It was thirty three years ago tonight that I first experienced Yes live and needless to say it changed my entire life. I have been a sound professional all of my life and it was because of that night and the emotions and wonder that overwhelmed me that I am. Thank you gentlemen for giving me a reason to be.

Just about everyone in Yes fandom has a specific concert performance that they found especially moving or significant, one that had a deep personal meaning or made a difference in their lives -- and all of those choices are different.

But there seems to be one unifying factor among all Yes fans -- the FIRST concert forever divided life into "before Yes," and "after Yes." Everyone seems to remember the exact date, time, and hour when they first saw the band perform live, and recalls vividly the impact of that show -- the intensity and the immensity of it. Ask any Yes fan about that first show, and an unmistakable, far-away look seems to overtake them... scanning a distant and past horizon, drifting into a previous day, a different time of life, perhaps even a different kind of heart that was forever changed by the Yes experience. That facial expression of remembrance seems to be practically universal, and it always seems to come with a smile.

For me, my first Yes concert was also my best Yes concert -- not because the band's performance was so superior to others given at a later date, but because that first Yes experience seemed so intimately *personal* to me at a time when I needed it most.

It was April 1973, the spring semester of my freshman year of college. Readers of Notes from the Edge will recall the story of how I met Kay Zahasky, my first Yes friend, and what a difference she made in my life. (No. 246). Kay was also responsible for my first Yes concert experience. If I ever see her again, I'd like to remind her of all of these things. I am sure she, too, would be overtaken by that that far-away, past-the-horizon, happy remembrance gaze.

I came to that first live Yes experience as a true "babe in the woods." Before that day, I lived a "separated" existence. As far back as I can remember, my life had been consumed by symphonic music, opera and ballet. I seriously studied many instruments for many years, sang in the adult opera chorus even as a child, and proved to be a very gifted dancer. This left no time at all for typical girlish pursuits. I was expected to be a "grown-up" even before I was a teenager. By the time I was 14, I was performing professionally with a ballet company, gradually rising through the ranks until I "retired" at 18 to pursue a more "normal" lifestyle by going to college -- something my peers, parents and mentors thought was equivalent to "throwing it all away." I strongly disagreed.

By then, I felt it was time for LIFE. Absolutely nothing about my life before college had been "normal." I knew there was something else out there that I desperately wanted -- something beyond the regimen of rehearsal, the four walls of the practice studio and the stage. College was the logical choice.

And that's where Kay Zahasky entered my life. Once we met and discovered that our love of Yes was a common tie, Kay delighted in surprising me daily with new and exciting challenges to my thinking. But no surprise was greater than the day she telephoned and said, "You're going to the Yes concert on Thursday! I have an extra ticket!"

I knew nothing about the concert. I had only been to one previous rock concert in my life, about five years earlier. It had been a rather drab, boring and disappointing "date" to see Neil Diamond from the nosebleed seats of a gigantic arena. If *that* was what rock concerts were all about, I was not interested. It had been like watching some teensy stick figure from across a great impenetrable divide of bodies, all blurry and indistinct. And the music had been one big indistinguishable roar -- very bad acoustics at the venue. The audience was rowdy, noisy, and talkative. I came from a classical background and was only accustomed to attending concerts to *listen.* Needless to say, that initial concert exposure was a total disaster, one I did not particularly want to repeat.

Yet here was Kay, telling me that I was going to see Yes the nex