This wonderful performance is now more widely available, eclipsing all others for sound quality and giving the best-yet opportunity to hear how fabulous the RELAYER tour really was [Boston FM broadcast, step aside!]. Warm thanks to Freezer for sharing his irreplaceable document, and all condolences to today's would-be progressive bands -- they really *don't* make 'em like this anymore.

Looks like no matter what Lestat postulates, he has a real propensity to be as wrong as possible.

I'm sorry I ever took that tape of Yes from December 1, 1974 out of my garage and offered it up.

Lesson learned and it won't happen again.

Many thanks to Lestat amd his cronies for showing me what a sad day looks like for trying to share anything at all.

It looks like I may have been dead wrong about who nearly ruined the audience recording of this show discussed below - it's been 'released' with apparent taper approval on at least one Bit Torrent tracker and the damage I thought inflicted by factory bootleggers remains.

It's easy to blame factory boots for this kind of damage - they do it all the time - but it now appears the damage was inflicted MUCH closer to the source - long before the factory boot ever got hold of it.

Unless of course the taper approved an upload of the factory boot - that would be a sad day like no other.

After experiencing some of the drier and harsher sounding SBD captures (e.g.,'73 LZ), indeed, throughout 30 years of collecting, I have, as well as most likely many, many folks, always preferred a great audience record..... Let's keep our fingers crossed that this taper will find themself continuing the contribution of this and other magnificent records....

theembryo wrote:

"Damn.... after Lestat's post.... it's difficult to construct a scenario where we're likely to see this emerge as it should without the amount of specific personal attention over each and every detail that records such as this deserve initially....... There will always be for-sales, but so unfortunate that the raw release sees circulation this way....."

Absolutely.

Especially with one original master and one bad remaster already running loose only the taper can see to it his wonder is appreciated for what it really is, by distributing himself or through authorized agents, after directly monitoring a decent job of any needed audio restoration or 'excavation' [careful revealing of extant signal detail only, with the unique audience capture energy and depth fully intact, audience chatter and all].

Damn.... after Lestat's post.... it's difficult to construct a scenario where we're likely to see this emerge as it should without the amount of specific personal attention over each and every detail that records such as this deserve initially....... There will always be for-sales, but so unfortunate that the raw release sees circulation this way.....

A few observations on the recording so fascinatingly debated below.

It seems to me VLC was a bit harsh, but when I visited GS' website I was a bit taken aback by all the nostalgia for a time before lossless digital sharing, when we were complete hostages to parasitic, profiteering factory boot scum, tyrannical industry types with limited vision or hissy tape generations as sources for ‘live’ material.

I do work for a number of 70s-era master tapers who understand clearly A] their work will never be properly appreciated without the right kind of [free] distribution and B] know full well their masterpieces will get short shrift from “remasterers'’ who think an excellent audience recording should be mixed to resemble sterile sbds and industry releases. Several of these ‘remasterers’, both groups and individuals, are quite well known and popular despite hasty, sloppy and ultimately sub par work with high quality sources capable of and deserving better. Even the ones who do this for love and no money more often than not turn out products far short of their potential and I can only guess it’s due to hearing loss, over-reliance on engineering theory or both.

Then we have the category of boot factory profiteer-remasterers, a.k.a. Highland et al, and Tarantura. I was sent copy of the Tarantura edit for analysis and possible remastering. Here’s the lowdown. 1] it's probably the best audience sound capture of Yes from 1974, period. 2] Tarantura, henceforth “Tarantula” [apologies to arachnids everywhere] had already nearly destroyed it with typically stupid and destructive 'remastering' designed to alter its very nature as an audience recording [“AR”]. Then they sold it for profit. More on this further down.

They did do unusually good EQ work – most popular remasters of this kind of thing fall short of their potential for spectral detail and often have less than the raw masters they started from. The incredible detail in “Freezer’s” AR capture is well revealed, but things go downhill fast from there.

In a practice all too common among both pros and amateurs but to an extreme an industry producer would find embarrassing, Tarantula applied so much digital compression to this recording it suffers severe unevenness I’m certain the raw master does not. Overcompression also renders sound harsh and ‘thin’ much of the time, at intervals amounting to dropout where there had been none. I recognized how bad it was immediately on first playback, but when I saw it on screen I was completely horrified. The compression is so bad that in graphic and spectral visual analysis the files literally burst completely out of the window and would do so completely off screen were it possible. Think of trying to stuff a beanbag chair into a 1” pipe. Why it didn’t create severe clipping and other distortion the minute it was done is a mystery, but as more and more clones of this tragedy are made error of all kinds will ultimately appear. Like digital noise reduction, which even today is a chainsaw nearly always doing far more harm than good, compression should NEVER be used in ARs except as a last resort for dealing with intolerable source distortion and then only very sparingly. Unless of course one prefers their sound harsh, pinced and tinny.

Other completely unnecessary crap was pulled, including intermittent bandwidth amplification in an attempt to mix out crowd sound not out of proportion at all with band sound and to artificially mix undistorted p.a. system output. It may also have been an attempt to mitigate or reverse the severe and boneheaded compression damage. All these measures really achieved was aggravation of compression damage pre or post and creation of more signal dropout – again, where there had been little or none originally.

The damage described above is irreversible and I have decided not to touch it, which brings up the subject of propriety and distribution anyhow.

The taper “Freezer”<

I just reprinted my review from my website. This is not a scam nor am I selling a silver, but just wanted to share the review of a newly found and released, excellent quality Yes tape.

