#30daysofyes

[the-citizen-toula]

New intro post FINALLY

First of all,

limoncelle -> the-citizen-toula

I wanted a bit more of an on brand name for this blog lol

Hello!

I’m Toula! I’m a cellist and music teacher, and a Yesfan since 2010 (or 2009 i don’t remember)!

This blog is mostly focused on Yes and Yes-related content, with a heavy focus on Billy Sherwood’s ongoing journey with the band and his bond with Chris Squire, the band itself’s iterations after the 80s, and all of the side projects, solo albums, and supergroups that have come from it!

They are very seldom talked about, especially on Tumblr, so I wanted to use this blog to share info and art and dumb shitposts that may teach you something new about Yes or give you a new perspective (a new state of mind) on some of its members. Keep in mind though there are literally no eras or members of Yes I do not like 😭 I’m very much a dirty “I love everything!” ahh fan

One of my favourite things to do is talk about Yes if you can’t tell 💀 so I’m very open to asks! If you have any questions about Yestory, questions for me, or want me to draw something or someone, feel free to reach out and I will do my best to answer your question :)

Tags to know:

#yes interviews (especially this post, it’s kind of the reason this blog is the way it is)

#yes fanart

#toula’s fashion review

#30daysofyes (I SWEAR I will get through this)

#conspiraposting

#billy sherwood’s tour diary (here is a link to the vlogs in chronological order!)

#70s/80s/90s/00s/2010s/2020s yes

#pre yes

#yes cinematic universe

More about me:

Besides Yes and Yes-adjacent bands I really love Youssou N’Dour, La Compagnie Créole, Lura, Stevie Wonder, Magma, Hiatus Kaiyote, Phish, some Vocaloid producers and a bunch of other random shit from all kinds of genres lmao

I love to cook and bake, work out, of course play my instruments (aside from cello I play lots of percussion and I’ve been learning bass guitar for a few years!) and draw!

In terms of games I have been a massive Rock Band/Guitar Hero freak since childhood and if I’m not playing those you will always catch me on Clone Hero playing customs

[unicornery]

30DaysOfYes Day 15 Bonus

As mentioned in the previous post, since Chris Squire was the only constant throughout so many lineup changes, there never needed to be another bass player for Yes until he passed. Billy Sherwood, who had already been a touring and studio musician for the band in the late ‘90s, was named as Chris’s successor, and his first official appearance on bass was on the 2015 tour. Considering he was listed as an official member on Open Your Eyes, I believe that would make him the first U.S.-born member of Yes. Other non-U.K. members include Patrick Moraz (Switzerland), Trevor Rabin (South Africa), Benoît David (Canada), and Jon Davison (USA).

Sherwood was put into a really unenviable role considering how many music fans ^fans of anything react to change. In my opinion, he does the absolute best that he can with this opportunity. When I first saw him in Des Moines on that tour stop, he played the bass lines yet did not steal focus, giving fans the time to adjust to his presence. Since then, he has come more into his own and seems to genuinely enjoy his time on stage making music with the guys. I’m so glad the band has been able to continue touring with him added to the fold, and I really love how he carried on playing the harmonica solo in “And You And I,” just like Chris did.

Every time I have seen him, he seems to be wearing some type of drapey cardigan, so you know I’m into that. Apart from Billy’s duties with Yes, he is a prolific musician in many other bands, and a legendary producer. 

(Image credit: David Wolff - Patrick/Redferns - via this GuitarWorld article)

[the-citizen-toula]

The hour of glazing is upon us

30 Days of Yes: Day 1

Your favourite song

(Can’t decide between peak or peak so fuck it both)

———

Symphonic Live is my favourite Yes album of all time by far, and has a very special place in my heart. I come from an orchestral background and been performing/studying orchestral music almost all my life so you can imagine how much I freaked out at a live album with a 60 piece ensemble performing my favourite yessongs just how I arranged them in my mind! Like holy shit

I’d been a fan since 2010 but I didn’t know about Symphonic Live until 2015 when my wife (then friend) sent me the link to the performance on YouTube and said something like “you’re in orchestra and you like this band right?” Little did she know she put me on to absolute peak

———

Close to the Edge/And You and I (Live in Amsterdam, 2001)

I feel like CTTE/AYAI were the obvious answers but I specifically love the orchestrated versions for adding so much weight to every member’s performance, not only backing up some parts but adding really really cool harmonies and countermelodies (even some slight reharms occasionally?) that elevate both pieces to absolute perfection

One good example is the melody in the horns you can hear in the second half of the phrase during The Big Moment

