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Tales from Topographic Oceans [Sides 3 & 4] - Yes (Patreon)

Published:
2024-01-21 23:37:42
Edited:
2026-08-02 12:04:01
Imported:
2026-09
Tags:

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Content

Well... this was an interesting experience! Not sure if this is what you expected from us by voting for this, but we are equally excited to share this with you. 😁

Thank you all for being a part of this platform and for coming along on this amazing journey of musical discovery with us. 

We are truly grateful to all of you with love,

Lex, Nick & Marley

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Comments

Scott Anderson

Thanks for the great and honest reaction. Most of side 3 was not my thing so I hadn’t listened to it in a long time. Side 4 is much better in my opinion, but this has never been my go to YES album. I’m sure it was important at the time for them to make it and express themselves. You have to give people / musicians the opportunity to stretch. I know lots of people who love this album and I’m glad you guys reacted to it. It’s so awesome that your reaction is honest.❤️❤️

Stephen Caruso

I love Yes and I love their amazing creative talent but this stuff was just hard to listen to at age 66 - when I was 15 when it came out it was pretty cool but I cannot get into 40 minute experiments anymore..

Stephen Caruso

the interesting thing is the first ''song'' sounded like if you had a robot and it was working in the kitchen and it was humming to itself then it would make sense the weird noises.. the 2nd song had much closer to Yes sounds that I like but was not enough to rescue the album reaction..

Michael Gray

Side 4 is my favorite side. Side 3 is great toward the end for me anyway. Still it's Yes so I love all this album.

Eric Meredith

I actually do not remember the beginning of side 3 sounding like that. I have heard this multiple times but it has been awhile. first 11 minutes was way to loud and lacked melody and any direction. side 4 is incredble. So good! Classic Yes, they give us what we want to a tee! thanks for the honest take here! that is why I love you both and love your channel! thanks for always being you!

Dave

Finally getting it done. Good job. Thought side 3 would be iffy as it is with other reactors and me. In my life I've listened to sides 1 and 4 too many to count and sides 2 and 3 maybe a dozen times. The Ancient (s3) first 10 or so minutes is crazy just like the first 4 minutes of Close To......... But, I knew you'd get into The Ritual as that is the classic YES. Revealing and Ritual are wonderful compositions.

Richard Dobson

I'm so sorry we did that to you Alexia. But it is almost a rite of passage for Yes fans, listening to The Ancient and having an opinion. Just think how all of us who went to the 'Tales' tour of November/December 1973 felt when we heard the whole album for the first time live! I was at one of the Birmingham gigs and it was 3 or 4 days before the album was released. The band played all of Close To The Edge, then took a short break, and then played the whole Topographic Oceans album in order. I promise you, there was plenty of shuffling in seats while Steve wailed away on his guitar during The Ancient. It's a divisive piece, it even broke the band! Rick Wakeman hated the album and had to be persuaded to finish the tour before he left the band. It was on this tour, in Manchester, where the famous story of Rick eating a curry at his keyboards while they were actually playing happened. I love the album, except for The Ancient which after 50 years I can tolerate. I'm very thankful you listened and were honest. That's what we expect from you, and I'm sure you don't mind us throwing some challenging music your way sometimes either. Great reaction!

Mark Alexander

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve listened to The Ancient from beginning to end, including this time. Nick, don’t be surprised if it still doesn’t work for you in 20 years. Sometimes I imagine it was this track that broke Rick Wakeman on tour and made him leave the band. I’m grateful though because that led to Relayer, one of my favorite Yes albums.

Louis Sonier

Nous Sommes Du Soliel is more like we are of the sun. The Remembering is Chris's favorite work out of this whole era

Mark

For many of us back in the day, Ritual was the song to experience as a couple and found it to be the most romantic piece Yes ever did. Many a relationship was determined if your prospective suitor “got” this piece. Steve’s guitar work at the end sounds like it’s spitting out golden colors. But this piece is about connecting. We all ditched school the day of the show. Imagine all 4 sides plus Close to the Edge. Can’t begin to describe how great the end of the Ancient sounded live. You cant say you’ve heard Yes without hearing Ritual. Welcome to the club.

Louis Sonier

may I suggest Beyond And Before? Leading song off of the self titled debut album circa 1969. The first official Yes song. Bruford, Anderson and Squire were there. Very crude but Chris's bass was already hinting at Fragile. You can hear what they were going to, if you know what to listen for

NicknLex

Wow that’s crazy!! These are the comments I love to read. To know little details like this puts me right there to that time with you all. Thank you for sharing and for all of your support! ❤️ Lex

NicknLex

Thanks, Kristine! Let us know what you think!

KevB(rewski)

