YES - South Side Of The Sky | REACTION | PROG Fridays

#yes #react #fragile
The Metal Junkie reacts to the song South Side Of The Sky by Yes. This reaction is part of Prog Fridays
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Let me know in the comments what you would like me to react to in the future.

[@jaymez3461]

South Side Of The Sky is the hidden gem on the Fragile album. It's one of my favorite Yes songs.

[@philluanastiemke6770]

One of my favorite Yes tracks. The song actually has a literal meaning :-) I believe it's about some mountain climbers who have met their match.

[@TigerMtnKing]

YES!!! The greatest band there ever was or will ever be!🤩

[@tobytanzer]

Great reaction to this underrated Yes classic. I subscribe to all Yes reactors. The apex of the Prog era. Yes covers all the bases, including classical.

[@Tarkus_]

Not "hell yeah," but rather HELL YES! 😏 This is definitely an underappreciated classic. It's not typically mentioned amongst their greats, but it should be.

[@LizOBrienRochford-gs2kj]

I’ve appreciated all your YES reactions. It’s clear you too hear their amazing mastery. Jon and Chris created a band that had no limitations in their talents, love of music or soul inspiration. READ THE WORDS OF THIS SONG. It has an actual story to it. Also- watch the video of this at their 35th anniversary at Tsongas. You won’t believe how freaking perfectly they play this gem out.

[@brooos]

I agree with you. Yes has been, and continues to be my favorite prog band since I first heard them in 1970.

[@mikevandenboom5958]

One of my favorite YES tunes

[@lesblatnyak5947]

Was my first live favourite, the harmonies live were outstanding ✨️🎶✨️

[@mattleppard1964]

More Yes from you? This one was one of my early favorites - the harmony and piano in the middle especially ❤ Your Yes reactions are always good 😊 Have you tried the 80s pop-rock stuff? I’ll have to check. If not, try “Hearts” That’s my official prog Friday suggestion ❤

[@JimboKM]

This is one of their tracks where every member shines.

[@EccentricAuntWanda1]

My favorite song off of this album! For something different on Prog Friday - consider the Discipline album by King Crimson if you haven't already.

[@joelliebler5690]

One of the best from one of the great prog. Rock albums of all time!Bill Bruford is one of the greatest drummers on prog, jazz, and fusion!My style too ! You might want to try some early Emerson, Lake , and Palmer!

[@tomhenninger4153]

Love the Song! "Brew-ford". Hahaha! Thanks for reviewing! Love it! Good job!

[@TheMetalJunkie]

I always screw that up lol

[@franciscodiaz183]

Masterpiece.

[@Jimi-ld2vw]

Hard for me to choose a favorite track from this album but this one is up there.

[@janicereinhard6840]

One of my top five favorite groups of all time 😊

[@GTO4now]

YES! 😊 One of my favorite songs from early YES.

[@PeterSokol-bl5vz]

Every song on this remarkable recording is my favorite Yes song…..just like whatever Yes song I am listening to at the moment is my favorite Yes song.

[@youandwhosearmy6339]

5:35 I love the middle section. It's Yes' little nod to the USA 60s band The Association. Love the vocal harmonies. Yes were magnificent. PS The Beatles, Zeppelin, Queen, Genesis, Yes there you have the UK's best ever bands in my opinion of course.. Seriously, there is enough music there to last you a lifetime.Look forward to your reactions.

[@gelsol]

Yes were deceptively funky. This track is groovy AF.

[@Hisseefits]

Machine Messiah , Tempus Fugit and Does It Really Happen? from the album Drama. I think you will enjoy those.

[@genestippell1833]

"i dont know how he remembers everything".... I dont think Bruford could play the exact thing twice in any song with the song suffering.. hes that creative.

[@RabbiSteve1]

Thank you for reacting to this, maybe the most “metal” of all Yes tracks. They didn’t even perform this live until their 2002 or 2003 tour. And saw them do it twice on that tour. The lyrics were inspired by a PBS special that Jon Anderson was watching while stoned. It was about an excursion onto Mt Everest, I believe. Everyone died. And it was about their last thoughts. Very atypical of Jon’s lyrics, where there was usually something more uplifting or spiritual to them. Or at the very least, more ambiguous meanings. This was straight ahead about people dying from cold exposure. They got lost and couldn’t find their way. One of my favorite songs of theirs ever. And kind of underrated, even by them, until they dug it out of their catalog and worked it up in rehearsals, and ready for performance. They actually always loved it, but felt it was too difficult to perform live.

