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Y - Goin' At It

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Goin' At It

Rock & roll's dependence on, and imaginative extension of technology makes it a science-fiction medium by nature. Even Chuck Berry, whose images of transcendence—cars—were mechanical, was able to suggest an otherworldly dimension by idealizing his cruising machines into virtual rocket ships. "You Can't Catch Me" is a science-fiction hymn.

By the late Sixties, rock festivals had become explicit science fiction landscapes, and groups began to produce program music for drug-inspired futurist fantasies. But it wasn't until the current decade that rock bands began to institutionalize sci-fi—the utopian idealism of such Sixties sci-fi masters as the Jefferson Airplane was replaced
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by the dispassionate technology of Led Zeppelin and Yes.

These bands saw themselves as component units of a record industry that had mutated its psychology and become a quasi-totalitarian science-fiction setting itself. Festivals were eliminated in favor of controlled indoor arena programs where virtuoso instrumental technique (Jimmy Page/Steve Howe, John Paul Jones/Rick Wakeman) and scifi-inspired fantasy lyrics (Robert Plant/Jon Anderson) became fundamentals.

Yes has always represented the lighter side of this process, its members trying to project themselves as organic, life-affirming good wizards as opposed to Zeppelin's demonism. This was especially true of their music, which was programmatic in its tonal airiness (especially Anderson's voice and Howe's guitars) and in the intricacy of its often classically inspired arrangements. They didn't nail this image down until Fragile, the first album to use illustrator Roger Dean's visual images of their cosmic programs. The group's style changed at the same time, when keyboardist Tony Kaye was replaced by Rick Wakeman and his overbearing flash.

Yes had solved its programming goals, but like all closed systems it was subject to entropy. As the band continued to run through the possible program readouts, less and less creative energy became available and Yes sank into cosmic torpor.

Going for the One reverses this process in a fascinating move that ties the band even more closely to Zeppelin. The title track is the most vital piece of music Yes has recorded since The Yes Album, opening with Howe's fiercest guitar playing in years, a gutwrenching slide pattern pinned down by Alan White's straight-ahead rock drumming. Howe's tone is darker here than it's ever been, and the newly returned Wakeman refrains from throwing wholesale Bach clips into the arrangement, instead using his keyboards for tasteful fills and added texture. Even Anderson's normally squeaky voice is a lot less stylized than usual—he actually sounds like part of the band. He even includes a few self-critical lines:

Now the verses I've sang

Don't add much weight to the story in my head

So I'm thinking I should go and write a punch line

But th

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Y - Goin' At It