The Whô versus Yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7FrIt352VE

I know taste is taste, and that Yes has a fanatical following, and that the Who put out some dreadful stuff, but on the whole, this seems like a mismatch.

haha yeah how is this even close

the who have maybe three excellent full albums, from bottom to top. Yes have several more than that but also way, way more terrible albums. Quadrophenia is better than anything yes ever put out. I dunno.

The Whô released four of the "greatest" albums ever recorded straight in a row -- The Who Sell Out, Tommy, Who's Next, and Quadrophenia. So did Yes -- The Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge, and Tales from Topographic Oceans. None of those Whô albums is as good as Close to the Edge, though hats off to Pete, John, Keith, and Rog, Who's Next is close.

The comparison only makes sense to me insofar as the Who got a little proggy at times in the '70s, and used a synthesizer sometimes. And they could be arty and conceptual--you could add Tommy to that too, maybe even Who Sell Out. But when the Who were at their best in those first three or four years, they exist in different universes.

I'm not sure the Who ever released an album as bad as "Talk".

I don't like Quadrophenia at all tbh

Why judge art by the worst work of an artist? That's parsimony inimical to art, eminence front, a put on.

I don't like Quadrophenia all that much either, that said, The Who >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Yes.

(lol just remembered what my username currently is)

The Whô is great, but "Behind Blue Eyes" is the closest they ever got to the melancholic grandeur of "Siberian Khatru".

I love both bands. Yes could err on the side of optimistic cheese too often for comfort and the Whô were pretentious as all fuck -- two rock operas! -- but I don't hold that against either of them. I have hard time choosing.

why are you getting all geir on us

I can pull up by the curb
I can make it on the road
Goin' Geir on you

I can stop in any street
And talk with people that we meet
Goin' Geir on you

I don't mean to be getting Geir-y. I love Wolf Eyes. I saw that quote by Townshend and it got me thinking.

I love both bands. I'm trying to decide if I'd rather go without hearing "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" or Relayer and I don't have an answer. The direction of music these days says The Who, so I'd probably vote Yes to be contrarian.

I love both bands, too. What Townshend said got me wondering if he was jealous of [the unmentioned] Steve Howe's chops, like he was Jimmy Page's, the way in the 1960s he confessed to being bummed that Hendrix got more props than him, competitive about who first brought feedback to the masses, him or Dave Davies. The direction of music will always favor lightning in a bottle bands like The Whô, Keith Moon over Bill Bruford. But why do we kowtow to popular opinion whenever it leans against prog, celebrating exclusivity of taste in regards to other genres? I understand the wording of that hypothetical question is stuffy, but so is the notion of a rock opera.

Ever since I had my mind blown by Peter Hamill (forty years after Lydon did), I really question this whole punk vs. prog thing. Maybe the 2010s is the time for this to finally die, even if it's just for fun.

Hammill.

What Townshend said got me wondering if he was jealous of [the unmentioned] Steve Howe's chops, like he was Jimmy Page's, the way in the 1960s he confessed to being bummed that Hendrix got more props than him

However jealous Townshend may have been of Page's and Howe's chops then, he shouldn't have been, since he'd already revolutionized the electric guitar in ways those players' conservative approaches would not have allowed for, primarily by freeing it from the tyranny of the fretboard.

And anyway, since around 1999-2000 his playing has vaulted way past anything Howe or Page (or Beck or Clapton) were/are capable of on their best days.

Low ebb wise - I find the Who's mediocre stuff to be pretty boringly listenable, whereas Yes more often tends to fall flat on their face with utter wackness.

Really shocked the discussion is so one-sided. I have never understood the appeal of the Who.

The Who were basically operating on another level, and their contemporaries knew it. Wakeman himself aspired to something close to the Who's power, and Jeff Beck said, "they were too good." Putting, say, Yessongs (as admirably stirring as it sometimes is) against Live At Leeds is profoundly unfair to Yes.-

I couldn't disagree more. I admit I haven't listened to the Who's full discography the way I have with Yes - I've only ever heard Who's Next, the radio hits, and some of Live at Leeds, but I've never heard what other people hear in them. They bore me, honestly.

The early Who singles (almost all of them) + The Who Sell Out matches up, for me, with the Beatles, mid-'60s Dylan, '68-72 Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, the Byrds, Sly & the Family Stone, CCR, '69-75 Neil Young, and not much else.