[@keithwatkins7908]

Thank you for another excellent reaction. Like you, I never delved into Jon's lyrics, just appreciated the amazing musicianship. Fragile is a fantastic album.

[@bélalugrisi]

It's simple, Bill Bruford has four brains. Cheers!

[@jefff3886]

It's one of my "pet peeves." Everybody talks about Jon, and Steve, and Chris, and Rick, and rightly so. But rarely do I hear people talking about Bill Bruford and how freaking great he is.

[@gelsol]

Bill Bruford is my favorite member of Yes. Close second is Jon Anderson, who is the heart and soul. Squire is often the standout, which is understandable, and his volatile relationship with Bruford is artistic gold.

[@bélalugrisi]

@@gelsol Well said! Jon encouraged Bill to write, and all through his career are stellar, beautiful melodic pieces and turn on a dime shifts! "Jon Anderson pushed me into doing bits and pieces. So I would come up with odd movements of the bass or… AL: Oh, so you wrote some of the melodic parts as well, not just rhythmic figures? BB: Yes. Bits and pieces. Riffs mostly. I heard the music from the bottom up: a bass line that could be doubled with the guitar, which would turn into some kind of riff or lead part. AL: I’ m a bassist, so I know what you mean by writing from the bottom up. BB: There you go. So bits of Heart of the Sunrise, parts of Close to the Edge. AL: Did you write any of Siberian Khatru? That’s probably one of my all-time favorite Yes songs. BB: A little bit. Yeah, I like that tune, too." [excerpted from abstractlogix.com/bill-bruford-interview/ }

[@louise_rose]

This is such a great track, with astounding musicianship and arrangements, plus lyrics that really capture the urgency of fighting to survive in the Antarctic...Squire's base is stabbing like a knife, both propulsive and clear - and then that piano/vocal harmony/drums trio in the middle! Sadly they mostly dropped this one from their live set after Alan White joined the band the next year, it's also very much a showcase for Bill Bruford's jazzy style of drumming, one of their jazziest early songs. The lyrics have some similarities with the famous expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton with the Endurance and their epic journey back to civilization - though in this song, the explorers seem to perish in the end? I first heard about Shackleton's journey when I was like eight years old, at a time when it wasn't as widely famous and written about as it has become over the last thirty years. My late mother loved the amazing story of that journey too, and I eventually gifted her a combo volume of Shackleton's books "South!" and "The Heart of the Antarctic" which cover the Endurance expedition and his earlier 1908-09 journey that took him down to about a hundred miles from the south pole. :)

[@karelvandervelden8819]

Glad you noticed this. Maybe the race to the pole between Amudsen and Robert Falcon Scott his team (1911) is even more fitting. At the end they perished in their ¨warm¨ sleeping bags not able to make the last miles back. Note that Vaughan Williams wrote his 7th symphony around this epic story. I read these epic antartic stories as a boy before this Yes song came out. I sometimes mention it but you are the first to recognize it.

[@louise_rose]

@@karelvandervelden8819 Yes, Scott is a possible parallel too. The Vaughan Williams symphony is familiar to me, very impressive - some of it was originally written as a score for the early 1950s film about Scott, and like this track it includes a wind machine! :)

[@karelvandervelden8819]

@@louise_rose This Yes song is one of the rare pop-songs I dared to expose my father to. He was a radio-jazz-musician but liked what he heard. He introduced me to Shostacovitch.

[@louise_rose]

@@karelvandervelden8819 Nice! I grew up both with rock/pop/soul music and within the classical music community, so my brother (two years older) and me were at home both within the rock and pop music of those days (the 1970s/80s, I figure I'm probably around ten years younger than you are) and with classical music and opera: listening, going to concerts or watching on TV, buying and collecting records, discovering new bands or composers... Our parents sometimes picked up on what we were listeniing to from new bands and artists. Yes and Genesis which were key discoveries for both of us, I think they didn't hear so much of them (because we were sometimes using headphones) ;) but when I bought the remastered CD of Relayer around 2006 - one of my absolute favourites wirh Yes - I had mum listen to it, and she was very impressed both by the amazing musicianship and by the bold conception and songwriting of those songs. She was seventy at the time, but still very alive to new music.

[@DanPemberton]

Really appreciate your reactions!

[@TheMetalJunkie]

@@DanPemberton thanks

[@DanPemberton]

That one's really a gym. This band could do this National Geographic mood that just takes the mind to new places. Much like the bridge section on Roundabout. Great to see you younger guys discovering this underappreciated band. Thanks, little bro!

