52 years, 1 month and 9 days ago Saturday, February 19, 1972 New York City, New York Academy Of Music 3,000 capacity
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Jon Greenstein Saturday, May 20, 2017 9:40 AM Ahh, my very first Yes concert at the long-defunct Academy of Music on 14th Street! I found a diary from 1972 I had been keeping, and in it I entered the following: "Blizzard, Yes concert! with Compost and Mark-Almond. Started at 1:00 am, Yes came on 3:30 and played 'til 5:05. Got home at 6:00." I remember that the blizzard that was forecast turned out to be not so bad, but it did delay the show significantly. (And there was also a lengthy delay between the 2nd act and Yes, which provoked impatient foot-stomping from an already antsy audience.) What struck me the most about Yes was their amazing ability to make their complex music sound in concert just like the studio versions. This was the last time I was to see them perform in a theater for many years, as the releases of Fragile and then Close to the Edge in that same year elevated them to arena status. (The next time I saw them was in November of that same year at the Nassau Coliseum in L.I., and I went on to see them as Yes, ABWH, and ARW another 27 times and still counting over the years.) |