chas

Monday, July 15, 2019 7:23 AM

I remember my mom wanted my brother and I to wear our Sunday bests ...was she think this was a recital or something? I worked at Specs music around this time and saw a LOT of shows at the LCC. Indeed, it was a great show, the band were just fantastic. We stood on our chairs for most of the set!

Laura Belfiore

My girlfriends and I were on Vacation in Orlando from NYC and we took a bus ride to Lakeland to see Yes. We checked into a hotel and tried to make telephone calls to find out where the band was staying. Our line was that we had a flower delivery for the band. We finally made a call to the Lakeland Hilton and they confirmed that the band was there, but said nothing could be brought to the room. We hung up the phone and checked out of our motel and checked into the Lakeland Hilton. We were told we got the last room.

We went to the show with no tickets. Did not realize there was no scalping and we were stuck. We hung out in the back and the band and some of the roadies were playing soccer. I saw "Claude" whom I met in NY a couple of weeks earlier. I told him of our problem and he said to sit tight. So we took a seat outside in the back of the venue along with some others who did not seem to have money to get inside and just travelled around with the band. Finally, the music came on. We got nervous and low and behold Claude came out and let everyone back there inside! What a great show!.

After the concert, we went back to the hotel and rode the elevator up and down a couple of times trying to figure out which floor the band was on. The elevator door opens and we see two teenagers sitting outside this door so we got off the elevator and sat down next to them. A few minutes later, Ed Shockey (PA DeeJay/ friend of Yes) opens the door and the kids that were sitting there said "Can we go in now?"...Ed Shockey said, if you remain cool I will come back out and bring you in. So we just sat there besides ourselves and he reopened the door and said come on in. As we are going down the hall into this hospitality room, we see the flowers we left for the band. We turn into the room and there is Chris Squire and Jon Anderson sitting at this long table. Jon is sipping a glass of Suave Bolla wine and Chris is smoking a cigarette. We were told to take a seat and when we sat down, we all lit up cigarettes and started smioking, I guess out of nervousness. I do not remember what we talked about..but Jon was at the head of the table and I felt like I was at the Last Supper!. At the end, I asked Jon for a hug and he graciously gave me and my friends one. We were on Cloud 9.

Next day, we wake up. get dressed and go to the Lobby. We found out the band was eating breakfast so we figured we'd hide out in the gift shop and wait for them to come out. We walk in the gift shop and Jon is in there! He was looking at these little cards with pretty sayings on them...he asked us which ones we liked and proceeded to write a card to each of us! He even asked me what my friends name who was too shy to come into the shop and wrote her out a card too! He asked us if we were going to the next show and we said we could not and he said goodbye to us!!! It was a dream come true for us!!!

This was the beginning of many Yes stories to follow!!!!!!!

john gadsby

man, this "in the round show was great, my first yes show, came from sarasota with 9 or 10 friends, all yesheads, one of our friends, jeff, was on crutches and we conned the doorman into letting him in early so he didn't get trampled "general admission" he was the first one in, grabbed a front row, realized that was too close so he moved to the third row. outstanding seats, we played a game that night with the crowd, we had brought in a frisbee (to roll in) someone, (wild bill i think) rolled up all but the last little bit, he asked what he should do with the rest, i told him to roll it, i then taped it(yes a joint) to the bottom of the frisbee and launched it into the crowd, this was before the show. that frisbee went around the civic center 4 or 5 times and noone noticed that there was a jjoint taped to the bottom,(all too high i guess :) we all started hollering at folks to look under, to no avail, at last the frisbee came back towards us, it was going to go over our heads, by now the crowd around us had caught on to what was going on, as it came towards us again, ole bill stood up on his seat and jumped up and grabbed it, joint was still there, so we did the only thing we could, took the joint off the "magic frisbee" and smoked it :)
loved the show, it was everything we'd imagined it would be

peace out,
john gadsby (punky)

punky, jeff, wild bill (aqualung) and rick (toby stubbed) harrod, chris (ficus) and marty (theotis) bernhard pammy wojnarowski and her friend sherry and the guy who owned the van, george

Dom Citrullo

Well Yes finally is playing Fl. again.

What happened on "Going For The One" Tour?

I hadn't seen Yes since The Tampa Show in June 1976, and was pissed that It took 3 years before they played in the Sunshine State again.

But was glad that I got to see them again before they eventually split up. Yes played in the round and were they loud or what. Wide variety of material including snatches of Sound Chaser during Chris and Alan's bit. First band that was successful in the round that I saw.

I actually liked most of Tormato and it translated well live, I thought Chris's harmonized Rickenbacker was the best thing on the record.

The concert was very enjoyable and the place was just about soldout at the Lakeland Civic Center.