Replay - Technological Musical Magician, Derek Dearden - 640
Release Date: 08/23/2024
6 reasons why Talk is a great Yes album - 688
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Ken Fuller and Jeffrey Crecelius This week, Mark and I considered what makes Talk from 1994 a great Yes album. The final Yes record featuring Trevor Rabin was a tour-de-force of progressive rock in many ways but what do you think Mark and I chose as our reasons to focus on? Perhaps we chose the same aspects as you would, perhaps not. In any case, do please add your thoughts on Talk to the show notes for this week’s episode over at Is this actually a great Yes album? Does it sound like Yes? Which musicians keep the Yes flame alive?
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Deep Cuts outside Yes - 687
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Jeffrey Crecelius, and Ken Fuller Mark and I spent some time this week searching through both our memory banks and our shelves of Yes-related records. We wanted to uncover and promote some lesser-known deep cuts on albums that Yes men have been involved with outside the main group. We each came up with 3 songs you may not have heard or you may have forgotten about. We hope you enjoy revisiting them or discovering a little more of the breadth and depth of what Yes musicians have been involved with over the decades. Of course, we would be delighted to...
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Steve Howe talks about his solo re-releases PLUS 'Yes Guess Who'! - 686
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Ken Fuller and Jeffrey Crecelius In a truly epic episode this week, I had a lovely conversation with Steve Howe about the re-release of two of his solo albums, Portraits of Bob Dylan and Natural Timbre. Then, Mark and I enjoyed goofing around asking each other to guess the Yes men being referred to in various quotations. Do play along with that yourself after listening to my great chat with Steve. Why is Steve re-releasing these two albums now? How do they differ in approach? How important is Bob Dylan to music generally and to Steve?
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Yes Authenticity - 685
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Ken Fuller and Jeffrey Crecelius It was great to think a little about what might make up Yes’ authenticity this week. Is it possible to define what makes the output of a band - or any kind of artistic endeavour 'authentic’? Rather than try and come up with a definition of authenticity (which is probably a loftier aim than we had time for this week), Mark and I discussed what the rather nebulous concept means to us, in the context of Yes music. We each came up with examples of what we consider to be authentic aspects in the 50+ year history of...
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Yes Time Machine - Support Bands Edition - 684
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Jeffrey Crecelius, and Ken Fuller This week Mark and I set off once again in our YMP Yes Time Machines, this time to visit Yes concerts that also featured fascinating support bands, or bands on the same bill that we would loved to have seen. According to the essential Forgotten Yesterdays website, there have been 599 bands who have either supported or played alongside Yes since 1968 so there was plenty of choice for Mark and me. Before we begin, have a think which shows you didn’t manage to attend and would like to go back to in a time machine to...
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Fragile Solo Songs Revisited - 683
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Ken Fuller and Jeffrey Crecelius This week, Mark and I discussed the 'solo' songs on Fragile. Each band member contributed an individual project, some with more success than others. The style and approaches used by Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe and Squire are very different and they certainly prompted an interesting discussion as you'll hear. With Yes soon to embark on playing the whole of Fragile live for the third time, we also touched on how these songs come over live - and if it's even a good idea to include them alongside the 4 'proper'...
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Are there any short Yes epics? - 682
Yes Music Podcast
This week Mark and I had all sorts of fun thinking about whether there are any short Yes epics - or if this idea is even possible. We set ourselves the restriction of only choosing Yes songs less than 6mins in duration so can you guess what we came up with and how we justified our choices? It was sad to hear that Ozzy Osbourne died this week, only a few weeks after performing his last ever concert with his Black Sabbath bandmates. I can’t say I was a dedicated fan of Ozzy or Sabbath but my introduction to heavy metal was when a friend of mine took me up to his room in a slightly creepy...
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Six reasons why 90125 is a great Yes album - 681
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Jeffrey Crecelius, and Ken Fuller This week, Mark and I returned to the show to talk about the Yes classic album, 90125 from 1983. It is clearly, we believe, a great album but what makes it a great Yes album? It wasn’t originally going to be a Yes album at all and only became one at the last possible moment when Jon Anderson arrived on the scene. The band Cinema, consisting of Tony Kaye, Alan White, Trevor Rabin and Chris Squire had basically finished the record with Trevor Horn but, as you can read in full detail in Stephen Lambe’s excellent book...
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The Tales book is released PLUS Adam Wildi Tales interview - 680
Yes Music Podcast
This week I’d like to celebrate the release of my second book, Tales from Topographic Oceans - Yes Album Listening Guide - a title almost as lengthy as the record itself. It’s been a very long and sometimes challenging process to prepare the book for publication - much like the record itself. However, it’s finally here and you can buy it from all the usual places. If you haven’t yet ordered your copy, you live outside the UK and you would like to help me out, please visit and order from there. There are print on demand links in the store on the site which will allow you to order...
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6 reasons The Yes Album is a great Yes album - 679
Yes Music Podcast
Produced by Joseph Cottrell, Wayne Hall, Ken Fuller and Jeffrey Crecelius This week, Mark and I enjoyed coming up with 6 reasons why the band’s third record, The Yes Album, is a great Yes album. As I’m sure you know, this was Steve Howe’s first album with Yes and also Tony Kaye’s last. It is correctly viewed by many fans, critics and Steve Howe himself as the first Yes masterpiece. Clearly, we could have found dozens of reasons why this is a great Yes album but that would have left less room for you to be involved. So please do add your reasons in the comments on this week's show...
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Unfortunately, this is another week in which Mark and I have been unable to record a new episode. Don't worry though, next week we are interviewing someone who created a huge amount of Yeskit when he worked with the band in the 1970s. We are also taking part in an epic session all about the Steven Wilson remixes of Tales from Topographic Oceans with several of your favourite YMP guests. Those two episodes will (hopefully) be coming up in the next two weeks so look out for those.
This week, on the theme of Yeskit, I'm going to replay the interview we did with the delightful Derek Dearden.
Here's how I introduced the interview in June 2023:
"Unless you have already read my book, Yes The Tormato Story, you may not recognise the name Derek Dearden. However, you have certainly heard the results of his amazing technical wizardry. This is another deep dive episode but it also contains much of interest to any Yes fan. Derek was a delight to speak to when Mark and I interviewed him a few months ago and I’ve been keeping this fascinating interview under wraps so that early readers of the book had a few surprises to discover. If you don’t like spoilers, then consider coming back to this episode at a later date. I won’t be offended.
Quite a bit of this conversation was used in the chapter entitled The Other Drums in my book but even if you have read that, I’m sure you’ll love hearing Derek explaining how it all came about in his own words. To whet your appetite, Derek was employed at Advision as a technician and then went on to found a company very closely associated with Alan White."
- What did Derek Dearden create for Alan White?
- How did it all come about?
- What else did Derek invent?
Let us know if you agree with us!