1.01 Siberian Khatru (11.56)
1.02 Heart Of The Sunrise (11.08)
1.03 Future Times (7.11)
1.04 Circus Of Heaven (5.04)
1.05 The Big Medley (30.37)
1.06 Excerpt From The Ancient (3.01)
1.07 Howe Solo (5.34)
==============================
2.01 Arriving UFO (8.03)
2.02 Starship Trooper (11.49)
2.03 Wakeman Solo (6.38)
2.04 Awaken (17.40)
2.05 Tour Jam For Boston (2.37)
2.06 I've Seen All Good People (7.11)
2.07A Audience Party (2.44)
2.07B Roundabout (10.21)
==============================

YES

TITLE: [Working] "B79", a.k.a. "The Realization of a Little Imagination"

DATE: 19 June 1979

LOCATION: Boston, MA, USA

VENUE: Boston Garden

RECORDING TYPE: Audience ["AR"]

SOURCE: Original master tapes [Maxell XLII-S] recorded with Nakamichi 550 deck and Nakamichi CM-100/CP-1 microphones

TAPER: The unsurpassed Mr. Barry Rogoff

LINEAGE: Original master transfer - Nak BX 300 [Dolby B out] > Digigram VXPocket V2 > CD quality wave [44.1, 16 bit] > Nero 7.0 > Addonics Digicopier Firewire > EAC > mastering computer > FLAC > Dime > You

INDEPENDENT SOURCE ANALYSIS: Several trusted “beta testers”, including the Taper, Gromek and others

ORIGINAL ART: Gromek

LINEUP: Vocals, harp, incidental percussion and guitar - Jon Anderson; Keyboards - Rick Wakeman; Guitars - Steve Howe; Bass Guitars - Chris Squire; Percussion - Alan White

SETLIST [for standard 80-minute CDR]:

[Vol. 1]
1.01 Siberian Khatru (11.56)
1.02 Heart Of The Sunrise (11.08)
1.03 Future Times (7.11)
1.04 Circus Of Heaven (5.04)
1.05 The Big Medley (30.37)
1.06 Excerpt From The Ancient (3.01)
1.07 Howe Solo (5.34)

[Vol. 2]
2.01 Arriving UFO (8.03)
2.02 Starship Trooper (11.49)
2.03 Wakeman Solo (6.38)
2.04 Awaken (17.40)
2.05 Tour Jam For Boston (2.37)
2.06 I've Seen All Good People (7.11)
2.07A Audience Party (2.44)
2.07B Roundabout (10.21)

Endless, endless thanks to the Taper – this nearly if not completely miraculous AR wouldn’t exist for us to enjoy without his bravery and expertise, then and now.

When the cheaper speakers begin to fart, remember - it's a true audience sound capture :]

REMASTER SUMMARY:

Pitch/Tempo naturalization and EQ work to reveal - not mix - existing detail in CEP 2.0 and Izotope Ozone. No noise reduction attempted. Extensive detail below can be read or skipped as preferred, but I will have no mercy on any complainers who have not read it [I will know] ;}

STRENGTHS [please also see "weaknesses" further down]:

Performance -

Yes in 1979 speaks for itself, here and in any other recording from the tour whatever its SQ. The excitement of a brand new album - never quite the same after TORMATO - had passed with 1978 but as Yes themselves have said the opportunity to focus on new arrangements and interpretations of seasoned works was exciting enough and it shows here.

GOING FOR THE ONE and its tour were a bit like CLOSE TO THE EDGE in being a daunting monument to follow up, but Yes pulled off another brilliant remake with their approach to the TORMATO tour if not the album itself, and managed to develop it nicely for 1979's second tour installment. If anything it was an opportunity to simply play, without the pressure of getting this or that performance of a brand new album sounding just a tad better than the night before. Slightly different approaches to everything anyhow, especially the "Big Medley", worked well enough to make them sound almost new again. Probably more than anything else what Yes had in common with straight jazz acts. "Arriving UFO" was a special treat, played rarely if at all during 1978.

Source and Mastering Effort –

As most will know right off, very different remaster of this same recording has been in wide circulation for some time. Both come from the exact same source - the same professional transfer of the original master tapes. Respective goals and results however differ enormously. The source is a top shelf 1970s AR unlike any other both for unbelievable sound capture and for almost insurmountable remastering challenges presented by Yes concert sound so powerful and detailed it overwhelmed even the best contemporary recording equipment at times.

