20 years, 4 months and 2 days ago

Friday, May 7, 2004

Toronto, Ontario

Air Canada Centre

17,000 capacity

Jon Anderson:
Woo! Thank you. Oh Canada. Sweet Canada. Beautiful Canada. It's great to be with you tonight. Thank you all for coming out. We appreciate it. Oh Canada. Woo! Every time we come out to..uh do a concert tour we always try to do something a little bit different and..uh we're going to do tonight a piece of music we recorded in the nineties, but we never ever played it on stage until just now so. The song actually is about..uh a modern invention that..uh I read about somewhere, I don't know where I read about it, but I read about it and its very simple, the idea is computers we..we have to do that with the computers at the moment, you know, typing stuff and it comes up on the screen. Eventually we won't do that. We'll just touch something and our minds will create things on the computer. It's called entering the 'Mind Drive'.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. Thank you. We're going to do..uh we're going to do one more song and then we're going to have a cup of tea and some biscuits and..uh Rick's gotta get the [???] together. Strawberry Jam. [???] cream. It's time for tea. Before that [???] saying..er..after the count of five, Mr. Alan. Mr. Alan, Hey after the count of five. Here we go. Wonderful. Woo!

Jon Anderson:
Woo! Thank you so much. Thank you. Feels like we're in a pub..pub somewhere. Find your gin and tonic please. Gin and tonic. Uh..sorry, sorry miles away. Um..we..we..we've been getting together actually now for many years and there was one time we were in Switzerland forever. It's seemed like forever and we never skied. We didn't have time to skate. We were too busy making lots of music and this is one songs that came out of that experience and..uh so I'm going to play it for you right now. [???] moment in time.

Jon Anderson:
There it is. I..I..I'd like to..uh, thank you so much. Thank you. I'd like to draw it, draw your attention to this wonderful drum break known as the Alan, Alan..the Alan White..uh. One more time. You know, you know where he learned that? Listen, Alan used to work in a working mans club in his band. His first band. He's comes from Newcastle up in the north of England and..uh up in the north of England. You know I've been there as well. The band plays first and then the comedian comes on. Then the band goes on again and then the stripper comes on. That's, that's were he learned to play that. See, he learned to play behind the stripper. Seventeen years old. Bad. So bad, I can't believe it. So we're going to do a song which..uh we recorded on an album called..um 'Magnification' and the idea. It's a very simple song. It's just the idea of doing a song..uh we did it one afternoon and it just sorta popped out of nowhere and the lyrics sorta talked about how so many times we got together it's like a homage to the fans. So here we go. A songs for the fans. Starting with Alan on drums.

Jon Anderson:
So..uh thank you so much. Thank you. So we decided to..uh. Alan has worn his kilt on. Uh..sorry. Sorry Alan. Oh know, Alan wants to show you his kilt. [???].

Chris Squire:
[???].

Jon Anderson:
Over to Mr. Chris Squire who would like to..uh

Chris Squire:
Ah Yes. So I want to tell you a little story about when we were..uh. When Warner Brothers asked us to do the..uh this acoustic set and onto the..the 'Ultimate Yes Collection' which is available in your local record store and..uh we..uh decided ..uh to try to do a new version of 'Roundabout' and Alan and I were sitting in the hotel in Tokyo and we thought, Well, you know 'How can we do that?' and then, we thought, we let's try to make it into some kind of Chicago bluesy kind of shuffle and we thought, that might work or it might not so we, so we got to the studio. As we would and then, said to Rick, 'Rick, could you give us a little Chicago blues to see if it's going to work?'. I went 'That's it, that's brilliant. brilliant' [???].

Jon Anderson:
Brilliant.

Jon Anderson:
Woo!

Jon Anderson:
Woo! Thank you. [???] we'll leave you in the hands of Mr. Steve Howe on guitar.

Steve Howe:
Thank you very much. That was called 'Second Initial'. Thank you.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. One of the great things. One of the great things to be able to come here 2004. Who would have believed? Who would of thought? To be able to play this next song. It's..uh a great feeling inside to be able to be with you tonight. I want to thank you all for coming out tonight.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. There was a..a sort of wild and crazy time in the middle of the seventies when..uh we started expanding our..our ideas and our thoughts and our energies and..uh it's kind of amazing that..uh we went through this sorta big, big movement of music. Wanted to say so much. Wanted to say so much in our music and..uh truly is wonderful that we can still play the music, that we have an audience for this music we wrote thirty years ago so. As we say, getting together like this is like a ritual and we shall play that for you.

Jon Anderson:
Thank you so much. When we first started rehearsing at the beginning of 1968, what this was about the third song we tried to sing and..uh we decided to record it at the BBC and we loved..uh playing it on stage so much we recorded it on the first album. It's an old, old Beatles song from way way back. So we're going to do it tonight for you.