I mean...when a performance like this is only one of your peaks...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhwie_the-who-a-quick-one_music

That singles run is fantastic but probably equaled or close by the Music Machine, the (Dutch) Outsiders, the Kinks - I don't know who else.

I don't know if there's another song that's so out-of-time with itself. When the breakdown starts, somewhere around 45 seconds in (that's pretty fast, when you think about it), it's like this song suddenly jumps about twenty years into the future. Yes doesn't have anything to compare with that, or other little Who moments scattered here and there. But I'm still on the fence, and somehow the impact of posting Gates of Delirium can't really compare, even though I think that's pretty amazing as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXU0GvtOTH0

in my opinion!

xp

and when you want to keep playing but you already threw your guitar away, you play the amps (at 8:30):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVIMunRMXOM

It's not so much that Yes wasn't capable of something like that, necessarily; it's that it would never have occurred to them.

Putting, say, Yessongs (as admirably stirring as it sometimes is) against Live At Leeds is profoundly unfair to Yes

Sorry dog but Yessongs owns. It's the best live album ever released. Live at Leeds is "an important historical document" but I'll take "Yours Is No Disgrace" over "Summertime Blues" and whatever the fuck a million times over

You'd have to change the production a whole hell of a lot, but Owner of a Lonely Heart isn't that far from the Who in some ways, as far as composition goes.

Who's Next sounds at times like a failed prog record, as good as it is, so they really have no business knocking prog.

it was, kind of; lifehouse is some proggy shit

in concept anyway.

With "The Grid", a central concept in Lifehouse, Pete 'predicted' the internet way way ahead of time. That is some witchy proggy (prognosticating) shit.

ROCK OPERAS are proggy as all get out, as are Pete's ongoing synth experiments in and around significant stretches of those ROCK OPERAS.

It's not Yes's fault that Relayer is pretty much the album of 1975 and people wanted to talk shit.

i agree w/ clemenza -- i don't go back to most of the who's post-tommy stuff that much these days but everything up through sell out is still glorious. "anyway anyhow anywhere" in particular never fails to amaze me. there's so much going on in that song, i feel like i'm hearing it slightly differently every time. nothing against yes, though.

I still haven't heard any Who albums but I love Daltrey/Wakeman's Lisztomania soundtrack.

https://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=XbZqKBwoIRk

I really question this whole punk vs. prog thing.

The word you were looking for instead of 'thing' was 'myth', and how many times has this been discussed on ILM over the decades? "Prog" was on the decline, artistically if not commercially (don't know about that), long before punk showed up.

However jealous Townshend may have been of Page's and Howe's chops then, he shouldn't have been, since he'd already revolutionized the electric guitar in ways those players' conservative approaches would not have allowed for, primarily by freeing it from the tyranny of the fretboard.

Strangely I was listening to some live Who not long before I came across this thread and thinking how immense Townshend's guitar playing was.

and punk will never be on the decline, while prog always will be, still, 39 years later. imagine if in 1977 people were still basing their aesthetic framework on genre wars from 1948

sucks because there are a lot of really great prog bands out there now, a lot of which aren't all that indebted to the 70's - but there's just no exposure

"Prog" was on the decline, artistically if not commercially (don't know about that), long before punk showed up.

Commercially, Pink Floyd, Queen, and Rush were still some of the biggest rock bands in North America during and after the punk 'revolution' (which barely even registered on radio until the 90s, unless you count new wave bands like the Cars and the Police).

punk is prog, prog is punk, forever and ever amen

never been fully won over by the who; yes have the ability to turn me into a gibbering wreck (on maybe like 6 or 7 songs); not sure i should vote

(xp) I don't want to kick off any new sort of discussion here, but I don't consider Queen a prog rock band fwiw. I don't know, seems to me the game was already up by 1975, the year of the Townshend quote: Fripp had wound up King Crimson, Gabriel had left Genesis, Hammill had put out "Nadir's Last Chance", Yes and ELP went off and recorded crap solo albums.

A few sinking ships had been deserted.

Yes have three really great records (Fragile, CTTE, Relayer) but The Who mean more to me, not least because Sell Out is one of my dozen or so favourite albums ever.

