Close to the Edge is the fifth studio album by the English progressive rock band Yes. It was released on Atlantic Records (Atlantic K 50012) in September 1972. It reached No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart[1] and No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard 200[2] (Atlantic SD 7244) during a chart stay of 32 weeks. In the Netherlands it reached No. 1 on the Dutch album charts[3], the only Yes album to do so.
According to co-composer Jon Anderson, the title track is inspired by Hermann Hesse's book Siddhartha. The song tracks the awakening of Hesse's character "close to the edge" of a river (and, symbolically, of the serial lifetimes of his soul), where he experiences a spiritual awakening. Bruford says in his autobiography that he came up with the title to describe the state of the band itself, as he had with its predecessor Fragile. He left the line-up after completion of the recording in order to play with King Crimson, which led to Yes finding ex-Plastic Ono Band member Alan White to replace him before starting a new U.S. tour.
Inside of the Close to the Edge LP
cover.
The spiritual influences introduced by Jon Anderson, which later formed the basis of Tales from Topographic Oceans, are already evident in the music and lyrics of all three tracks on Close to the Edge. Renewal and repetition are other main themes; the title track starts and finishes with the same sound effects of running water and birds, and in "Siberian Khatru" there is the repetition of two-syllable words and phrases. This came up many times later in songs like "The Revealing Science of God", "Going for the One", "To Be Over", and "Rhythm of Love".
This album set a trend for Yes of structuring an album around a single epic song. Here the centerpiece is the song "Close to the Edge". Later Yes albums that follow this pattern are Relayer (which features "The Gates of Delirium"), Going for the One (which features "Awaken"), Drama, which features "Machine Messiah", Talk (which features "Endless Dream") and Fly from Here, from the album of the same name.
The cover art was by Roger Dean. Some of the photography for the album sleeve was by bass player Chris Squire's former bandmate in the Selfs and The Syn, Martyn Adelman.
Raw Power is the third studio album by American rock band The Stooges. It was released on 7 February 1973 through Columbia Records. Though not initially commercially successful, Raw Power gained a cult following in the years following its release and, like its predecessor (1970's Fun House), is generally considered an influential forerunner of punk rock.
Raw Power was released in America in May 1973 and in the UK the following month as an album by "Iggy and the Stooges", contrasting with the group's first two albums, credited to "The Stooges". The album sleeve comprised a photograph of Iggy taken by rock music photographer Mick Rock. The songs "Search and Destroy" and "Shake Appeal" were both released as singles (the album's title track was released as a single in Japan only). Despite rave reviews, sales of Raw Power were weak, and the album peaked at No. 182 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. Despite its weak initial reception, the reputation of Raw Power grew tremendously in subsequent years, and the album's volume and ferocity became benchmarks against which later albums were measured.
Iggy produced and mixed the album by himself; unfortunately, his botched first attempt mixed most of the instruments into one stereo channel and the vocals into the other, with little regard for balance or tone quality. Tony DeFries, the head of MainMan, informed Iggy that the album would be remixed by David Bowie. Iggy agreed to this, claiming that "the other choice was I wasn't going to get my album out. I think DeFries told me that CBS refused to release it like that, I don't know",[12] but insisted that his own mix for "Search and Destroy" be retained. Due to budgetary constraints, Bowie remixed the other seven songs in a single day in an inexpensive Los Angeles studio, Western Sound Recorders, in October 1972. According to Iggy, the mixing session took place in one day:
"To the best of my recollection it was done in a day. I don't think it was two days. On a very, very old board, I mean this board was old! An Elvis type of board, old-tech, low-tech, in a poorly lit, cheap old studio with very little time. To David's credit, he listened with his ear to each thing and talked it out with me, I gave him what I thought it should have, he put that in its perspective, added some touches. He's always liked the most recent technology, so there was something called a Time Cube you could feed a signal into -- it looked like a bong, a big plastic tube with a couple of bends in it -- and when the sound came out the other end, it sort of shot at you like an echo effect. He used that on the guitar in "Gimme Danger," a beautiful guitar echo overload that's absolutely beautiful; and on the drums in "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell." His concept was, "You're so primitive, your drummer should sound like he's beating a log!" It's not a bad job that he did...I'm very proud of the eccentric, odd little record that came out."
Bowie later recalled:
...the most absurd situation I encountered when I was recording was the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. He wanted me to mix Raw Power, so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He said 'see what you can do with this'. I said, 'Jim, there's nothing to mix'. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. On at least four or five songs that was the situation, including "Search and Destroy." That's got such a peculiar sound because all we did was occasionally bring the lead guitar up and take it out."
Nilsson Schmilsson is the seventh album by Harry Nilsson.
Commercially, this was Nilsson's strongest work, producing three of his
better known songs and achieving acclaimed chart success. This album
marks the first of two of Nilsson's albums produced by Richard Perry. It was ranked No. 84 on Pitchfork Media's "Top 100 Albums of the 1970's".[7]
Two of Nilsson's self-penned songs, "Jump into the Fire" and "Coconut",
subsequently became hits. The album performed well at the 1973 Grammy Awards, earning a nomination for Album of the Year, while "Without You", a cover of a song by the band Badfinger, won a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. This could be one of your favorite albums ever.
In late 1968, Traffic disbanded, guitarist Dave Mason having left the group for the second time prior to the completion of the Traffic album. In 1969, Steve Winwood joined the supergroup Blind Faith, while drummer and lyricist Jim Capaldi and woodwinds player Chris Wood turned to session work, Wood also joining Blind Faith's drummer Ginger Baker in his post-Blind Faith group Ginger Baker's Air Force for their first album.[4]
In the beginning of 1970, after the demise of Blind Faith, the band having lasted barely six months, Winwood returned to the studio ostensibly to make his first solo album, originally to be titled Mad Shadows. He recorded two tracks with producer Guy Stevens, "Stranger to Himself" and "Every Mother's Son", but yearned for like-minded musicians to accompany. Inviting Wood and Capaldi to join him, Winwood's solo album became the reunion of Traffic, and a re-launch of the band's career.[5]
As did most of their albums, it featured influences from jazz and blues, but the version of the traditional English folk tune "John Barleycorn" also showed the musicians attending to the same strains of folk baroque and electric folk as contemporary British bands The Pentangle and Fairport Convention.
It was reissued for compact disc in the UK on November 1, 1999, with five bonus tracks, including three recorded in concert from the Fillmore East in New York City. In the US, the remastered reissue of February 27, 2001 included only the two studio bonus tracks.
Steve Winwood oversaw a deluxe edition version that was released on March 15, 2011,[6] featuring the original studio album, digitally remastered on disc one, plus a second disc of bonus material including more of the Fillmore East concert with alternate mixes and versions of album tracks.
