Yes Album Listening Guides – Tales From Topographic Oceans Part 10 - Tales live - the video - 632

Produced by Wayne Hall, Joseph Cottrell, Jeffrey Crecelius and Ken Fuller

This week Mark and I watched the video compiled and edited by Hed Gilboa and posted to the YMP Discussion group on Facebook by Doug Curran that contains all the known crowd-shot footage of Yes on the Tales Tour of the US and Canada in 1974.

One mistake I made (presumably amongst many) was to say that the Super 8 film format became available in 1975. Of course, I meant 1965 otherwise this tour couldn’t have been captured using this technology. Also, as Mark mentioned later in the discussion, we do have a great opportunity to see what the stage scenery looked like in action during Ritual via the 1975 QPR film, clips from which are spliced into the Yesyears documentary, released in 1991. However, this is the Relayer tour and various elements of the stage production were enhanced by this time so it may be slightly different. I think I’m still correct when I say that there is no known professional film from the Tales Tour itself.

Anyway, historical minutiae apart, I hope you enjoy listening to Mark and me geeking out about this video and discussing aspects of the Tales Tour. You may well want to watch the video itself and look at the screen grabs I’ve included in the show notes for this week before listening to us banging on as it may help to contextualise our ramblings.

• What was it like to attend a concert on the 1974 Tales Tour?
• What is the video evidence like?
• What can we learn about how Yes played Tales live?

Let us know if you agree with us!