[@armandourso1526]

Wonderful ! Hugs from Brazil 🎉

[@DocSardo]

You should also check out the live version that has an extended outro with Howe and Wakeman battling it out. Unfortunately, no Bruford, who really shines in the studio version, but still a must watch.

[@davep8221]

I believe it's about mountain climbers having a very bad day. I'm glad we got a remix/remaster of this album, especially this song. For me the original was like having acid dipped q-tips shoved into my ears.

[@jamesgabbert9375]

Best song on that album.

[@pentagrammaton6793]

Early Yes! Wakeman was the (highly trained) classical influence.😍

[@yes_head]

Great song, although Eddie Offord also doesn't get enough credit for what he did for Yes on this album. He's one of the 70's most under-appreciated producer/engineers. That middle vocal section is very reminiscent of CSNY, who were hugely influential on the vocal prog bands like Yes and Genesis.

[@davestr7031]

@yes_head.100% on Offord. His tape and razor blade work on this album and CTTE is off the charts

[@ChromeDestiny]

Along with the later Machine Messiah I think this track has Steve Howe's best riffing. Jon Anderson said he was inspired by two magazine articles he read, one about sleep that said it was death's little sister and one about a mountaineering expedition that went wrong.

[@bukeksiansu2112]

Check out different style from another giant 70's prog rock bands such Gentle Giant - Octopus or Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick.

[@courtneywallace871]

If you haven’t done so yet, you need to do Heart of the Sunrise off this same album. How about some Jethro Tull?

[@TheMetalJunkie]

I have done heart of the sunrise but not Jethro Tull

[@courtneywallace871]

@@TheMetalJunkie Cool. For Jethro Tull I recommend starting with Locomotive Breath. Guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

[@phillyflyer12]

​@@courtneywallace871'Back Door Angels' from War Child is one of Tulls hardest tunes, full of Barre's great riffs.

[@erikahlander3489]

Some suggestions within prog in a wide sense and very different from each other but picked special for you: Jethro Tull "Minstrel in the gallery", Frank Zappa "Packard Goose", Primus "Tommy the cat", and finally Emerson, Lake, Powell "Tarkus" (10:18) (original version with ELP is more than 20 min).

[@roygaiot8105]

Ah YES, brilliance upon brilliance. Here is an off the beaten trail suggestion for prog Fridays > Eloy - The Light From Deep Darkness. The track has two very heavy, and glorious, instrumental sections. It's the 1st really great track from this often overlooked German band. They are unlike the other touted German bands like Can and Faust, in that they are, kind of like Yes, in that they are more melodic and more accessible with really tight compositions and great grooves.

[@TheAmazingSpaghetti]

If you want a super wild and crazy Yes song, try Sound Chaser and Gates Of Delerium from their Relayer album.

[@TheMetalJunkie]

I've done the whole Relayer album already. Check out my yes playlist

[@DanPemberton]

It's about an Arctic expedition that goes wrong.

[@allanmartin1005]

There is only YES.

[@jefff3886]

This song is but one part of a matched pair. For the full effect, one must also play "We Have Heaven." Full disclosure: I am not an objective observer, I am a Yes fan boy. Not sorry. Love that song "We Have Heaven," especially because it leads into "South Side Of The Sky." I've always wanted to get 5 or 6 people together and sing it live.

[@jefff3886]

Rick Beato says that Bill Bruford is "one of the greatest fusion drummers ever." I can't disagree with him. This whole album showcases the brilliance of Bruford. Check out the track "Heart Of The Sunrise" and be enthralled.

[@TheMetalJunkie]

Great track!

[@bauertime]

For me Gentle Giant is up there with Yes.

[@bauertime]

Spocks' Beard did a great version of this song.

[@SuperPrimus]

I want to recommend you "Deamon Lover" by Shocking Blue :)

[@Jimi-ld2vw]

Ever dabble in Mahogany Rush? I would suggest Strange Universe. Or if you like something a little heavier, Tales Of The Spanish Warrior or Land Of 1,000 Nights.

[@johng.8517]

I suggest you do "Awaken" next. It takes you on an uplifting spiritual journey. Here's a great live version: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pHW7lJaLZd2ahNE or the studio version. But it's amazing how close the live version is to the studio version.

[@Thirdwind2]

No, definitely the Studio version!

[@harleyw]

Agree. Studio first. ​@@Thirdwind2

[@MarshaBonForte]

It’s a waste of time trying to understand the lyrics.