Jon Anderson, Now and Then

JamBase has a nice writeup of a recent Jon Anderson show out in Santa Barbara.

The concert began and ended with Yes numbers that had the crowd singing and clapping like a group of teenagers around the fire at summer camp. The first two songs he sang, “Yours Is No Disgrace” from 1971′s The Yes Album and “Long Distance Runaround” from 1972′s Fragile, were Yes classics. Hearing the frail singer croon, sans the massive musical framework of thunderous sounds that would envelope him in a typical Yes concert, was disconcerting at first. But quickly it became apparent that Anderson’s voice was up to the challenge and allowed the audience to decipher every word, many of which would normally be drowned out in a cacophony of rock music.

Pair that one together, courtesy of the Dog Gone Blog, with a 1974 audio recording of Yes doing “The Gates of Delirium” at the Cobo Arena in Detroit, Mich. Chops, chops, chops. Anderson puts a lot of zip into the vocals.