The intro to Close to the Edge to me is just absolutely perfect. The end of Solid Time of Change is just so hard to describe, that drop is so insane like I’m not religious but it feels like you died and then went to heaven

Matter of fact just listen to I Get Up I Get Down (13:42)

And it’s not like we just go from nothing to something either. It’s very gently building the entire time until it all just hits you like a truck and absolutely sends you to the clouds

The climaxes in both (the end of I Get Up I Get Down and the ending of The Preacher the Teacher) are greatly elevated by the support of the orchestra and never fail to bring me to tears 😭 the epicness is just off the charts here and they CLEAR the studio versions and even other live versions

I absolutely adore the ending of The Preacher the Teacher in And You And I (1:49:54); it’s been stated before by the arranger (Larry Groupé) and conductor (Wilhelm Keitel) that it was really hard to keep the band and the ensemble together, but holy shit do they manage to stay tight throughout that entire section as we get more and more rubato until Apocalypse, every hit just means SO MUCH

———

I preordered the vinyl and CDs for the rerelease of Symphonic Live the second they were announced and made a post about it here, I was SO hype about it and could not stop crying through my first listen

That whole time I was feeling a wave of grief over Chris and I had just happened to discover Symphonic only a few weeks before June 27th, so there was a lot of emotional weight there that I didn’t process until then that I touch on a bit here

But this record really helped in me processing all that

———

Anyways who was even surprised. Peak is peak

They’re having so much fun 😭

[the-citizen-toula]

FINALLY GETTING AROUND TO THIS

30 Days of your Favourite Band

Who else would it be lol

edited from this post from billy sherwood’s insta!

This is the schedule:

Day 1 — Your favorite song

Day 2 — A song you’ve heard (or want to hear) live

Day 3 — A song from their debut album

Day 4 — A song from their current album

Day 5 — A song from your favorite album

Day 6 — Your least favorite song

Day 7 — Your favorite member

Day 8 — Your favorite lyric

Day 9 — Your favorite album

Day 10 — A description of when you saw them (if you haven’t seen them, describe what you want it to be like)

Day 11 — A piece of merchandise that you own

Day 12 — A piece of merchandise that you wish you owned

Day 13 — A picture of the lead singer

Day 14 — A picture of the guitarist

Day 15 — A picture of the bassist

Day 16 — A picture of the drummer

Day 17 — A group picture (if there are other members besides the previous four, post them on this day)

Day 18 — Your favorite music video

Day 19 — Your least favorite music video

Day 20 — A review of your favorite album, song by song

Day 21 — Your favorite tour they’ve been on

Day 22 — Your dream tour with them on it

Day 23 — The first song you heard

Day 24 — The song by them with the most plays in your library

Day 25 — A song from a movie soundtrack they were on (if none, post a song you’d like to hear on a movie soundtrack)

Day 26 — A picture of a former member

Day 27 — A description of why your favorite song is your favorite

Day 28 — A description of why your favorite album is your favorite

Day 29 — A letter to your favorite member

Day 30 — Why they’re your favorite band

Got this idea from @unicornery who also did Yes under the same tag! Really excited to see how they compare since it’s been 5 years and our tastes are definitely not the same

I already know what I’m gonna say for a big chunk of these so I might just write out of order and schedule them for the correct day 😅😅😅

[the-citizen-toula]

30 Days of Yes: Day 2

A song you've heard live

No you did NOT hear me singing at the end you're delusional

--- --- ---

The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) [Live in Washington, D.C., 2025]

This one will not be as long but holy shit this was one of the most hype moments of my LIFE UGHH

I didn't capture the first part because I was just in shock, but you could like physically feel this solo. That bass was so loud and whenever he hit that E it literally made my chest rattle 😩 Billy did SUCH a good job and like I mentioned before he looked like he was really feeling himself

Won't be long now until we get Flamingo Billy

And Juano tapping away at his little drums never fails to make me giggle 😭

--- --- ---

My brother got me and my wife tickets to this show for my birthday and we flew out to meet him there in Maryland. We had such a good time overall in the city (cried like a million times throughout the show) and I got to see TwoSetViolin the day before this also in D.C.! You can't hear it but my brother leaned over and asked me if that was Chris Squire lmao. I said "In a way"

[the-citizen-toula]

30 Days of Yes: Day 3

A song from their first album

which is…

Survival

I was going back and forth between talking about Harold Land and Survival, but I already talked about Harold Land briefly in a previous post and Survival is my favourite song on s/t :)

By far my favourite part of this track besides the immaculate rainy day vibes is the fact that our tonal centre changes so often you never truly get used to one. It really ties into the storytelling in the lyrics and feels like we’re going on a journey

