Circa:
Keswick Theater
Glenside (Philadelphia), PA
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
Section Left, Row HH, Seat 27
$110
The soundcheck was the highlight of Circa's appearance at RoSFest. There was just so much potential at that point. Plus the illicit pleasure of hearing something we weren't supposed to have access to.
Roy and I ate a quick dinner and came back to the Keswick Theater. Yes drummer Alan White and former members of Yes Tony Kaye and Billy Sherwood had arrived. The auditorium was closed off for the soundcheck, but the lobby was open. The auditorium couldn't be completely closed off, as there weren't doors between it and the lobby. All the sound carried through. And while they put some folding screens up to block the view and roped off the entrances to the auditorium, we could see around them.
I got myself into a spot with a good view and watched Alan play the drums. Roy, Mark, Tina, and Krista joined me for a bit. Mark and I had time to catch up with each other. I hadn't seen him since 2005, I think. In between talking, we were playing "Name that Tune" with the soundcheck. Circa was going to play a long Yes medley, and every once in a while we'd hear a familiar drum part or a chord played on the keyboards. I heard Tony play Yours Is No Disgrace. Mark and I both thought we heard Alan play a bit of The Ancient, but it was not part of the medley during the show.
Tina and I tried to have a serious discussion about our friend Zoey, who is not doing too well. But then Circa would play again, and it was too loud to continue talking. We'd look at each other, start happily bopping around to the music, and then turn serious again once it was quiet. It was nice during this break and the previous one to just have time to talk to people. It was also thrilling knowing that Yes musicians were in the house.
Even then, as excited as I was, I wasn't sure how the concert would go. From reading some fan sites, I knew the format of the concert. Circa would play their entire new album, then the 40 minute Yes medley featuring songs from every Yes album. The encore would be The More We Live—Let Go, Billy Sherwood's track from Union. Roy thought the Circa album was inconsistent. I liked it better, but I wondered if it would work well live. Like the rest of Billy Sherwood's projects, it was a very heavily produced sound, with most of the tracks being mid-tempo. It all sounds nice, but there's such a consistently full sound that it gets fatiguing to listen to the whole thing. It doesn't breathe. I do really liked a couple of tracks on it, the first song Cut the Ties and Together We Are.
We went to our seats and the concert started. Much bigger crowd than was in attendance the rest of the day. I like to stand up and dance at concerts - we got seats on the far aisle so I could do this without being in anyone's way or blocking their view. From this vantage point, I could see Tony Kaye from behind his keyboards, actually seeing him play. That was pretty cool.
I thought the show started off well. Cut the Lines reminds me of Does it Really Happen from Yes' Drama album, with a forceful bass line. It was a good performance.
And then things started going wrong...
The next song Don't Let Go had a plodding chorus. I liked it less live than I did on the album. And I was noticing how bad the sound was. The Keswick is really a good listening room, with good acoustics. All the bands I had seen over the last two days had good sound. Circa was playing so loud that it was overpowering the room. It's almost like the volume was another instrument, adding echo and boominess and distortion. I've been in this venue enough, in similar seats even, to know that this is not usual here. The sound was as bad as when we saw Genesis at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal, which was a shame. I had earplugs, so the sound wasn't painful, just bad.
It wasn't just me. People started to leave. Other people started to speak up. During a break in between songs, people were yelling to turn the volume down, turn the bass down, turn the guitar up, since it was lost in the mix. I overheard Billy talking after the show, and it seems like he heard lots of "turn it down" and "turn it up" without knowing the problem. And the people way up front were hearing the music from the band's monitors, so they weren't hearing the overloaded sound.
Still, I don't think Billy handled it well on stage. He responded to the yellers by commenting "I'm sure we're all musicians here, and we all want to mix it differently". That could have been alright, but it was just about the only comment he made to the audience other than saying thanks after a song. Now, I just don't think he was making a good relationship with the audience. The festival audience had just spent all day listening to mostly unfamiliar music by enthusiastic bands, so it's not like they were just turned off by not knowing Circa's material. I wonder how much of a difference Billy could have made by introducing some songs and talking to us rather than only addressing us when he was frustrated about the sound complaints during the first hour of the show.
There was a general lack of connection from the band to the audience. I've read other reviews of the performance, and someone said it seemed like Circa wasn't playing to the audience. When I saw Billy all those times with Yes, I thought he had good stage presence. It sounds funny, but I think part of the problem was that he was using a microphone attached by headset instead of a mic stand. He wasn't singing to the audience; it felt like he was singing to himself. And the vocals were so processed, I could hear his breathing through the headset mic and that sounded processed too. Partway through the performance, he got a regular mic stand.