As many Yes fans do, I have a love/dislike relationship with this monster bastion of Prog excess over the years. It's become kind of the signature album people who dislike Progressive Rock point to "prove" their view that all Progressive Rock in the 70s was egotistical noodling by nerds and songs about enchanted wizards, fairies and fantasy worlds and dense spiritual mumbo jumbo. The rock and roll media (Rolling Stone etc), straight ahead rock crowd, the country rockers, the punks especially spewed venom at albums like this for its excessive pomposity. (I don't think for a second most of those people ever even listened to this album). I admit, as a HS teen more concerned with getting a zit before the weekend, it took a few years to really appreciate Tales, except for Revealing Science of God which I liked right away. Like many here, The Ancient was always the sticking point, and Remembering to some extent. My view of Tales is pretty close to what Rick Wakeman thought of Tales. Wakey has said a lot of funny things about Tales over the years, it would be hilarious if there was a video compilation of just his best quotes/stories on Tales. The whole meat eaters vs vegetarians split in the band was comical. Coming from Rick, the Caped One, a guy who was all about excess in many ways with his showy keyboard style, for him to be so dissatisfied with the direction Yes was going on Tales with the length, the amount of random formless soloing, and the lack of structure etc, was a huge problem and obviously became a dealbreaker and he quit the band after that tour. I get exactly what Wakeman's criticisms were, and I was so happy he returned to Yes for Going for the One, which for me also meant a return to their classic sound I loved in tunes such as And You and I, Heart of the Sunrise, Long Distance Runaround etc. Jon and Rick were finally on the same page again, and the result was a much more melodic, more symphonic, structured Progressive classic sound, especially on Awaken, to me Yes' signature epic even over CTTE. I saw Yes every year when RW came back--77, 78, 79--and then Rick and Jon left together in 1980. It would have been very cool to hear the album in full live like some of you did when it came out, but I can't imagine how that would be to take the entire thing in unheard! Like I said, it took me a few years, and I now have seen/heard the whole album live over the years over many Yes tours, which is probably better since I was older and could appreciate most of it better. But The Ancient still is the one that doesn't do much for me as far as repeated listening, and is the most glaring example of the need for judicious editing, and kind of proves why Wakeman left after Tales. Too much Steve Howe on most of Tales and not enough Rick. As someone who has now a much wider scope of music listening in almost all genres, I can handle The Ancient a lot better than I could as a 16-17 year old. And I do love The Ritual, especially after hearing it live, and the album does end beautifully. But the whole album is certainly at minimum, an experience, both the good and the not so good excessive!

KevB(rewski)

Sorry to hear that you got the "dooshy Howe" at your concert. Steve has always been wound very tight, and is a very serious guy. He's almost the polar opposite of Steve Hackettt in personality, who is much more laid back. Re a Yes/Genesis comparison, you would never hear this kind of long form solo guitar noodling on a Genesis album. Genesis was always about music that serves the SONG. Genesis were all songwriters. And thus, they valued melody. And even with long instrumentals, Genesis coming from a classical background still desired some structure, some form, ala a symphonic form. The word you two keep looking for when you were trying to grasp the abstract Ancient was the lack of melody, of lack of melodic structure. I think you used harmonic. I agree, The Ancient was not melodic at all until the 2nd part a bit. Genesis always tried to play melodically, even in a bizarre epic like Suppers Ready. Yes veered toward unedited noodling during the Ancient, which is why Wakeman couldn't take anymore. Wakey was also about classical Symphonic Progressive structure and melody.

KevB(rewski)

Did you enjoy The Revealing Science of God at all? (First track) That is clearly the best music on the album imo, and when I finally saw it performed live a few decades ago, it was a very cool experience.

KevB(rewski)

I'm pretty much the same way. If they had just kept the album to a single with 1+4, many people would cite it over CTTE as the best Yes album ever.

KevB(rewski)

I can't even imagine taking all of Tales in unheard. Wow. Were people going wtf? during most of Ancient or accepting of the abstractness? Or high off their gourd.....

Kristine Doggett

The Ancient is definitely a hard song to get into, especially on a first listen. Still not one of my go tos as far as Yes is concerned. Love Ritual though. Someone suggested Beyond and Before, the first track of their first album, Yes. I second that request given Lex's love of first tracks. Gotta get back to the Yes roots. Nice reaction, guys.

Richard Dobson

From what I can remember Kev, there was more acceptance of the abstractness. This was a room full of Yes-heads, and we were going to concentrate on this weird stuff! It was hard going though. That being said, sides 1,2 and 4 were received very well, especially The Ritual during Alan's drum solo when Jon, Steve and Chris were all playing percussion. Spectacular stuff! This was an important album for me personally, its release had been delayed and although I had it on order I was leaving home for London very soon and I was desperate to get my hands on it before the move. Fortunately it arrived about three days after the gig and I had ten days to immerse myself in the music before leaving. My stereo was following me to London later so I recorded the album onto a C90 cassette and that and my little portable cassette player kept me going in my first few weeks in the big city. Rick had it all planned out, by the way. Mid way through January I was at the Royal Festival Hall watching him perform Journey To The Centre Of The Earth with orchestra, choir, David Hemmings narrating and his band. No curries being consumed here! I was at the second show (two performances 6pm and 9pm) and it was this performance that made it onto the album!

Stephen Caruso

I did when I had bellbottoms and slightly buzzed in my teens

Vic Weatherford, soundofflute

Ritual and South Side of the Sky are must see performances from the Songs from Tsongas video. That concert was the last performance of the last tour that the "classic lineup" of Chris, Jon, Steve, Alan and Rick performed together, in 2004, their 35th Anniversary Tour. Would love to see that happen somehow.

Douglas Kregger

Hi guys late to the party but glad I got to see this reaction. A couple things to mention the ancients is a tough track to get into until the last 1/4 of the track which I really like a lot. The first 3/4 was written as a jam, something written with the live performance in mind. It’s a track that’s hard to find on bootleg but I believe they play it better live. Second thing I want to mention is Steve wasn’t prickly with audiences until recently. So I hope it won’t affect your feelings towards the music. He’s 76 and I think he should retire but that’s not for me to decide.

Franck Thibault

So, I am not a huge Yes fan, but for fans like you, to be disappointed when listening to an album of one of your favorite bands, is heart breaking. It happened to me twice in 1 week in 1998, I bought & listen to one album of 2 of my favorite artists each: I didn't listen to those albums for 2 weeks, after a re-listen, I appreciate them more and now I love them.