For B79 two primary areas of focus were front and center - 1] The very same brilliant natural detail in the original master recognized by all going in, yet like most from before 1990 or so in need of liberation from analog tape 'encrustations'. 2] Pitch and tempo, which in the original tapes are way, way off due to the common practice of so-setting high end decks at the time theoretically for a better sound capture. Based on my experience with such tapes I’d call the theory highly viable, but would be ashamed to death if I ever left out the needed post-capture correction. Pitch-tempo has been addressed carefully and now matches period studio recordings as well as other original AR masters without similar needs.

Many audience recordings are remastered to sound as much like industry ‘live’ releases as possible. That’s fine and a value I share when limited to clarity of detail, but in an AR detail comprises much more than just instruments and vocals. Audience sound, p.a. system output nuances and venue ambience among many other things are paramount and should be conserved as carefully as performance sound unless something enjoys artificially high volume in the recording, as in an obnoxious, constant yeller right next to mikes. While audience volume in B79’s source is prominent, it suffers no such imbalance constant or otherwise, is accurate, proportionate and part of the event’s reality. Taper's section is relatively quiet, and in any case if we hate audience noise so much in an AR we should stick to sbds or heavily mixed industry releases. Therefore I both left it intact and revealed it, along with Yessound. No spot mixing to suppress audience sound was either needed or attempted, and would have resulted in terrible artificial effects transitions throughout the recording anyhow. Band and crowd detail alike are now MUCH more visible. Not to mention much closer to and in some areas beyond that of its 'sister' recording "B78" [Yes, Boston, 30 August 1978].

Both B78 and B79 were unique achievements in audience taping, having detail across the spectrum rivaling many of the best from 1990 and beyond. Even in their case it was largely hidden under many layers of tape noise and related issues. Both required many months of experimental EQ work and testing of results by multiple listeners in a wide variety of playback systems to get their existing detail as fully revealed as it could be without rendering analog noise or distortion intolerable. While B79 oddly does not have quite the degree of high frequency richness and warmth B78 offers it does come within a hair of it, and more importantly enjoys richer midrange presence as well as noticeably lower hiss volume. So rich are B79's mids that together with its excellent enough highs they led more than one 'beta' listener to initially accuse me of trying to pass a sbd off as an AR ;}

What you have here is the original capture, unaltered except for EQ work to reveal as much of what the original audience really heard as the recording possibly can. It may even come as a serious shock to many. The entire dynamic range now comes through vastly better than I had hoped it ever would even from such an exceptional source [and because of some problems in it described below]. High frequencies, while still not quite as smooth as B78's, are actually more detailed in some ways. Mids, which had been overwhelming and harsh in raw master and worse in remaster sequences prior to this one, are now as warm as B78's not to mention more 'present'. Lows from kick drum to the entire range of bass guitar frequencies can be both felt and heard in all their complexity, much as the audience experienced them. The listener is cautioned to start with relatively flat tuner/amp settings - the proper AR goal of signal and signal detail as close as possible to the real thing has been achieved and cheaper speakers in particular can be vulnerable.

WEAKNESSES:

Performance -

Not my absolute favorite of the tour, but up there. I thought Yes' Madison Square Garden [NYC] performance just a night or two earlier was more vital, especially Starship Trooper and Awaken, but it didn't include "Arriving UFO" and my old 1st generation tape of it has been played at least 100 times too many for a Dime-worthy remaster to be possible. That's made even sadder by its source having also been a Nak 550 original, almost certainly rivaling this one for brilliant SQ and for all I know lost completely to three decades of entropy. If anyone who likes what they hear in B79 ever turns up the original master of "MSG79" please get in touch!

The Yes PA mix was also better at times in New York - in this one certain of Wakeman's keyboard channels especially are much lower, most noticeably at different points in "Big Medley" ["Perpetual Change"] and "Awaken". Most of the time though keyboards in B79 come through more clearly than in B78 and but for tape distortion could easily be called studio or sbd quality.