"Steve Wehner:

Interesting that a copy of this show is just now surfacing after 33 years. My master tape copy was the only one in existence until this time. My version has circulated and admittedly not a very good recording (done on crappy equipment from way back in the cheap seats). I would be real interested to see if this actually surfaces or is just hype. I always wondered if someone else recorded it besides me.

Steve 'Relayerman' Wehner"

Maybe, but this is now clearly identified as a sick scam, targeted at those who never got past 1990s "silver" boot factories, and worse, miss them. For those wondering - whether or not this recording has been circulated someone is trying to sell it on Forgotten Yesterdays for profit. Please ignore it. The original and probably better can be had for free on any number of trader websites. Please do a Google search and spend nothing other than what your ISP and local blank disc sellers charge. It'll probably sound a lot better too.

Interesting that a copy of this show is just now surfacing after 33 years. My master tape copy was the only one in existence until this time. My version has circulated and admittedly not a very good recording (done on crappy equipment from way back in the cheap seats). I would be real interested to see if this actually surfaces or is just hype. I always wondered if someone else recorded it besides me.

Steve 'Relayerman' Wehner

Relay Of Keyboardman (Tarantura TCDY-10-1, 2)
Dunkirk Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA – December 1, 1974

Disc 1: Firebird Suite, Sound Chaser, Close To The Edge, To Be Over, Gates Of Delirium, And You And I

Disc 2: Ritual, Roundabout

Yes, I agree!! This is excellent news!! How do I get a copy? This tour was my first concert--ever. This is the same set list they played when I saw them. To have a copy of it would truly be a 'Wonderous Story!'

"Relay Of Keyboardman (Tarantura TCDY-10-1, 2)
Dunkirk Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA – December 1, 1974

Disc 1: Firebird Suite, Sound Chaser, Close To The Edge, To Be Over, Gates Of Delirium, And You And I

Disc 2: Ritual, Roundabout"

Great! Where do we get it? Why just 100 copies? Something like this should be offered to the world, and can be done so losslessly for free. reem@mindspring.com if interested.

Relay Of Keyboardman (Tarantura TCDY-10-1, 2)
Dunkirk Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA – December 1, 1974

Disc 1: Firebird Suite, Sound Chaser, Close To The Edge, To Be Over, Gates Of Delirium, And You And I

Disc 2: Ritual, Roundabout

Relay Of Keyboardman is the debut of a brand new tape source of a show that has never circulated before. Yes’ late 1974 tour of the US is their first of several in support of Relayer. The sound quality of the tape is clear, powerful, detailed, and the best audience recording from this short tour. Tarantura increased the volume slightly which brings up attendant hiss, and there is some crunchiness surrounding the audience noise that isn’t on the master tape, but that is only noticeable in the quiet parts between songs and is not a factor during the music. The timbre of the stereo recording is unique in capturing a three dimensional aural dynamics and is very welcome since this is Yes, even thirty years on, at their most adventurous and aggressive. On this tour the set list is short despite the presence of three twenty-minute epics. The goal of these shows was to bring the new keyboardist, Patrick Moraz, and their daring music from the new album onto the road with little in the way of extended solos and improvisational elaboration. Pieces that would find their way to the stage the following year such as “Clap” and “Dance Of Ranyart/Olias (To Build The Moorglade)” are omitted in favor of straight renditions of studio material (with one important exception). Yes play the new album, two thirds of Close To The Edge, one fourth of Tales From Topographic Oceans, and “Roundabout” from Fragile as an encore. The tape begins with the “Firebird Suite” introduction played over the venue’s PA system and muffled conversation by the taper. Moraz’s keyboard intro to “Sound Chaser” is not audible, which is common for many of these tapes and the music picks up with Alan White’s drums. Anderson’s flute is very loud at the beginning before the band launch into the verses. Steve Howe’s guitar solo in the middle is particularly hostile in this recording.

After Anderson’s humble greeting and a request by someone close to the taper for “Roundabout,” the band play “Close To The Edge.” The opening section “Solid Time Of Change” seems to blow the audience back a few rows and Moraz plays the first sections very conservatively. He adds his flavor at the end of “I Get Up I Get Down” and the first part of “Seasons Of Man.” There seems to be a bug in the PA as the band reiterates the opening keyboard part before they can finish the piece. There is a small cut in the tape afterwards, cutting part of Anderson’s next introduction where he says, “…in time for Christmas. The first song we played to you is called ‘Sound Chaser’ and that’s on the album. And this song we’ll do now is called ‘To Be Over’.” This is one of Yes’ most exalted compositions and they deliver a beautiful version. Afterwards Anderson says, “The album’s titlted Relayer. And the first side of the album is titled ‘The Gates Of Delirium.’” Since the album wouldn’t be available for another two weeks, the audience’s reaction to the piece is mutued and Yes deliver a very space rendition. The first disc ends with “And You And I,” the one song from Close To The Edge that has the longest stay in Yes’ set list over the years. It is on this tour when the harmonica melody was introduced during “The Preacher The Teacher” played by Chris Squire.

The final song of the set is a twenty-five minute version of side four of Topographic Oceans “Ritual.” Before the first verse lines from “The Remembering” (“out in the city running free”) and “The Revealing Science Of God” (“what happened to this song / we once knew so well”) make an appearance. It is an interesting effect, recalling the important highlights of earlier songs in the piece. The band always intended for Topographic Oceans to be played as one, four-part pi