Yes is a band that is progressive in a way that is real and not pretentious like many of those who follow the progressive rock movement seem to prefer. I have heard more tales of woe from those who proclaim that they prefer progressive bands and in the same breath wail over the fact that Yes is ever-changing. As a note, 90125 is no less "progressive" than Relayer because it is considered more commercial. Unfortunately many who want progressive bands also want those bands to be static and stagnant.

Yes has gone through many changes and explored many paths and in some instances experienced growing pains, which will happen to any that chose to be dynamic. But in every way they continue to grow as a group. Currently the sound that is Yes is very similar to the sound they had when they began but much matured over the 30 years they've been professionally producing music.

The music is driven by bassist Chris Squire on stage and off. He is the only member to have worked on every album and is often referred to as the "keeper of the flame." This also refers to the way he finds new talent to bring to the band, including such members as Trevor Rabin and Igor Khoroshev. Jon Anderson has performed on all but one album, in which he was replaced with singer Trevor Horn.

Members have included Peter Banks, Geoff Downes, Trevor Horn, Patrick Moraz, Rick Wakeman, Bill Bruford, Trevor Rabin, Billy Sherwood and Igor Khoroshev. Most of their album covers and many of their sets have been designed by the artist Roger Dean who is famous for his album covers and rock art. Currently the band's lineup is Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire and Alan White. They are now in studio working on their latest album and recently conducted a poll to find out if their fans would prefer to have an orchestra on their next tour, which resulted in a nearly even split with the ayes garnering 49% of the vote.

They have a wonderful and visually stunning website at www.yesworld.com from which you can access pictures of the band, the individual members' own sites, the fan newsletter, their full discography as well as complete lyrics, the latest news and tour information. They also will sometimes list contests and participation events such as the recent voting for the playlist for their recent Masterworks tour and voting for or against the orchestra.

Some follow-up on Yes. Their vocal harmonies owe a great debt to Chris Squire's childhood when he sang in a prestigous British chorus. Their song structures owe a great debt to Jean Sibelius, since Jon Anderson admired him greatly. According to some sources, Yes was formed as an attempt to take the experimentation done by the Beatles to another level. A great question of debate is Which member is the crucial link to Yes? Most would say Jon Anderson but the band has created albums without him. In my personal opinion, Chris Squire is the crucial link. He has played with every incarnation of Yes and is a founding member. His bass is a trademark of the Yes sound, as is his high backing vocals.

yes is a common *n?x program that prints out a string over and over until something kills it. The default (if no string is given) is "y"; just line after line of ys, repeated infinitely.

Why, you ask?

This is actually one of the neatest things about the way UNIXlike systems work, believe it or not-- this program does have a use! Remember the pipe? That thing that lets you cause the output of one program to be the input of another until one terminates?

Well, sometimes you'll come a cross a program, for example rm -r, that will be asking you a very very large number of yes or no questions, and will expect you to type "y" or "n" into every single one of those questions. But if you know that all the answers will be "y", you can just type yes | rm -r at the command line, and it will feed "yes" into each one of rm's questions! Inane, but elegant.

See also Kosh

Complete Yes discography goes like this:

Yes- 1969
Time And A Word- 1970
The Yes Album- 1971
Fragile- 1972
Close To The Edge- 1972
Yessongs- 1973
Tales From Topographic Oceans- 1973
Relayer- 1974
Yesterdays- 1974
Going For The One- 1977
Tormato- 1978
Drama- 1980
Yesshows- 1980
Classic Yes- 1981
90125- 1983
9012Live: The Solos- 1985
Big Generator- 1987
(ABWH) Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe- 1989
Union- 1991
Yesyears- 1991
Yesstory- 1992
Highlights- The Very Best Of Yes- 1993
(ABWH) An Evening Of Yes Music Plus- 1993
Talk- 1994
Keys To Ascension- 1996
Keys To Ascension 2- 1997
Keys To Ascension Volume 1& 2- 1997
Open Your Eyes- 1997
Something's Coming- 1997/Beyond And Before- 1997
The Ladder- 1999

Solo Albums by the various members of the band:

Jon Anderson:

Olias Of Sunhillow- 1976
Song Of Seven- 1980
Animation- 1982
3 Ships- 1985
In The City Of Angels- 1988
The Power Of Silence- 1992
The Best Of South America- 1993
Deseo- 1994
Change We Must- 1994
Angels Embrace- 1995
Toltec- 1996
The Lost Tapes Of Opio- 1996
The Promise Ring- 1997
Earthmotherearth- 1997
The More You Know- 1998