Roy got up at one point. When he came back, I shrugged at him. He told me the second half would be better. At least we knew the Yes medley was coming. I saw about 50 people leave, even a couple with the guy wearing a Circa tshirt and the woman wearing a Yes tshirt. I think they expected to like the show! I would seriously say I endured the first half of the set. I've read after the fact that 200 of the 700 festival attendees skipped out of Circa's set.
Did the Yes medley make up for it? It was wonderful and exhilirating, even with the bad sound. I guess I knew what it should sound like, and my mind filtered the distortion and filled in the rest of the sound. The medley opened with Tony Kaye playing the keyboards on Looking Around, a song from the first Yes album. Tony kicked ass on those early albums. Roy said the highlight of the performance was seeing him play those early pieces in the medley.
The medley was just awesome. It featured bit of the following songs:
Looking Around
Harold Land
Every Little Thing
Survival
Somethings Coming
No Opportunity Necessary
Yours is No Disgrace
Heart Of The Sunrise
South Side Of The Sky
Roundabout
Close To The Edge
And You And I
Ritual
Sound Chaser
Parallels
Arriving UFO
Silent Wings
Tempus Fugit
Changes
Owner Of A Lonely Heart
Cinema
Rhythm Of Love
Lift Me Up
Endless Dream
Mind Drive
Open Your Eyes
Lightning Strikes
It was all instrumental, except for Endless Dream. Billy sang the end of the song. I copied this list off of a website. I couldn't place Harold Land. My favorites were the early tracks, Ritual, Sound Chaser, and Arriving UFO. How obscure is that?! During Tempus Fugit, the original version has vocals going through a vocoder going "yes, yes" a few times. Circa changed that to "Circa, Circa, Circa". It was a cute touch. I miss seeing Yes live, and this really excited me that I'll have the chance this summer.
The encore was, eh. Yeah, it's a Yes track and I've never heard it live, and it's even a standout on its album. But it sounded so similar to the Circa material, it didn't do much for me. Some people had really different opinions of the show. My friend Robert, who is an organizer of FMPM festival in Montreal said he liked the first half better and thought the guitarist Jimmy Haun didn't do a good job on the Yes parts. Some of the big Yes fans sitting up front looked thrilled about the whole performance. Cherry was so happy about it, I gave her my glass-half-full opinion: only commented that the medley was wonderful and left out what I thought of the rest of the set.
Circa did an autograph signing after their set. I wasn't going to be around the next day, so I hoped to get all their autographs that night. There was an after party, but we didn't have the VIP tickets to get in. Even if I could get in anyway, it was going to end pretty late into the night and I had a big day planned the next day. We got into the autograph line. I saw Linda briefly, but I didn't really get a chance to say goodbye to her. At first, it was just Alan, Billy, Jimmy, and Billy's brother Michael at the table. Man, I really wanted to get Tony's autograph. I had only met him once briefly on the Talk tour.
I don't think Alan recognized me. He looked exhausted. I told him I was really looking forward to the Yes tour, and he didn't hear me at first. I repeated myself a few times and he nodded. Then I said I was going to four shows. Alan smiled, and asked what shows I was going to. The guy in front of me interupted, and that was all I got to say to Alan. Billy recognized both Roy and me, even though we hadn't seen him since he left Yes in 2000. He shook both our hands. I should have told him something like "oh, we got married since we saw you last" but I thought of it too late.
Tony Kaye finally came out to the lobby, but took his time. He signed a few autographs for people waiting in line, but there was a group of us at the end of the band's table waiting just for him. Thankfully, the venue security didn't make us leave. Tony then waited til he got a drink. He walked over to his place at the end of the table, and lifted his glass to toast us. I had my bottle of water with me, so I lifted it up and we clinked our plastic glasses.
Tony signed my Talk CD and Something's Coming CD. Both of these were a big deal to me. I had all the autographs on Talk except for Alan and Tony, so I was able to complete it that night. I even had the artist Peter Max sign it, and he draw a little Yes logo on it. I bought Something's Coming over ten years ago, right when it was released. Shortly after that, I met Peter Banks, and he signed his name *and* he wrote Tony's name on it. I've been wanting to show that to Tony Kaye for ten years now, but he hasn't been performing. I pointed it out to him, and he asked "who signed that? It doesn't even look like my signature?" "Peter Banks". When Tony and Jimmy saw my Time and a Word, with Jon Anderson's signature on it, they didn't recognize it and asked who that was. Jon changed his autograph a few years ago, and it's now a big J with circles around it. We made fun of it.
Check out the Yes logo Peter Max drew on it.
Afterwards, I ran up to a few friends who were still hanging around, like Krista, Mark, and Cherry, and giddily showed off my Talk CD. Roy and I went back to the hotel and wound down for a bit after the day's excitement. If I lived closer, I'm sure I would go to RoSFest every year. It really was well organized and I really appreciated that.
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