YES live in the round at the Spectrum - Roundabout June 21, 1979

0:07 SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody, welcome to the concert room inside the Philly Concert Experience. I'm your host, Bob Hill. The concert room is a podcast session dedicated to the performances, performers, bands, and artists who played on the stage at the legendary Philadelphia Spectrum Arena. The Spectrum held numerous concerts over its 40 plus years of existence, earning the nickname America Showplace. And today's session features a legendary band from England who we absolutely love here in Philly, and all of their shows were sold out.

0:40 SPEAKER_00: I believe the band also loved playing the spectrum. There is a lot of recordings and videos out there to enjoy their performances in the spectrum. Today we're going to feature Yes, an English progressive rock band formed in London in 1968.

1:00 SPEAKER_00: Yes, opened up for cream at their uh during the farewell uh show at Royal Albert Hall on November 26, 1968. Yes, we played the spectrum a total of 18 times. Some of those dates were multiple nights. The first show was November 13th, 1971, uh with Emerson Lincoln Palmer. That's a great night of there. And the last performance at the spectrum was in 2004. Um as far as yes and fill goes, again, we uh loved our prog band, such as yes, we loved the music, we loved all the tours, and we always looked forward to uh to the shows, and um again they always uh sold out the yes shows in 1977, 78, and also in 1979, uh they were performed in the round.

1:56 SPEAKER_00: Now this is a special staging that was uh really unique. They had a big round stage that was in the middle of the arena, and it spun around slowly while the band performed. And John Anderson was in the middle of the round stage. Uh there's a lot of videos of these shows out there. Check them out when you'll see it's uh it's really cool. As far as I'm concerned, I was a little too young uh for the 70s tours. And as you know with the history of yes, there was numerous lineup changes going on uh into the uh new decade of the eighties.

2:31 SPEAKER_00: Um I did say yes at the spectrum on their 90125 tour. And that was in April of 1984 with Trevor Raven on guitar. Um that album and so yes, kind of a more commercial like with uh radio-friendly heads. Uh but they still had that unmistakable yes sound. And uh I know many of you uh who went to see these yes shows in the 70s, you know how great they were live, and uh of course all the way up into the eighties and nineties and the uh 2000s. So let's get to this performance. As I said, there's uh a lot of yes to the spectrum material out there, however, most of the early shows, uh the quality is not that great, that's understandable, because most of the captures are uh audience or maybe poor quality soundboards.

3:24 SPEAKER_00: But I think this recording is uh it's pretty fair. This was a CD release, actually, from the show on June 21st, 1979, at the spectrum. Um so it's pretty pretty good quality. And um we're going to feature their classic song of their debut album Roundabout. This is on the spectrum stage. This performance was on the night of June 21st, 1979, as I just mentioned. This concert was part of the re-night uh spectrum. They played June 20th, June 21st, and June 22nd.

4:11 SPEAKER_00: Um we are going to feature roundabout because I think it really captured uh they were recording the screen years of uh 1979. They were on their ummer leg um of the 1970-79 tour to support the album Tomato. And as I said, this is the night of June 21st, 1979. The concert is performed in the round with a rotating stage, as I mentioned, in the center of the venue. Uh the lineup here is the classic lineup of John Anderson on vocals, Rick Wakeman on keyboards, Chris Squire on bass, Steve Howell on the guitars, Alan White on drums.

4:57 SPEAKER_00: So here is roundabout on the spectrum stage on the night of June 21st, 1979.

5:17 SPEAKER_01: Let's tell if we can do many, many more of these kind of things in the eighths.

14:49 SPEAKER_00: Those uh yes shows in the round um at the spectrum are kind of legendary around here. They're talked about um and fondly remembered frequently. Uh so hopefully you were able to see yes in concert um in any form. It's just uh absolutely a great name of tunes. So I hope this particular performance brings back great memories of concerts and bands at the spectrum or uh the tour itself and uh show you may have seen at a venue that was your local in your city. If not, I hope this gives you an idea of what the experience was like and the atmosphere inside a spectrum concert.

15:29 SPEAKER_00: Uh so thanks again for joining us today. Please subscribe to the podcast and feel free to leave a comment. And I look forward to more enjoyable conversations and music in the concert.