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Liner Notes: Emotional Content

Although no one knew it at the time, 1976 was to be a pivotal year in the career of the band Yes. The massive world tour to promote the “Relayer” album had seen the band perform 89 shows all over the world between November 8^th, 1974 and August 23^rd, 1975. At the end of it, all band members were understandably tired and in much need of rest. In an effort to get away from the Yes mold for a little while, it was decided that the band would take a short break and that each musician would record a solo album. All five solo albums were released, to mixed reviews we might add, in the first months of 1976. By then, all five band members were ready to regroup and be Yes again. With no new Yes album to promote, the band nevertheless elected to go out on tour again before going back to the studio to record the follow-up to “Relayer”. Armed with a new set list, a striking new stage (designed by Martyn Dean) and amazing laser effects to top it all off, Yes began a short, yet memorable new tour. Avid Yes fans will doubtless remember that PRRP once released a remaster of the June 17^th Jersey City concert, the only known radio broadcast from what every one has come to know as the 'Solo Albums' tour. The concert which we now bring you was performed two days later, June 19^th, 1976, in Hartford Connecticut. Long time Yes fan Barry Rogoff was there that night, and only his own words, we think, can truly convey the feeling of what happened that night, with all its magnificence and horror. These memories are already available at the 'forgottenyesterdays.com' website. By kind permission of the author, we offer them here as well. Once you've read them, you will understand why we feel that this particular Yes performance was so unique in the band's long history…..

(BR)..The outdoor Yes concert at Colt Park in Hartford, Conn. on June 19, 1976, was at the same time, the best and the worst concert experience of my life. It was the first time that I actually experienced the sort of Yes magic that you can hear on Yessongs. It was also the first time in my life that real violence happened right in front of me.

I had been to the concert the night before at Boston Garden. Like the weather, the performance was hot, sweaty, and intense, but not magical. The band changed costumes so many times that the audience got to see their entire tour wardrobe. The night before that was the well-known FM broadcast from Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City.

All of the Yes concerts I had been to up to that point were good to great, but none had been magical. Each time, I expected to hear something that would truly blow me away, like the version of The Fish on Yessongs, but it had never happened. I was starting to wonder if it ever would.

I had two tickets to the show in Hartford the next night. The friend who had been planning to go with me copped out at the last moment so I dragged along one of my photo staff members instead. I took a 35mm SLR and a few lenses in a bag, along with a little Sony TC-110A tape deck (I hadn't yet acquired a Nakamichi) and a small tripod.

Colt Park was a huge, fenced-in field with the stage at one end and lighting towers in front of it. We got there in the afternoon, in time to get a good center-stage position for the Pousette-Dart Band set. Although the weather was cool with a misty drizzle on and off, the atmosphere was like Woodstock. People were sitting on blankets as far as you could see in any direction. The three huge Martyn Dean snake heads^* loomed over the stage, in anticipation of the concert yet to begin.

^*The "snake heads" were actually called the "Crab Nebula" stage, according to Roger Dean's book "Magnetic Storm. It was designed by his brother Martyn.

Even before the Pousette-Dart Band began, a few people started to climb up the light towers, to get a better, if somewhat shaky, view of the stage. That's when I took the black and white photos that you see here.

The towers had virtually no protective fencing around them. They were, for all intents and purposes, enormous jungle gyms. An announcer pleaded with the crowd not to climb the towers because they weren't designed to hold that much weight, but he was ignored. More and more people climbed up. Eventually, several husky security guards, who looked like bikers to me, managed to get everyone down without much trouble.

When Yes began, it was dark and the drizzle had become continuous. I knew immediately that this show was going to be different from the others. There was a spark to Siberian Khatru that I'd never heard before. The Yes magic that I had been anticipating for so long finally arrived in Sound Chaser. Steve's manic guitar solo ripped apart the night sky. I was in awe. I had never heard Yes so "on" before.

However, people were again climbing the light towers, this time in greater numbers than before. Back came the security force and up they went. Most of the climbers got down without any trouble but six or seven refused until the security guards began beating them with police-style flashlights. One last fat guy simply wouldn't get down. I'll never forget the image of his silhouette clinging desperately to that light tower while a security guard smacked him on the head, over and over again, while Yes was playing so incredibly well. The fat guy finally slumped to the ground, unconscious, and was carried off.

The solos were magical. Patrick's solo was inspired and contained lots of familiar Story of I material. Jon's harp solo in particular was more beautiful than I had ever imagined it could be. Even now, listening to the tape confirms what a great performance it really was.