Source and overall sound -

Tape noise. It could be a lot worse and actually isn’t as bad as some of what ended up in the officially released THE WORD IS LIVE, but it's noticeable. We are dealing with a 1970s analog AR albeit an excellent one, not a high end DAT from the 1990s or 2000s. The recording and remaster are also so detailed they reveal Yes sound system noise almost never detectable otherwise and frequently confused with tape noise when it is. Concert sound system output flaws are most noticeable during the Howe and Wakeman solos [see taper’s notes below], and during “Gates”’ transition into its “Soon” movement. Tape age and/or wear seem likely factors as well, and this master is reported to have been played more frequently than B78 over the years before quality digital transfer became possible. It probably contributes to both noise and other shortcomings, including some high hat and other metal percussion sounding a bit 'warbled' or 'swirly' throughout [just possibly also a property of sound system output, examined in more detail further below].

Not long into this project I had taken to calling it, jokingly, "Bull Rodeo '79". Anyone familiar with North American bull riding events should quickly understand why. Quite often the very best analog AR sound captures are the most difficult to remaster if goal and approach are getting their natural spectral detail as completely visible as possible without rendering inevitable analog noise or distortion too aggravating. B79 underwent nearly a hundred experimental remaster sequences before the current one was settled on, each suggestive of a bull ridden slightly longer than the one before it, before the rider finally thrown and bull had to be shot [files deleted]. Each one at least did achieve enough for the next one to be built upon. This all resulted largely from midrange so strong in the Yes sound mix it generated several categories of distortion effecting the entire spectrum, especially the high frequencies - not a problem at all in B78 despite its higher tape noise level. Every time detail began to sound like something approaching what the audience heard, high frequencies in particular would become 'dirty' sounding, with a sort of 'ringy', 'ghost' image in the lower parts of certain extreme highs like metal percussion. Sibilant distortion was also bad during many full band at full throttle moments, effecting both vocals ["S"s] and high frequency instruments. All of these are properties of the original analog capture and can be heard in it, but naturally came right out front along with desired detail. The challenge was finding the right EQ sequence for getting that joyous signal detail revealed while keeping the different distortion types at tolerable levels. Between at last achieving the right balance and some limited post-EQ compression, what you have here is the final, most successful effort.

Some of this distortion can still be heard, especially the sibilance, but after many a 'dead bull' it's at last no worse than in the master source while signal detail vastly better than anything heard before. The previously circulated effort may remain preferable to some listeners, and while I would never begrudge anyone preferring lower noise/distortion levels to better spectral detail the pitch/tempo correction alone helped make possible getting more signal spectrum revealed without aggravating the distortion problems as much.

As always, digital noise reduction technology - from dehissing to sibilant reduction - remains so primitive and counterproductive I refuse to use it unless it's absolutely unavoidable [as in the case of "B76"]. It was not used here, except for some anti-hum/rumble measures in very quiet sections like Steve's solo and parts of "Awaken" - which attack signal too but had to be done. All undesirable noise remains to some degree, but again intact, fully revealed signal was the goal and it couldn't have been achieved without putting up with a higher noise/distortion level. Undesirables remain most noticeable in Steve Howe’s solo – Yes’ engineer really had that acoustic guitar jacked up [see also taper’s notes below] - "Future Times", "Circus of Heaven", "Starship Trooper", "Awaken" and "Roundabout". In them things get rather fuzzy sounding at times, but they still offer far greater detail than EVER before. A scattering of sibilant distortion will still be noticeable throughout, including segments where other distortion problems are least annoying or altogether absent. In consolation I can offer all are 100% better than they had been at several points, and again no worse now than in the raw master. Most importantly, detail even I didn’t think existed is fully revealed.

Other source weaknesses include a number of widely scattered of mechanics-generated dropouts, usually microphone cables being jerked around. In one such case the taper and his entourage were desperately trying to get valuable equipment out of harm's way as a drunk was staggering toward it just before "Arriving UFO". The day was saved and the moment is preserved here as a part of the overall event history, not to mention in such crisp detail it almost puts us right there in its midst. Part of what makes an AR an AR. Time constraints and my rather purist nature with ARs dictated my leaving them alone. Most occur only during audience noise anyhow.