Bill Bruford:

Master Strokes- 1986
If Summer Had Its Ghosts - 1997
Bruford Levin Upper Extremities- 1998

Steve Howe:

Beginnings- 1975
The Steve Howe Album- 1979
Turbulence- 1991
The Grand Scheme Of Things- 1993
Not Necessarily Acoustic- 1994
Mothballs- 1994
Homebrew- 1996
Quantum Guitars- 1998
Pulling Strings- 1999
Portraits Of Bob Dylan- 1999

Patrick Moraz:

i- 1976
Out In The Sun- 1977
Patrick Moraz III- 1978
Coexistence- 1980
Timecode- 1984
Future Memories Live On TV- 1984
Future Memories II- 1984
Human Interface- 1984
Windows Of Time- 1994
PM In Princeton- 1995

Chris Squire:

Fish Out Of Water- 1975

Rick Wakeman:

The Six Wives Of Henry VIII- 1973
Journey To The Centre Of The Earth- 1974
The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table- 1975
Lisztomania- 1975
No Earthly Connection- 1976
White Rock- 1977
Criminal Record- 1977
Rhapsodies- 1979
The Burning- 1981
1984- 1981
Rock 'N' Roll Prophet- 1982
Cost Of Living- 1983
G'ole!- 1983
Black Knights In The Court Of Ferdinand IV- 1984
Silent Nights- 1985
Live at Hammersmith- 1985
Beyond The Planets- 1985
Country Airs- 1986
Crimes Of Passion- 1986
The Gospels- 1987
Family Album- 1987
Time Machine- 1988
A Suite Of Gods- 1988
Zodiaque- 1989
Sea Airs- 1989
In The Beginning- 1990
Night Airs- 1990
Phantom Powers- 1990
Aspirant Sunrise- 1990
Aspirant Sunset- 1991
Aspirant Sunshadows- 1991
Suntrilogy- 1991
The Classical Connection- 1991
2000 A.D. Into The Future-1991
Soft Sword- 1991
African Bach- 1991
The Private Collection- 1991
Country Airs- 1992
Best Works Collection- 1992
The Classical Connection II- 1993
The Heritage Suite- 1993
Prayers- 1993
Rock And Roll Prophet Plus- 1993
Classic Tracks- 1993
Microcosm (Sega CD)- 1993
Greatest Hits- 1994
Live On The Test- 1994
Light Up The Sky- 1994
Almost Live In Europe- 1995
The Piano Album- 1995
Cirque Surreal- 1995
Visions- 1995
The New Gospels- 1995
The Seven Wonders Of The World- 1996
Fields Of Green- 1996
Fields Of Green Maxi Single- 1996
In Concert- 1996
Voyage- The Very Best Of Rick Wakeman- 1996
The Word And Music- 1996
Orisons- 1996
Can You Here Me?- 1996
Tribute- 1997
Return To The Centre Of The Earth- 1999

Alan White:

Ramshackled- 1976

Tony Levin:

World Diary- 1995
From the Caves of the Iron Mountain- 1997
Bruford Levin Upper Extremities- 1998

information compiled from: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Vine/5537/tonylevi.htm

Yes have always been there in my life.

I have two older brothers -- 6 and 8 years older than me. Thus, when I was in elementary school they were teenagers, and teenagers in the late 70s at that. Yes at that time were huge--the quintessential arena rock band of the 70s in fact. The dizzying lineup changes kept occuring, but always Jon Anderson and Chris Squire doing their thing.

My brothers had the Yes posters in their room (they shared a bedroom, until my oldest brother got kicked out), the t-shirts, the albums, and sometimes they would let me sit in the room with them (never when they were getting high, though) and listen to the music. They would doodle the groovy Yes logo on their notebook covers. They would explain to me how Yes was music that was about something, man. They had seen the band a few times--on the Tormato tour when they had the cool rotating stage, on the Going For The One tour (hey, that dude's naked on the cover!).

When I myself got to high school, 90125 had just been released. I of course listened to it, and got into it, because, hey, it was Yes. My older brother told me it was crap--"The lyrics aren't about anything! Where's Steve Howe!"--but I didn't listen. At least he and I could agree that sitting in a dark room with headphones listening to Close To The Edge was about as perfect as music could get.