But as the show went on, the area we had staked out in front of the stage got more and more packed. Everyone was standing by then. I had a camera bag over my shoulder and was holding up a lightweight tripod with a microphone taped to it. My photo staffer was shooting slides.

When Ritual ended, I noticed some gang types circling around me and eyeing my camera bag. They looked just like sharks circling their prey. Expecting the encores to be Roundabout and I'm Down, like the night before, I made the painful decision to shut down and leave. As we worked our way to the exit at the back of the field, I was even more bummed to hear Yes playing Starship Trooper. But there was no going back. In retrospect, it was the right decision. Had I stayed, I'm sure I would have been mugged.

The news report in the Hartford Courant the next day included a photo taken from the embankment at the back of the field during the Pousette-Dart Band set. It shows a sea of heads facing the stage. It's the other images from that concert that were burned into my memory: the idyllic, Woodstock-like afternoon followed by the incredible dichotomy of brutal violence happening directly in front of a magical Yes performance.

To this day, I wonder what happened to the guy who was beaten repeatedly with a flashlight until knocked unconscious. He might have been one blow away from a fatal cerebral hemorrhage. Had that happened, I would have testified in court and Colt Park would have taken its place in history beside Altamont as an example of how a rock concert can go terribly wrong.

Before Colt Park, I held the naive belief that the ambiance of a Yes concert could somehow infuse the audience with positive energy, the way a Grateful Dead concert does. I left Colt Park knowing that to be untrue. The world holds great beauty and magic, along with frightening ugliness. Most of us live our lives seeking out beauty and magic, but finding it at a rock concert, even a Yes concert, doesn't protect us from ugliness. We have to do that for ourselves…….(BR)

As you can see, this particular Yes performance was worthy of notice for more than one reason. Was the band ever aware, or even made aware, of what happened that night? That we will never know, but from a member of the audience's point of view, especially one who was so close to where the sad event took place, it is evident that such a happening would forever remain etched in one's memory.

Apart from the strange circumstances which we've just described, this was, for Yes at least, just another show in yet another successful tour. The tour itself, however, would mark a very significant turn in the band's career. This would be the last time that fans would see this particular Yes line-up in action. Shortly after the last concert of the tour, the band adjourned to Switzerland, keyboardist Patrick Moraz's native country, to start work on the follow-up to “Relayer”. Not long after, frictions began to grow between Moraz and the other band members, at which time Patrick was more or less thrown out of the band. Rich Wakeman, who had left Yes in a rather stormy way after the “Topographic Oceans” tour in 1974, was called in as a session player to replace Moraz. The result was pure magic. Rich was asked to re-join the band permanently as they went on to record one of their most beautifully crafted works to date, the magnificent “Going For The One” album.

Because of the strength of the new record and Rick's return to the fold, which was met with immediate wild enthusiasm by Yes fans the world over; people tend to forget about Patrick Moraz's great contribution to Yes history. To many, “Relayer” still stands as one of Yes's finest albums, as well it should, and Patrick can be very proud of what he did during the short time that he spent with the band. All three songs contained on “Relayer” are considered Yes classics, and would be stricken from the set list for years to come, much to many fans' dismay. It would take some 24 years before fans could see and hear Yes play 'The Gates Of Delirium' in its entirety again. Sadly, even if snippets of 'Sound Chaser' and 'To Be Over' have been heard in Squire's bass solo or Howe's acoustic guitar set, the songs have not been played live in their original form since the curtain fell on the 1976 tour. So it is with great pride that we bring you this very rare recording from a very special era in the history of Yes. Even if the sound is far from perfect and the show is incomplete for reasons explained above, we hope that the performance itself will blow you away as it did Barry, as it did us when we first heard it.

PRRP Staff

Notes from the Re-Master

The master tape for this show was digitized and sent to PRRP as data WAV files. The show is incomplete -as listed above- but no significant gaps occurred. On first listen, it is clear that the sound is a bit distant. This could only be corrected partially given the nature of distant sound. Tape noise was also an issue and needed reduction using multiple techniques. Other sources of noise such as claps, yells and microphone bumps were minimized as much as possible. Tonality was adjusted after frequency analysis revealed an imbalance. Some clicks and crackle required manual removal. Dynamics which are often dampened by a distant recording site were readjusted and partially restored. Finally, a consistent speed error was found and corrected. Disc 2 material also had a Right channel drop that required repair over a 2 minute segment and a different speed correction factor.

PRRP Staff

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