referred to the track as "an effective throwback to the band's salad days."

As an aside, I've always found the line "Don't hide behind the headlines (oh yeah)" reminds me of this famous montage from Citizen Kane, which depicts the evolution, and disintegration, of a marriage within the microcosm of the breakfast table.

The song was only played four times early on in the touring cycle, and the best things about the live version are - in my estimation - the beginning, which features a sort of overture to the song rather than starting from the same point the studio version does; and the end, where Trevor has a little more space to play his lovely ride-out.  Some of the most beautiful guitar parts on Big Generator are also the most brief, on record the coda of "Final Eyes" is a little over 20 seconds.  But ultimately most of BigGen's more expansive songs proved to be too unwieldy for live performance.

Get ready for the Year of the Monkey

With thanks to En Stars, here's an article about what to expect in season two of 12 Monkeys, which debuts on Monday, April 18th.
http://www.enstarz.com/articles/133238/20160107/12-monkeys-season-2-premiere-date-set-prepare-for-year-of-the-monkey-video.htm

Which do you want first?

A late-night update from the Maestro...










I have to say, this doesn't come as a surprise to me.  Since Trevor's initial announcement last month, in fandom discussion I had speculated that the reason Trevor announced the status of ARW rather than the progress on his solo album was because the one project had supplanted the other.  But of course new music is always welcome and I'm very happy the guys are choosing to make this project a priority now, as they have all noted on social media.  Here's hoping there will be news of their album for third or fourth quarter release this year.

"Music is magic"...making a case for curating YesWest

It's not necessarily out of the realm of possibility to acknowledge - with the passing of Chris Squire - that the last great era of Yes is now behind us.  Indeed, some believe it to have passed long ago.  But of late there has been a boon granted to the profile of the classic era of the band with remixed archival editions of some of their best-known albums by musician/producer/engineer Steven Wilson, as well as the release of Progeny, a collection of seven live recordings from the 1972 North American tour.  Such a scheme might have been considered overkill a decade ago, before the mania of the superfan collector proved that such exhaustive releases are welcomed by the masses in super deluxe-type packaging.

And it is all to the good for fans and also for those who appreciate the effort taken to restore and enhance the artistic legacy of Classic Yes.  But where is our champion to curate the history of YesWest?

(At this point I would like to acknowledge Ryan Rabin as a one-man walking museum of YesWest tour t-shirts - I believe he has been photographed wearing one from every tour at this point - as well as the iconic colorful shirt his dad wore in the 9012Live concert film; and I appreciate Ryan's tribute.)

As much a crucial and incredibly popular era of the band's history, within this decade there has been only one official release dedicated to an aspect of that particular time: the release of Union Live in 2011, a set which presents the long-circulated in fandom pro-shot footage of the end-of-tour performance in Mountain View, California as well as the accompanying audio. The Limited Edition version includes tracks recorded in London and Pennsylvania as well as the bootleg known as "First Union," an audience-filmed VOIO of the first performance of the Around the World in Eighty Dates tour in Pensacola, Florida, and the pro-shot footage of the Denver, Colorado performance.  However, the organizers behind the project were unable to secure release of the professionally-filmed footage from Pensacola, some of which can be seen in the 1991 "rockumentary" YesYears as well as the Greatest Video Hits home video.

Not to necessarily deride the work which went into that particular release, but...for its' target audience, it's nothing we haven't seen before.  All of the performances included were already available in trading circles and gray-market release for years.  I've stated this previously in fandom discussion but YesWest fans are so incredibly fortunate to have access to footage from every tour of that lineup, even if most of it has been - up to this point - bootlegged.  Rabinites can enjoy a decade, more or less, of Trevor's performing prowess via these sources, and given that the window of his time as a touring musician was relatively small (for those of us in the rest of the world, though of course fans in South Africa and the UK have their own unique memories and evidence) it's an absolute treasure trove, one which has sustained many of us over the years in terms of our continuing devotion and enjoyment.

I don't wish to venture into a detailed discussion of what is available on video - as that is an entry for another time - but simply to state that YesWest is criminally under-represented from an official release standpoint when it comes to both live footage and live audio.  Prior to the appearance of Union Live there was only 9012Live: The Solos, a collection of the solo setpieces from the 9012Live tour in addition to the songs "Hold On" and "Changes," three tracks on the 1991 YesYears retrospective boxset, and four tracks on The Word Is Live, a career-spanning compilation of Yes live performances released in 2005.  And Union Live, even with the bonus tracks which are included with the Limited Edition version, does not represent a complete performance.  I do acknowledge that is what made the inclusion of the Denver and Pensacola shows a (mostly) solid bonus, as the audio/video from Mountain View features little more than half of the actual setlist.

For example, one of the songs which didn't make the running order from the Mountain View show is "Changes" and thanks to a collector here it is (although it's missing the introduction).  But Trevor's vocal is really strong on this version - he holds that long note for about 10 seconds.

The Union lineup was both a highly-successful tour and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for fans, therefore it strains credulity - even with all of the accompanying dysfunction of the situation at large - not to have gone through with a worldwide official live release at the time, especially since so much recording and filming was done in Pensacola and Denver for the YesYears documentary.  And as the numerous soundboard and broadcast bootlegs available attest, there was also professional recording of several dates over the span of the entire touring cycle.

Speaking of another video (even though I said I wouldn't), the official release of 9012Live also does not feature an entire setlist.  Naturally it emphasizes the songs included from 90125 but the setlist strategy over the length of the tour was split evenly between Classic Yes and YesWest and the experience entire also deserved a full-length album release, as there are wonderful performances of such Yessong stalwarts as "I've Seen All Good People," "Roundabout" (the full version, not the truncated one which was cut from the film due to the continuity error of Trevor's pants) as well as "And You and I."  In performances of the latter song along with "Starship Trooper," Trevor made them his own in his masterful interpretations.

Beyond what has been offered in the 9012Live releases, the only other live recording which was made available from that time was a version of "It Can Happen" from Atlanta, which appeared on the b-side of the single for that song.  Trevor previously spoke with author/radio presenter Jon Kirkman regarding why a full-length live album was not released at the time.


The 9012Live tour was a major event in the overall history of the band, and certainly a landmark occurrence in the life of YesWest.  It would only be to the benefit of that legacy to finally put out a live album, even if it had to source more than one performance, as 9012Live: The Solos did.  A deluxe edition could also include the full performance from Houston for 1988's The BIG Tour, some of which can be heard on the YesYears boxset and The Word Is Live.

And I haven't even discussed what has happened with Talk in regards to professional recording and broadcast of the tour.  Again, gray market and bootleg sources have assisted fans with capturing the memories of those performances.  But when one considers that Talk is the only YesWest studio release not to have been licensed for digital distribution, and which has only just been reissued on vinyl within the last year, as well as the fact that the original release has been long out of print - forcing those who want a copy of the CD to utilize secondary markets - the legacy of the final period of YesWest is sadly lacking and that is unacceptable for an album which is not only a technological landmark, but also features some of the very best playing, singing, songwriting, arranging and production of Trevor's rock music career.

The span of what constitutes the history of YesWest encompasses thirteen years, five albums, four tours, and music which gratified audiences, performances which were vibrant, engaging, entertaining and audacious.  And I believe the legacy of this era of Yes deserves as much care and passion in its' curating as any other.  I may be a lone voice in the wilderness, I may represent just one fan of many, but I hope someone with influence hears me, and attempts to redress this imbalance before it's too late.