Olias Of Sunhillow and Fish Out Of Water are incredible and Hammill's Over is 10 times better than Nadir. Rush were still putting out their best work and the underground/Rock In Opposition stuff was as good as ever. I don't think the rot really set in until the early 80s.

yeah even though the big names were shaking up there were still a lot of great prog albums being released in 1975 and 1976. I always thought of '78 as the year when things really went south, with former prog giants releasing stuff like Love Beach, And Then There Were Three, and Tormato, with nothing new to really compensate.

(xp) ... and Hammill actually reformed VdGG in 1975 too, I know. I don't know, I'm possibly projecting here! Anyway Fripp was the first guy I know of to talk about dinosaur rock bands... when John Lydon was probably still listening to them.

Krimson and hammill's solo work, particularly Over, are something other than what people mean when they talk about prog, for the most part. those are guys who were happy to break out into new genres, work in new wave and punk (together! see Exposure) etc.

The Who have aged worse for me than most other huge 60s/70s classic rock bands, whereas Yes keeps rising

The Who is great, but I'd be thrilled if Yes won this

I sometimes think of Who's Next as the ultimate classic rock album and "Baba O'Riley" as the ultimate classic rock song. At the end of the day, though, I voted for Yes: I just listen to them more and "Starship Trooper" probably means more to me.

I can't imagine listening to Yes.

'Who's Next' was the first album I ever bought, and for a number of years the Who were absolutely my favourite band, but at the same time there is something about them that has always annoyed me. I remember going to the Charlton concert in 1974 and thinking (while they were playing) that, despite them being headliners and massively loud, and everyone around me in the crowd apparently loving their performance, that it was somehow a let-down. Not only was the overall effect crude and laboured but the section of extracts from 'Tommy' seemed to drag on for ever. I think, with hindsight, that their earlier stuff is better.

I bought 'Close to the Edge' and played it a lot, but later sold it. I listened to some of it again recently and was surprised at what a racket it seemed. I remembered it as sounding much smoother.

But re. the Who: until quite recently, despite my reservations, I was still keen on listening to them and getting the old albums on CD and so on, but I've really lost interest now. I would rather listen to Nick Drake to be honest, which is weird because I never heard any of his stuff in the 1970s (or during the revival that probably peaked about ten years ago) and only started listening to him within the last two years.

I taped that Charlton gig off the TV, I had to admit that the version of "My Generation" disappointed me, being that half-speed long version, particularly when the intro to the gig had shown a different version where Pete sings the first line on his own then the band come in with the fast version..

I read somewhere that Townshend was very drunk by the time he got on stage. I think there was something bad about the whole gig, perhaps to do with his attitude. It's a pity that it's the only one of them in their heyday to be filmed. I did go and see them a couple more times (at Wembley Empire Pool in 1975, I think, and a second Charlton gig in 1976) and I don't have any particular memories of those.

I remember going to the Charlton concert in 1974 and thinking (while they were playing) that, despite them being headliners and massively loud, and everyone around me in the crowd apparently loving their performance, that it was somehow a let-down.

You were at that show? No way! fwiw, they hadn't played live in months, and Townshend was dead drunk. In the footage, you can see him nearly fall over a few times. Few fans (or band members) regard that as a great show.

It's a pity that it's the only one of them in their heyday to be filmed.

There's also a March, 1973 show in Voorburg, Holland that was filmed in its entirety. It also happens to be a frustratingly off night, but with more peaks than Charlton.

I admit I haven't listened to the Who's full discography the way I have with Yes - I've only ever heard Who's Next, the radio hits, and some of Live at Leeds, but I've never heard what other people hear in them. They bore me, honestly.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Monday, April 18, 2016 9:57 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^

Voted Yes

I feel like the greatest WHO experience would have been to have seen them live in '64-'65. All that talent yet I think they never reached their full potential.
This was close for me, but I listen to YES more.

this is no social crisis

This is you having fun.

getting burned by the sun

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Why the circumflex?

Same question

to be searchable, i can only imagine

I think it has to do with the logo for the Who having an arrow pointing out the top of the O.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

methanietanner otm. maximum r & b!

this was a lot closer than i figured it would be

Well afterall ILM does like to get all Yessed out late at night.

Who Are You vs Tempus Fugit