Yes - Fragile

I've been on an extended break. No particular reason, i just wasn't feeling it. I have a new record coming next week, but i bought a few old ones today. It's an interesting collection, for sure.

In honor of feeling quite fragile after my second dose of coronavirus vaccine, yes, you guessed who right, it's Yes's Fragile. Even better, in honor of acquiring a new keyboardist who wasn't afraid of a little Moog, Yes made a Richard Wright style not a Pink Floyd album. Every member has a solo track, but the rest are group jams. They were crunched for money after buying Wakeman new gear, so they put the whole thing together quick as an experiment.

Rick Wakeman was actually offered a spot in Yes and David Bowie's band on the same day, but in the end he decided he didn't want to play David Bowie songs every day for years. 

Fragile isn't a concept per se, more like a conglomeration of coincidental feelings about the band. As for it merely being a technical show off album with no overarching theme or shape, bollocks. The band was fragile (they fired their keyboardist for being a Luddite, remember), they were about to get quite famous because the preceding tour went really well, the artist took it literal and painted a fragile planet breaking up as a wooden spaceship flies overhead, and the pieces are lovely (unlike anything on those two underwhelmingly Syd-less Pink Floyd albums). 

Wakeman hated his extracts of the third movement from Brahms' 4th Symphony, but he wasn't yet free from his solo contract that forbid him to write new material. The band itself had just paid off their previous manager so he couldn't steal 5% of their future royalties. Bruford had never composed anything before. All in all, i'd say this is about as good a "we don't know what we're doing" album as anyone could make. 

I still feel like garbage, but this album certainly isn't. Flighty and spastic, sure, but i'd choose playful and unpredictable. Now, if you'll excuse me, i'm going to curl up under a fuzzy warm blanket and sleep until i feel better. Maybe we'll do another one tomorrow.