Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

The other month I was listening to a radio broadcast from the '70s and they played "I've Seen All Good People" by Yes. I abruptly flashed back to when I was a kid and would listen to the local rock station in the mid-1980s. It was a rural station and it was actually pretty freeform for the era. Not that I even know what "freeform" was at the time. But they'd play a lot of long/early progressive tracks, etc. One of the songs they'd play often was this one, and I loved it as a kid, but had forgotten about it over the years, no doubt due to my general aversion to all things prog.

But that aversion has been melting away the older I've gotten...in fact I've really gotten into that early "proto-prog" stuff, like the LP by Touch, and especially the one by Ram which was reviewed here on Unsung. So anyway I ordered a '77 US repress of "The Yes Album" which sounds phenomenal, other than a mysterious damn skip halfway through "A Venture" (one of those skips where you actually have to lift the tonearm, otherwise it's a stuck groove), and I am surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. Other standouts on the album would be "Starship Trooper" and "Yours Is No Disgrace."

I also got a copy of "Yesterdays" from the same Discogs seller for fairly cheap, haven't played it yet. What Yes album would you all suggest I get next? I was thinking "Relayer" because I read it's kinda heavy, but skimming some tracks on Youtube it sounds a little too fusiony to me. What's drawing me to "The Yes Album" is how it almost sounds like a more proggy version of "Abbey Road."