Awaken Bake Relayer Cake: Jon Anderson 80

Jon Anderson & Animation - The Friends of Mr. Cairo

Well happy birthday to me, huh? And happy birthday #11 to this page. And a very happy milestone birthday to today's rock star.

Where have I been? I'll explain in a minute.

But back to the rock star guy, exactly 22 years my senior as he is.

Is he the only high alto male rock singer? There must be others, but my addled brain fails me like a rusty bucket with a hole in it. Oh, well.... my bucket's got a hole in it and I can't buy no beer.

Of course he's most beloved and renowned as the main singer and co-founder of one of the three Prog bands Jann "eternal adolescence" Wenner could stand to put in the Hall Of Fame.

When that happened, I think a lot of folks said YES.

So where have I been? Hahahaha, wouldn't you like to know?

OK, so YES. About 20 years ago, before smartphones came with their 500 MB of storage space, I had this device called a NOMAD that held all my walking-around music.

This had a lot of stuff in it, among the goodies this 2CD length compilation I made of them, with several of those goofy edits I used to like to do where I'd make imaginary single 45 versions of lengthy Prog Rock epics and such.

This device, and that YES tape, are long lost to the digital mists of time. Or at least it was *sinister laughter, twirls moustache ominously*

So YES, that's where I've been. Only it isn't 2 1/2 hours anymore. It's almost eight. There's nothing obsessive or extreme about that, is there?

I even went the full ridiculosity and remade all the special edits, adding a whole bunch more the intervening, additional 20 years of editing skills allowed me to dare to profane such sacred texts with an attempt.

Of course, it's all officially released material, so I would never, ever ever ever smash it into the cloud as the biggest Easter Egg of all time, alongside this wild 1982 concert of the birthday guy touring solo with another band that I remastered a few weeks ago, before The Affirmatives set in. Never happen. Never.

Jon Anderson & Animation

Convention Hall

Asbury Park, New Jersey USA

8.6.1982

01 Ocean Song/Sleight of Hand/State of Independence

02 Song of Seven

03 The Friends of Mr. Cairo

04 medley incl. Gamelan/Close to the Edge/Heart of the Sunrise/Long Distance Runaround

05 band introductions

06 The Play and Display of the Heart

07 Animation

08 Surrender

09 All In a Matter of Time

10 Soon

11 medley pt. 1: Perpetual Change/I've Seen All Good People/Yours Is No Disgrace

12 medley pt. 2: Starship Trooper/Awaken

13 Animation jam

14 Roundabout

15 Olympia

Total time: 1:51:17

disc break goes after Track 07

Jon Anderson - vocals, guitar & percussion

David Sancious - keyboards

Clem Clempson - guitar

Guy Shiffman - drums & percussion

Stefano Cerri - bass & vocals

preFM reels of the complete concert recorded for the King Biscuit Flower Hour

sourced from the 2019 Japanese bootleg silver CD "New Jersey 1982" on the "Alive the Live" label

edited, retracked and denoised -- with dropouts repaired, channels balanced and volume boosted as necessary throughout -- by EN, October 2024
689 MB FLAC/direct link that definitely does not have that 6CD playlist in it, no not at all

Watch out for guitarissimo Clem Clempson -- I know I've threatened to cover him by himself 18 times in 11 years -- who handles the Steve Howe YES parts more than capably and goes for broke as only those in his and Steve's league can go.

One more thing about that playlist that is not in the folder: it's all in alphabetical order and designed to shuffle up all at (more or less) a consistent volume, the YES Family solo stuff too. But it doesn't matter, because it isn't in there. LOLOL

Anyway we will try to do a few more things as part of the anniversary October celebrations, a couple more are slotted. But before we do that, we do wish a tremendous 80th b'day to Jon Anderson, born this day in 1944 and a source of Affirmation for tens of millions of listeners for many's the decade now!--J.