There is a last, stiff, uncomfortable date in September, but the Jazz Café is the spiritual end of the first edition of Earthworks. No matter how seductive, the rigidity of the digital drums militates against the suppleness and flexibility required for jazz performance, and the band has reverted to being a rock group with some jazz musicians in it.
#Bill bruford prism kigb crimson full#
With Yes out of the way, Earthworks continues full steam with an eighteen date trip to Germany, again, rounded off with an excellent Jazz Café in London, well-attended by a strong contingent of local friends up from Surrey.ĭjango Bates’ career, meanwhile, has been taking off, and increasingly it is becoming apparent that Earthworks is not offering enough to hold him, and it isn’t. Relief, again, in Earthworks concerts in Europe and Japan as the leaves turn and Fall descends. The tour was presumably in support of some album or another, but it’s not one that Bill ever played again, once recorded.
It is ghastly, macabre, and over-blown, but also un-missable.Īt Madison Square Gardens on 15 June ’91, the world’s most expensive drum-kit, $40,000 worth of two Simmons SDX units in tandem, stalls completely, and Bill performs a humiliating drum “duet” on acoustic hi-hat, snare, and cymbal opposite the thundering Alan White.Īfter four months, it’s too much. Two thousand gigs completed on 16 January ’91.Īs if sleep-walking, Bill is astonished to find he has re-joined the Yes behemoth, with 8 musicians – the entire cast of “Dallas” re-united. A difficult album, and the beginning of a loss of confidence that begins to dog Bill from now on. There can be no title other than “All Heaven Broke Loose”. Work starts, almost to the hour, that the “100 hour” First Gulf War starts, and concludes, almost to the hour, that it ends. Modern Drummer votes Bill into their Hall of Fame.Ī cold January in central Germany recording Earthworks’ third CD, with friend David Torn, producing. This miserable project finally grinds to a conclusion in the late summer, long after Bill lost any interest, and he finally escapes to a refreshing US tour with Earthworks, through October, in support of “Dig?”. As May turns into June, there are Earthworks dates to be fulfilled as merciful relief.
The now purposeless sessions in France turn into “Une Grande Bouffe”, a gluttony to relieve the boredom as empty day follows empty day. This Frankenstein monster is fixed, sampled, quantised and generally massaged into life with every conceivable studio gimmick and an army of session musicians. The European Yes find their initially promising second album sessions in Miraval, France, hi-jacked by Roy Lott at Arista, who wings the tapes to Los Angeles for the Californian Yes to add its doubtful contribution. It is deemed that the “European Yes” should be sired with the “Californian Yes” in an arranged marriage, which, goes the thinking, will double the sales. continues on the road in Japan and America, but the band, which is just finding its musical legs and the beginnings of an identity distinct from its distinguished parentage, is about to succumb to the expected management and record- company idiocy.
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