Yes-Fragile (1972)

 

Artist: Yes

Title: Fragile

Label: Atlantic

Format: LP

Cat #: SD 7211

Year of Release: 1972

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1972 Columbia Record Club edition

Sold Price: $5.99

Listed Condition: VG/VG+

Sell Date: 11/5/20

Discogs Last Sold: 8/31/20 $15.79 Sticker on sleeve

Low: $3.00

Median: $6.00

High: $95.23 M/M 6/1/20 with original inner sleeve and booklet

Current low price: VG/G+ $3.00,  V+/VG+ $20.00

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 9

Have/Want: 1785/249

Where Sold: Willowick, OH

Time it took to sell: 5 years

Where and When Bought: Al Bums Worcester early 80's

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A

Sad To See It Go?: no

Fragile make up the "big 3" of the Yes catalog with The Yes Album and Close To The Edge.  Although "Round-about" (I forgot about the dash!) and "Long Distance Runaround" could not be avoided on any baseline AOR Rock Radio playlist, no matter how cut down, the album as a whole still sounds fresh to me in headphones start to finish.  I think the first copy I had was a beat dollar bin copy in the pre-CD era that was essentially unlistenable, but this is a clean copy I bought used sometime later.

King Crimson snobs that would forgo Yes need to get their ass in gear.  The epics that close out the sides "South Side of the Sky" and "Heart of the Sunrise" are ALWAYS 'eavy and NEVER 'umble.  You get some interludes.  What else can I say?  Wakeman and Dean came on board here, so keyboard and art put the band in a different realm for the third album after a couple lesser albums.

Yes is one of those bands I had a fat discography of good condition vinyl bought in the pre-CD era that was never replaced on CD.   I even got a copy of the dreaded 90210 (and a 50 cent promo single with an a cappella "Leave It") before abandoning the band in the mid-80's.  "Everybody sucked in the 80's" is a truism in the classic rock world, particularly prog.  Attempts to be commercially "relevant" ruined many a great band, except for perhaps the Edgar Broughton Band and possibly the aforementioned Crimson. Maybe.  There is probably a website dedicated to veteran 80's prog.  But this is a blog for someone else, not me.  Might be a fun read though from either a fanatic perspective or a savager.

Many swear by the great reformation, Union.  To this day, I've never listened to it.  I'd sooner put time into ignored bits at the tail end of the classic era-Topographical Ocean & Relayer.  I actually liked Tormato and Drama, but Going For The One was almost as bad as ELP's Love Beach.  Late 70's cut-out prog was a thing, and the records were bad around that time.  Corporate rock radio made sure of that, not the new wave of "punk" as revisionist writers like to sniff in over a quarter century of lock-step flawed analysis.

Aesthetics are, in the end, just that.