I still like Yes a lot, and my upbringing means that I like the old stuff as much as the newer stuff (okay, yeah, Big Generator and Talk are mostly big stinkers, but Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe, Keys To Ascension and The Ladder, and 90125 are very good) but Yes is a band I'm in to because my older brothers were. They doesn't even listen to much of that stuff anymore--my oldest brother in particular has gone to the dark side largely, listening mostly to bland pop and --gasp--country (okay, he does live in Oklahoma), but somehow in some sort of strange fraternal devotion I still love the stuff.

Yes®, satellite television

Introduction

In 1989, cable TV was introduced in Israel. The Israeli TV airwaves never had much to offer: Channel 1 (produced by the Israeli Broadcasting Authority and considered poor and old-fashioned) and Channel 2 (before it got commercial). It's no surprise cable TV gained instant popularity. Slowly but surely, the cables were laid out to major cities and suburbs, eventually connecting around 66% of the households to cable TV (as of September 1997). The Russian immigrants were an especially loyal consumer group, willing to shell out the full monthly price just for the 3 Russian-speaking channels.

An empire's fall

Year 2000 was time for another Israeli monopoly to end -- the multi-channel TV business. For 10 years, ever since the introduction of cable TV in Israel, five companies (Tevel, Matav, Gvanim, Arutzey Zahav and Idan) had a franchise, a restriction on competition, which allowed them to monopolize the market. It made sense when it was given, since cable infrastructure was non-existant and the cable companies had to invest enormous resources to lay down the cabling.

In the way of all monopolies, prices grew, the offers remained static and the so-called "cable families" got enormously rich and controlling (especially after the five companies were consolidated into just three).

"Yes", a company which received a franchise from the Ministry of Communications to operate a satellite-based TV service, changed that.

Enter Yes

"Yes" begun operations in 2000, after financial difficulties and growing pains which were putting its launch into question. The customer reponse was overwhelming! The company could hardly handle the flood of installation requests. Shortage of decoder equipment and technicians caused installations to be delayed for months!

All went in the usual monopoly breakdown route -- all of a sudden, people saw that, for the same price, service could be a whole lot better:

  • digital broadcasts
  • many more channels (world-wide, Cartoon Network, 4 dedicated movie channels, 4 music channels and all the goodies our friends in US are long used to)
  • multiple channel packages ("pay for the channels you actually watch")
  • service to borderline settlements and Kibbutzs which weren't connected to the cable infrastructure due to commercial considerations

Ministry of Communications forbid the cable companies from introducing similar features for some time, in order to give the newcomer time to stand on its feet. Eventually, the cable companies came out with similar offers; turns out all they've needed was a good shake, to hint them they're not alone on the market.

Some of Yes success can also be attributed to its stylish brand image, which reminds of Orange brand's image. In a country where "foreign" is associated with "quality" and "prestige", they chose an English name and are producing English-speaking advertisements mocking up Hollywood movies, adding the popular foreign scent to their brand. As a result, the viewer imagines Yes as strong foreign corporation rather than a local business ran by your next-door manager.

Beyond 2000

The competition is fierce and both competitors have serious commercial backing. The cables came out with broadband Internet offer (which Yes can't offer due to its one-way operation -- and Bezeq, 50% shareholder wouldn't want it to compete its ADSL offers anyway). Yes added more interactive services. Both are striving to purchase more exclusive foreign productions, often overpaying the major US studios up to 5 times just to gain that exclusivity.

All in all, Yes is another success story of Israel's slow de-monopolization.

References

  • http://www.moc.gov.il (Ministry of Communications)
  • http://www.dtg.org.uk/reference/dtt_world/dtt_israel.htm

Yes (?), adv. [OE. yis, [yogh]is, [yogh]es, [yogh]ise, AS. gese, gise; probably fr. gea yea + swa so. See Yea, and So.]

Ay; yea; -- a word which expresses affirmation or consent; -- opposed to no.

Yes is used, like yea, to enforce, by repetition or addition, something which precedes; as, you have done all this -- yes, you have done more. "Yes, you despise the man books confined."

Pope.

"The fine distinction between 'yea' and 'yes,' 'nay' and 'no,' that once existed in English, has quite disappeared. 'Yea' and 'nay' in Wyclif's time, and a good deal later, were the answers to questions framed in the affirmative. 'Will he come?' To this it would have been replied, 'Yea' or 'Nay', as the case might be. But, 'Will he not come?' To this the answer would have been 'Yes' or 'No.' Sir Thomas More finds fault with Tyndale, that in his translation of the Bible he had not observed this distinction, which was evidently therefore going out even then, that is, in the reign of Henry VIII.; and shortly after it was quite forgotten."

Trench.

 

© Webster 1913.

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