Riff Album Challenge
Yes — 90125
I love you maybe. You left a scar.
Being a prog fan in the early ‘80s meant living in a world where your brothers, uncles, and sister’s boyfriends spent a lot of time telling you how music used to be so much better. Like, back in the early ’70s. “I saw the Lamb tour like three times, loser.” That’s the kind of thing you’d be putting up with when you put Genesis’ Abacab on your mom’s stereo.
My sister bought me the 1972 Yes album, Fragile, for Christmas in 1982. I don’t know why, really. “I just thought you’d like it,” she said at the time, and she has no memory of the event at all, now. I was immediately hooked and started digging into the back catalogue, but was pretty excited when I learned that a new Yes album — 90125 — was shortly to be released. The band had broken up and reconstituted and Steve Howe wasn’t with them … whatever. I barely knew about that stuff and hardly cared.
I loved the shit out of it. I really did. My 1983 was — forgive the Stranger Things cliches — Dungeon and Dragons, Three’s Company reruns, and endless videos from 90125. MTV, you may remember, was still an emerging concern. I remember actually sitting in front of the TV waiting for each new version of the video for “Leave It” to drop. Like the album itself, the band was flirting with the most advanced technology…
