Yes "Talk"

No movie tonight. Grim came over again, and once again we went for a walk at CSUN and ended up sitting at a table in the Business Center food court, just talking about stuff like the Yes concert, and Trump, and King Crimson. Two out of three ain't bad, right? I've been investigating some of the music from the Trevor Rabin era of Yes, and have made a great discovery with the album "Talk", which I had never heard and had only barely heard of. I didn't follow Yes for a while, really for all of the 1990s, when the group had broken in different factions and incarnations. During that time you never knew which members were gonna appear on which album, and I gave up listening after "Big Generator" in 1987, which I didn't love. And then in the 90s, I switched gears completely. I only listened to new bands - 90s music - like Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains and Smashing Pumpkins and a few old favorites like Pink Floyd, and Eric Johnson and King's X. In the 90s I didn't listen to any Metal or Progressive Rock. It was just the times and the way things were. The 90s was a unique decade.

But then in 1999 I rediscovered my love for Yes with "The Ladder", their latest album at the time, that was released that year. It was one of the records that got me back into progressive rock, and since the turn of the millennium I have been back where I started, when I was 13 years old and hanging out at College Records : listening to a lot of progressive music, with select hard rock and metal bands thrown in for good measure. And I still love 90s music, too.

But when Yes released "Talk" in March 1994, it barely registered on my musical radar. The earthquake had just hit, the music of the 90s had changed the whole cultural vibe, and I think I was aware the album had come out, but I had no interest at the time in listening to it.

But it is interesting, as always, how the phenomenon of time operates, and how Things That Matter to a person come about and can be reintroduced into one's life.

The 90s was a powerful time in my life, for many reasons both good and bad (to generalize a complex scenario). Consequently, a popular song from the 90s can bring back all kinds of quick-flash emotions, deep feelings, yearnings, sensations of promise and loss, etc.

Which makes it interesting that an album I had never heard before today, but from the same time period, can evoke that same range of feelings.

From what I read after Googling, "Talk" was dismissed by critics as a failure for Yes, even by those who had championed their move toward pop-oriented Prog in the 1980s when Rabin joined the group. In '94, however, Yes would have been seen once again as a Dinosaur band by stupid critics, who constantly feel the need to show how hip they are not only by promoting the latest trends but also by trashing what has come before.

I got interested in "Talk" after hearing a song from that album at the concert on Wednesday night. The song was "I Am Waiting". I had never heard it, and it blew me away to the point of almost inducing a tear. Such a beautiful song.

So, yesterday and today I listened to selections from "Talk" on Youtube - never the best outlet for sound quality to be sure, but I just wanted to preview the songs.

And everything I heard took me to That Place, where memory and it's corresponding emotion come to life.

Sometimes, when you hear certain music, all of a sudden You Are There. You are back in the time when you first heard it, and you are back in the same place, and you are back in the same circumstances, and you feel exactly how you felt at that time, in those moments and those places.

The last song on "Talk" is a fifteen minute piece called "Endless Dream". It sounds like classic Yes from their ultra progressive period around 1977, like a piece off of "Going For The One".

Hearing it floored me, because I couldn't believe I had never heard it in 24 years since it's release, and also because I was hearing it now. It was brand new to me, and it is an amazing piece of music.

It is brand new, it is twenty four years old, I heard it for the first time, and it took me back to 1994.

I have long since discarded the idea of linear time. Time in a straight line works only on the body, and perhaps not even in that way entirely, because you can work out like Mick Jagger and stay in shape.

But time-in-a-straight-line (linear time) is a concept that is foreign to the heart and mind.

Ask yourself, "How old to I feel inside"? The chances are, even when you are 90 - or even 106 like John McCain's mother - you will still feel 24 inside, or maybe 17, or 36.

You feel yourself in your soul to be in the age range of the memories that have meant the most to you, and that age range can be specific or a little bit "all over the place", depending on the emotions of the memories you are re-experiencing, via music, or movies, or a location, or even a book.

Time is not linear, but circular. Things go out and come back.

In memory, which includes the involved emotion, nothing is lost.

You can be in any place at any time, on any day, feeling how you felt.

The great musicians know this, and I thank God I have been in the audience for so many years.

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)