Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans (1973)

Digital audio conceived for downloading onto computers and iPods has expanded the realm of possibilities for today's recording artists. Freed from the restraints of a sixty-minute vinyl long player or a seventy-five-minute compact disc, more artists are exploring song cycles and extended compositions around extremely long narratives that illustrate grand themes. This, of course, is unfortunate and all the more reason to resist the downloading revolution that threatens to bring back all the pretentiousness and excesses of the early seventies, and on a bigger scale. And few bands were more pretentious and excessive then Yes.

The progressive rock boom of the seventies was, at first, a healthy reaction to some of the plodding heavy metal bands that began to emerge at the same time, offering a more thoughtful alternative based on intelligent themes and musical virtuosity. But unlike bands such as Pink Floyd, who created some exciting and challenging rock that offered soundscapes that were as expressive as a Jackson Pollack painting (and many times just as edgy), Yes created a lot of aimless noise. Tales From Topographic Oceans, a kitchen sink of just about every conceivable form of psychedelic and quasi-classical experimentation that followed the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, was just that - aimless noise, a work that went on and on without saying anything. You see, Tales From Topographic Oceans is a large-scale composition over the length of a double album, lasting 81 minutes. It's like a supersized "Roundabout," only much more abstruse. As Yes frontman and lyricist Jon Anderson explained, he conceived Tales From Topographic Oceans because he was interested in writing a large-scale work and was subsequently inspired by a footnote in Indian guru Paramahansa Yogananda's book "Autobiography Of a Yogi," one of those books that inspired many Westerners to explore Indian philosophy. The footnote Anderson ran with explains the Shrastic Scriptures that ruminate on religion, art, social life, medicine, music and architecture. And the pomposity of such a scheme is all you need to know to understand this group.

First of all, no one wakes up and decides to write a song that fills an entire double album and then goes looking for a theme to fit it; such an approach begins in contrivance. Secondly, basing a musical idea on a footnote in a book rather than the book itself just screams shallowness. And thirdly, if you're a rock star, and you want to ruminate on such deep, highbrow topics as religion, art, social life, medicine, music and architecture, maybe you're in the wrong business. Maybe you should be a humanities professor, though, admittedly, there's not so much money in that.

Anyway, few intellectuals would have the stamina to listen to Tales From Topographic Oceans, mostly because Anderson's long-winded prose touches on these subjects with too many flowery verses that try unsuccessfully to sustain a single, coherent idea - which is all the more embarrassing because Anderson is trying to hold too many ideas in his head at once. The rest of the band is just as erratic; guitarist Steve Howe, who wrote the music, throws in stinging avant-garde solos along with classical passages we recognized from Fragile, drummer Alan White livens up the backwash a bit but is desperately trying to keep up, keyboardist Rick Wakeman - who later confessed to having issues with the whole damn project - swoops in with grand flourishes for no apparent reason, and bassist Chris Squire doesn't even seem to be there. The most interesting music here is unlistenable, while the rest of it is so soothing and relaxing you forget you're listening to a rock band. You're too busy trying to stay awake. Anderson and Howe began writing this magnum opus ridiculous at about the same time Pink Floyd released The Dark Side Of the Moon, and I get the impression that this was Yes's answer to that masterpiece. But after hearing The Dark Side Of the Moon, why would anyone bother to ask the question?

It took a long time for progressive rock to recover from this record, finally coming back to life in the nineties with the advent of bands like Radiohead. But Yes's legacy of pretentiousness continues, and in unlikely forms; as downloads have allowed even longer compositions, rap acts have tapped into their possibilities, recording their own extended narratives.  And they're probably being encouraged by fourteen-year-old fans seeking profound meaning out of life, a bunch of kids similar to the ninth-graders who sustained Yes for so long. History doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.

(This is my last Sunday record review for awhile; I need another break. Look for me to resume writing about records either May 12 or May 19.)