Listening to YES: Open Your Eyes, Part 2
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Totally agree with your assessment of this album glad you've done and can move onto the next two albums which are much better in my opinion the ladder and magnification
Wonderlove - where melody and rhythm clash and the lyric appears to have been written by a lovestruck teenager. And I am a diehard Yes fan since 1970.
"fatiging sound", yes, exactly !
Hey Jim! Summing up, OYE is part of the YES catalog so it must be listened to by you. They all can't be masterpieces!!!👍⭐️😎
Yep, the hidden track is probably the best thing on the album in hindsight! It has vocal extracts from some of the other songs with ambient noise in the background and goes on for about 20 mins. Like many people I found it by chance when I left the CD in the car player. When it started it scared the hell out of me!. It's a Billy Sherwood album really.Somehow Someday is a re-hash of Jon Anderson's Boundaries from the Animation album. There's some good Squire bass on it - Loveshine is a good example.
Strangely the 5.1 upmix edition doesn't have the ambient track at the end I've heard. The hidden ambient track was played as the audience filed in during the '97 - '98 tour before switching to Firebird Suite as Yes arrived on stage.
Jim the hidden track was cool as it was produced as the introduction music for the live shows. The producers were given a free hand to play with edits, and it's cool. It was an odd time for YES, a lack of promotion and the timing was maybe difficult. Line-up issues, record company stuff, cover design, but, having said that, it'ss YE, so plenty to still love about it.
I'm going to disagree with your assessment that the bonus track was "cool". It was literally just sixteen minutes of ambient birdsong with intermittent vocal phrases from the album randomly inserted every minute or so. It's so simple and banal that I could have created it with Windows Media Player on a boring afternoon.
Yes but YES did it, and once again not only doing something different with the audio production, a hidden track was made, both thinking out of the box and progressive. We can all do stick men painting too, but it doesn't make it a Lowry. The shows had this opening music played at the venue, Jon and Chris wanted something different, it is and it's a mad, odd creative moment, not by YES but kind of by YES, see creative, and at the show it worked.
Anyway it's great we think differently.
From The Balcony is the only song from the "second side" that I liked.
For me, every album by Yes is extraordinary and special!!!
Thanks Jim!
Big greetings from Lviv (Ukraine)
👍👍👍🎸😎🤠✌️✌️✌️
Yes it does
Your take on Alan's playing is spot on and a big problem with Yes. It's like he didn't think about making a song more interesting with different or surprising fills or patterns. This album and later stuff plods on with his 4/4 playing.
I absolutely love Alan White's drumming but there was noticeable decline after Keys to Ascension. I wish they'd brought in someone like Simon Philips or Steve's son Dylan who had studied with Bill Bruford.
I never cared for this album at all but not everything they've done were masterpieces although they've done more than any other band in history. It is what it is. Looking forward to your reaction of 'Magnification'!🤩
I totally agree with you Jim.....this is why I never mention this album to react to. It's tame. Common. Average. It's less artsy. But when Yes released "The Ladder" released in 1999....that album was and is a masterpiece. In 2001, I was mostly listening to Jazz, no Rock, no blues, no country, mostly Jazz and on Saturday, I listen to my favorite smooth Jazz radio station there was a world music program that play world music and "Homeworld(the ladder)" came on several times. I liked it and I wanted to buy the album....and did....so I think "The Ladder" album is a modern or 21st century YES masterpiece. You should check it out!
I think, the disappointment came at the time because of the "Keys to ascension - studio recordings"
It was like two directions at a time
The hidden part is almost the best part ^^
Yeah, this is one I don't even remember at all. I did however, really like The Ladder and I think you will too.
100% agreement on your breakdown Jim !!
there are some phrases with meaning here🤓
The Ladder is more what you are looking for 🤓
The music from Open your eyes come across well live much more punchy & melodic !! much better sounding bass parts & drumming from Alan & Chris 👍
Billy Sherwood albums tend to have too clean a sound for me.
Too much odd sounds which are not necessary.
It was really meant to be a Billy Sherwood & Chris squire album with Yes members coming on board when the music was 80-90 % complete this explains a lot for me 😟hidden track was like therapy waves crashing’
& relaxing sounds Queen did a similar track on the Made in Heaven album 😃
"Wonderlove" is strange, it doesn't work well, we have the feeling that they are not together
Love Shine is so repetitive and bores me to tears
"The solution" is amazing, so strong
I actually found this CD used 3 or 4 days before the official release date. It has a punched hole in the barcode. So I guess that means it was a promotional copy. I was excited to get it early. I figured I would buy the Surround Sound version at a later date to officially support Yes. Never did. So disappointed with this album. I haven't bothered with getting a vinyl version of this one either. While I love hearing Jon's and Chris's voices together and there are some interesting bits here, I find the music overall too choppy and doesn't flow. Fatiguing Sound, yeah that describes the album.
