(no subject)

[miko2]

Today's Song: Roundabout by Yes

Well this is hardly a newsflash -- Roundabout from the 1972 Yes album Fragile was one of their biggest hits until the 80's when Owner of a Lonely Heart went to #1. However, I figure suggesting songs for downloading from iTunes doesn't have to always be new stuff that you've never heard before. It can also be stuff that you're familiar with but don't already own. Also, this was a popular tune on MOR and hard rock radio but it was never a huge top 40 hit, so probably not everyone is familiar with it. In any case, this is probably my favorite Yes song.

I had this song stuck in my head the last day or two, and wanted to put it on my iPod. I discovered that none of my Yes cds were ripped to the hard drive yet. While i was doing that I surfed the web to read about the band and their cds from that era, and I found some nice videos on Youtube, and I decided, what the heck, any tune available on iTunes can be a song of the day. If I want to make "We Are The Champions" my song of the day tomorrow, then maybe I will. Even if everyone in the world has heard it before. ^_^

You may or may not have heard Roundabout before. Either way, here's a very nice video on Youtube taken in 1973, with the band in all of their early seventies rock star regalia glory. Great stuff. ^_^

Here also is a much more recent accoustic version of the song. The band is much older and it almost sounds like a lounge parody of the song, except that their incredible musicianship is still very much in evidence.

Somewhere in the middle is this concert version from their bloated 1991 Union tour (in which original band members Anderson Bruford Wakeman and Howe combined their self-named group with the version of Yes that existed at the time).

You can, by the way, also buy the accoustic version of the song in the above video on iTunes, so even if you own the original song I'm giving you a download idea that you may not have considered. There are other versions available for download... some live versions of course, the version with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from the Symphonic Yes cd (also pretty cool) and another classical take on the song by the Silverwood Quartet which sounds interesting (you can also hear some samples from their covers of this and other classic rock tunes on their web site).