Andrej

YES! It was true! It was not 1. april joke!!!

Hi. My name is Andrej and I would like to make a report from YESterdays show, which was my first (and hope not last) YES concert. I would like not to bother you with it, but I must tell how I counted down months, days and finally hours before the show. (And now I am happy :-))

So, Yes were playing in sporthall, in front of some 2-3000 people. I did forget to say that me and my friends came from Slovenia, which is the nearest country to Trieste (which is in Italy). The doors were open at 8p.m. and the show started at 9. We (me and my girlfried, who received her Yes concert for her birthday ;-)) took our seats in the middle of 4th row, right in front of mr.Cristopher Squire (ans as it showed later, we had really fine seats). As there was one hour to wait, we bought some T-shirts (finnally I own a Yes T-shirt :-)) and we enjoyed to watch how the hall was filling. Italians around us were tipical italians (loud and full of temperament): While waiting they played cards, a game known as "ship sinking" and more... They were funny, but I had a little fear that they will not behave nice during concert (and I was wrong, most of the time).

After the first sounds of Firebird Suite excitement was in full form, the crowd started to became loud and after a few seconds the band took the stage and we were in (soooo long waited) heaven. And after a few minutes: Siberian Khatru. Whoa!!! That was it! Finally my heroes were playing this marvelous music in front of my eyes. The setlist was mostly the same, and as we expexcted from Steve, he did play something new between Mood and Clap, ant that was (I think he said so) a part of Winter from Antonio Vivaldi´s Four Seasons (although it is a spring right now ;-)).

About bandmembers:

Steve: one flubbed note during Mood, occasionally smiling (?) and superb playing. (Ah, and realy serious face during OOaLH ;-)

Jon: perfect voice, no mistakes, no forgotten words, very nice chatting during the songs (he made the crowd laughing a few times)

Igor: Uh, on the way home we talked mostly of his solo spot. Man, he is good!

Alan: what a powerful drumsolo!!! I never thought he is so good, because during the songs he is mostly playing 4/4. But in the solo: he played 4 different rhythms with his four limbs. Huh!

Billy: he was even smiling sometimes. His guitar is unaudible most of the time, but solos from Trevor he did reasonably well. Anyway, he contributed a lot of vocals (especially Chris higher parts) and (thanks god!) he did not chew during Revealing Science of God.

And finally Chris: He is the Man! That big human figure playing with his Rickenbacker as it is a tennis reckett :-). He vas really having his time! He was laughing all the time, he was killing us with his E tones and bass pedals, but his "mean smile" was never really mean, just funny. He even made a mistake as he start singing "Follow..." at the end of Starship Trooper. This was the highlight of the concert for me. Everything else was so perfect, that at that particular moment all band was having a big fun, they laughed to each other, then Chris started again: "Follow..." and everything went OK to the end.

About sound:

It was OK, sometimes a real cd quality, but for me it was not loud enough (not much, maybe 5-7%). The bass pedals (I am sort of a bass player so you must forgive me) were not loud enough, as I expected the deep basses will shake the building. It happened ocasionally, but until the encore I think, music was a little to quiet (maybe I have damaged or dirty ears, who knows?).

Al in all, It was GREAT and PERFECT and today I can just keep saying to myself: YES! YES! YES!

(Ah, and the bad thing: my friend was trying to make a bootleg with some small recorder, but someone from security noticed him and then they confiscated him the recorder. So, no boot :-( Sorry.)

PS I asked even