Thankfully, 'The Ladder' is a much better album. I do as a general rule find this late 80s and 90s production to be terribly sterile and uninspired, but it had its moments, I suppose!
In my opinion state of mind and open your eyes I like February 2025
I shared both parts with Scot. I know he doesn't like this album. Lol. We'll see if he leaves comments? 👍😎
Wonderlove does sound like four or five ideas from four or five different band members (only two of which were any good) shoehorned together. It should have been scrapped and cannibalised for spare parts which might have fitted into a better song. From the Balcony would be nice in an Anderson solo album and isn't a second longer than it needs to be. Love Shine is a little pedestrian with mechanical 4/4 drums though Howe is on good form. Somehow Someday gets the 'pedestrian' label from you but I'll go further - it's plodding - and, yes, it's a relief when the drums stop. The Solution has a thrown together sound much like Wonderlove and my thoughts of what should have happened are exactly the same. They used the ambient 'hidden track' as background music prior to coming on stage when they toured at this time and it was quite pleasant when used in such a manner but I don't need it on record. It's a disappointing album especially when compared to Keys to Ascension though, as you say, there's some good bits - just not enough and not put together in the right order.
Billy Sherwood did most of the lead and rhythm guitar on here. Steve recorded all of his solos remotely. If you do listen again, you might notice just how disjointed the guitar solos sound from the rest of the music. Steve and Billy worked out their duties as guitarists a lot better on The Ladder.
Yes, exactly. "Disjointed" is the word
Compare "City of love" and "Somehow...someday"...
City of Love is so much better
@@jpirard Yes
may I say parts of this album sound "uninspired" ? Brave listeners that we are, we'll give the next Yes album its chance 🤣
My biggest thing is there are almost NO tracks that let Anderson sing ALONE. These multi-layered vocalizations in the high range give me a headache.
Yes, and sometimes it sounds wrong
Yeah it seems that most of his vocals have some sort of phased effect on them
The second half of the album is one of Yes' nadirs to me for the most part. I do like Wonderlove and The Solution. Loveshine and Man in the Moon might have some of Yes' worst lyrics imo and Somehow Someday has some of Yes' worst arranging. No one can agree on a tempo. Jon Anderson did a better version of the same song in the 80's on his solo album Animation under the title Boundaries.
Open Your Eyes was a misguided attempt to get radio play. Yes soon realized they were better off focusing on the internet and touring for promotion.
Yes, the drums production is awful
I think "From the balcony" and "Universal garden" are the only "Yes" songs, the others Squire / Sherwood
Yeah, not a good album as a whole, though it has it's moments. It sounds like Billy Sherwood had way too much input. He plays the bass very well, but I don't like his style of composing music, lyrics, mixing, etc.
"Love shine" is a mess of a mix, it's not well produced
Not a great track in general, it sounds like a bad Union outtake.
Part 2 of a mediocre album by YES. Oh joy. Just wait until you hear Heaven & Earth. Here's a tip for you for that album, Jim. Try listening to some of it on yt and speed it up to 1.25. Sometimes, when you do this, it actually sounds better. I'm not kidding.
I think any Yes albums after 2004 I won't even be able to drag myself to listen to. Even on Jim's channel ...sorry Jim.
@@tonygrinney7115 I like Fly From Here and Mirror to the Sky is pretty good. Quest is ok.
Oh no, not Heaven and Earth! Makes OYE sound like Close to the Edge.
@@Lightmane sorry not for me.
Steve Howe’s playing is the only good thing on this album as a whole. The opening track is meh. I like the harmonies in Man on the Moon, but the lyrics are awful. This is Jon Anderson at his weakest lyrically-very immature and childish, which he occasionally fades into (as in Tormato). But vocally he is decent for the most part here. Chris Squire is a shadow in the whole album, he's there but you barely notice him. The production makes the whole thing feels stale and stuffy.
Everything and every instrument sounds subdued and tamed. No poetry in the lyrics. Not many transitions. The songs sound generic and commercial. Really don't like this album.