Last off, beginning about the point of "All Good People" a very strange property of the master recording becomes evident - at best poorly described as a "rushing", "watery" sound most obvious in heavy crash cymbals. It resembles some deliberate effects used in psychedelic recordings from the 1960s and beyond, but here intended by no one, except just maybe Yes' own soundman. A bit of it can be heard in the official LIVE IN PHILADELPHIA video release - also and interestingly during "All Good People". I've also detected it in the opening bars of "Yours is No Disgrace" from YESSONGS, itself at least in part quite likely an 'official AR'. It's most weirdly common in ARs from the 1977 GFTO tour [99% of them including the best ones]. Causation hypotheses range from venue air movement to contemporary cassette technology, but I most strongly suspect phase shifters in the Yes PA system output. No digital or analog remastering protocol or device will remove it, and it could also be a factor in the ‘swirly’ property effecting metal percussion throughout the entire recording as mentioned above.

With caveats in mind, enjoy! Please share freely but never sell and please keep lossless. Happy time travels!

NOTES FROM THE TAPER:

The 360-degree sound system suspended over the rotating stage used in 78, 79, and
80 was a marvel. It sounded so good that one would have had to work hard to get
a bad recording. It gave everyone in the entire building a great listening experience
and a great view of the entire band. If only it were still in use.

The 360-degree stage did pose one unique problem: how to aim the mikes to get good
stereo separation while staying on-axis with the sound sources. What you hear was
my best guess at the time.

I should also mention that there were problems with the sound system at one point.
There were technicians all over the stage during Jon's acoustic "Leaves
of Green" and (I think) Clap.

Hopefully Lestat will agree to remaster my recording from 1980. He's not into
the Drama album but I think he will come to recognize that the performance had some
great moments. Being early in the tour, Trevor's voice was still in good shape.
If you would like to hear that show, post a comment and let us know. –Barry

[Lestat replies – I’ll GLADLY do the DRAMA show, and am looking forward to working on it! If B79 is any indication it’ll be something to behold.]

FROM AN INDEPENDENT TEST LISTENER, WRITER AND MUSICIAN:

B79 "Arriving UFO"

When Yes played the Boston Garden in 1979, ten true summers had come and gone, then slid uneasily into an eleventh. Where the Big Medley seemed a nice way to include past favorites on the band's ten-year anniversary, in 1979 it hinted that the well was running dry. And, in some ways, it was; fans who had attended the 1978 shows may have had future times on their minds, and not just during that song.

But the music itself gives no hint of the turmoils backstage: the sound is great, the band plays well, and the songs are smashing. With the return of "Starship Trooper" and addition of "Leaves of Green", it even sounds as if things were getting better. Listen to the Big Medley here, and see if you can keep the volume level down for long: Chris Squire feeding his "Fish" solos to the audience as if by hand; "Perpetual Change" exploding with the same incredible energy that made it impossible to omit from YESSONGS. The revival of "Time and a Word" was subsequently included on YESSHOWS, but without the power of hearing it punch into "Long Distance Runaround". By the time "Soon" draws the medley to a close, it's clear that a year on the road had honed these songs into rapier vehicles, with the band slicing them up every show to the fans' delight.

Still, there was a reason the band hadn't put together a new album, and not for lack of ideas: almost everyone put out side projects in 1979. Things would finally come to a head by the end of the year, with the Paris sessions proving that at least they tried. Meanwhile, they had crossed the continent doing shows like this, and it is no wonder that a solo Jon soon found that he missed the band. In 1980, Boston would witness a very different Yes, and the longing would begin for a return to shows like these.

Fortunately for us, the intrepid taper who recorded the 1978 show came to this one as well, with fine results: a rich sound and a full spectrum. An earlier version of this was previously released into trading circles, but this version is undeniably, vastly clearer: all instruments can be made out, and the overall sound is much sharper. It's as if the listener was moved from a pretty good seat behind the soundboard to the perfect center just in front..

So join us, the taper, editors, artists, and remaster beta testers of BOSTON 1979, in celebrating this great concert from the last year of the classic Yes era -- thanks to this great sound capture, and an excellent recovery, we can hear it just as if it were happening live before our ears, for the first time, at this very moment. Which is only appropriate since, in some cosmic vibratory manner, it is indeed still happening -- echoed in the very molecules and energies of our beings. Surely Jon would agree :-)