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Liner Notes: Boston Invaders

For nearly 70 years, the Boston Garden was one of the legendary arenas in American history. It was the home of the Boston Bruins and Celtics. All of music's greatest stars played there. Families went to watch the three-ring circus, ice shows, the rodeo, and the Harlem Globetrotters. Speeches were given there by some of the greatest politicians of all-time, including Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. Sadly, in 1995 the old Garden closed its doors to the public for good and the new Fleet Center ushered in a new era for sports and entertainment in New England.

This Yes show was performed at the grand old Boston Garden at a time when it was still an icon of the city of Boston. As recalled by one Yes fan that was there….”As a venue for rock concerts, the old Boston Garden was genuinely horrible. Of all the concerts I went to there, only two bands, Pink Floyd and Yes, had sound systems good enough to overcome the booming upper-bass reverberation that plagues almost every performance. Pink Floyd used extra speakers in the back of the hall to create a 360-degree soundstage. Yes had a rotating stage in the center of the floor under an amazing 360-degree sound system. For Yes, everyone in the entire building had a good seat, even the people farthest from the stage.

Of the three years that Yes used the round stage (1978-1980), the 1979 show sounded the best to me, but that may have been more a matter of having a perfect seat for that show than anything else. I've lost my ticket stub but I'm pretty sure I was in the 10th row on the floor.”

The set list for the 1979 Summer American tour was different from the earlier TORMATO tours. This Boston show was only the second time that Yes played Arriving UFO and Leaves of Green, each of which were played only ten times during the whole tour. The remainder of the set consisted of a mixture of songs from TORMATO, their most recent album, and older material.

This was their 93^rd show of the TORMATO tour with only 9 more shows to go. At the time, no one in the audience likely suspected that this would be the last tour for this Yes line-up for over a decade. After the tour, the band members met in Paris to start rehearsals for a new album, but things didn't quite work out the way they had planned. Rick Wakeman describes the situation this way,

“It all worked very well up until about 1979. That's when it really started falling apart. The problems were both internal and musical. Jon and I had formed a partnership of playing and writing and a way of working. We just felt we weren't getting any input at all from any other areas. Everything became a struggle. We ended up recording an album which we never finished, and what happened was we got halfway through…and it was like Jon and I met one day in Paris in a little cafe and just said, 'we've both had enough'. I mean the band's just run out of…we were digging into the gold mine that just had a few nuggets left”. (1981).

Just as the Fleet Center replaced the Boston Garden and ushered in a new era for New England, the loss of Anderson and Wakeman ushered in a new creative period in the life of Yes. But before this split, not long after the end of the 1979 tour, Yes were the masters of their craft and thrilled audiences at every turn. So, with this Boston show we bring you, in our opinion, one of the very best Yes performances from the year 1979.

Notes from the Re-Master

This is an outstanding recording. It comes as a master tape source from the guy who recorded it. He informs us that he used a Nakamichi 550 recorder with Nakamichi CM-100/CP-1 microphones at the time. The show has wonderful quality with harmonics visible in the frequency spectrum up to 18,000Hz. This level of quality is very rare for audience recordings made before 1980, but here it is!

The show had a bit too much sub-bass so the frequencies in the range needed adjusting. Clipping also occurred so clip restore algorithms were used. In general, the sound board manager did a good job that night but occasionally a solo would start with volume that was too high or too low and needed adjustment. There were a number of yells, whistles and clicks that were found and reduced as much as possible. On rare occasion a single or dual channel dropout was found and needed repair. Most were dealt with successfully and are not noticeable. The tape flips were successfully navigated with pasted patches. Fortunately, since tape flips occurred during applause, no other source was needed to produce the complete show. A gentle hiss reduction also made quiet sections more pleasing but a rolling hiss at one point required more specific attention. Tonality was adjusted in a few spots to eliminate excesses but detail was enhanced throughout. Finally, after detailed analysis of segmental run-times, a speed correction was applied to create the finished product. We at PRRP have more shows from this taper so stay tuned because they are going to be great!!

PRRP Staff

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