The D#m7 voiced in the harmonies in the prechorus and the Em11 at the end especially are so light and airy and dreamy I JUST CAN’T WE ARE ABOVE THE CLOUDS

I used to listen to this song all the time when I was in my feelings as a moody teenager 😭 but I have come to appreciate the song itself more as I got older, especially during the spring with all the nature imagery and how PERFECT this song sounds with rain outside

I urge you all to go outside while it’s raining right before sunset, sit on a bench (preferably overlooking the water), and listen to Survival

Also here’s my copy of American flavoured s/t I somehow found in my local record store 🥹

[unicornery]

How It All Began

TL;DR I was a weird, lonely, radio-obsessed teen and heard Roundabout on a ‘70s request show I listened to regularly.

30 Days of Yes: Day 23 — The first song you heard. 

Of course there’s a possibility that I encountered the Billboard number one hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart” sometime between 1984 and 1997, but for official purposes, the first Yes song I heard, and the song that made me a fan, was “Roundabout.”

At the time, the Des Moines radio station Star 102.5 had a popular program called “Seventies Saturday Night.” It was a DJ-hosted show that played pop, funk, disco, rock, and more from 7-11pm, and took listener requests from all over central Iowa.

I started listening to the show when I was in sixth grade. I had been to a birthday party at the Legion for a classmate where the parents invited the whole class (always a big fan of those), and they had a DJ who threw in “YMCA” among the pop hits of the day. I happened to be radio channel surfing one Saturday and got excited to stumble upon “YMCA” again.

Through junior high and high school, I listened to Seventies Saturday Night whenever I could. If I was out with my family, we’d listen to it in the car, but most of the time I listened to it in the living room on the family’s big Sony stereo. The one with the 5-disc CD changer, dual tape decks, and a digital tuner. I had friends at school but I wasn’t always included in social activities on the weekends (see my joy at the everyone’s-invited type of party), so I really did spend a lot of time at home on the farm listening to the radio.

One Saturday night in my sophomore year of high school, I was in my usual spot on the couch listening to my show. Possibly playing Tetris, the one game I had for my green Game Boy. With no DJ intro, I heard the initial swelling crescendos contrasted with gently picked guitar intro, followed by the whole band kicking in. The different sections of the song, the keyboards, the prominent bass (did I mention we had a subwoofer), and the dramatic “in and around the lake” section held my interest throughout its 8-minute-plus runtime. Transfixed may be too dramatic a word, but it was about that. By the time they got to the outro, with the chanted vocals and guitar riff to tie it all together, I was all in. The DJ came back on to say that the last song was by “Yes.” In that moment, my life changed forever.

In the non-Saturday-night parts of the week, I still listened to some top 40 radio, and Oldies 93.3 with mom, but starting to drift to classic rock stations more and more.  When I listened to those stations, I kept an ear out for “Roundabout,” and came to learn another Yes song, “I’ve Seen All Good People.” The Fort Dodge station even played “Long Distance Runaround” into “The Fish” sometimes (Triple Shot Thursday, baby).

I got my first Yes CD, the Classic Yes compilation, on March 1, 1997. I wish I had written down the date of hearing “Roundabout” for the first time, but at least I kept for posterity the sales receipt from the Musicland where I bought that album. I don’t know what convinced me to get that over the other compilation that was available at the time, perhaps nothing more than Roger Dean’s painting being more appealing than the collage/assemblage on the Highlights cover.

[unicornery]

30 Days of Yes: Day 5 — A song from your favorite album

For a long time, my favorite Yes album was Close To The Edge, then a few years ago I was trying to think of an album to recommend someone to get into the band, and I realized how solid The Yes Album is. So now it goes back and forth between those two, or is maybe a tie. And since I did a song off CTTE for “Favorite Song” on Day 1, I will choose a song from TYA for today.

The Yes Album was released in 1971 and it represented the first major lineup change for the band. Peter Banks was out on guitar and Steve Howe was in. It is known for containing the song “I’ve Seen All Good People,” released as a single edit under the title “Your Move.”  The full track is still played on rock radio to this day!

In my mind, TYA is anchored by the twin pillars of “Starship Trooper” and “Yours Is No Disgrace.” Both clock in at over 9 minutes, and represent a transition from the more traditional song lengths on the first two albums, toward the longer-form pieces that were to come.

I really loved “Yours Is No Disgrace” ever since the first time I heard it on the Classic Yes compilation (the first Yes CD I bought, back in 1997). I must admit I was hooked in by the gimmick of the guitar sound passing between the right and left channels.  It’s a fantastic showcase for Steve Howe’s artistry, and he is supported well by Tony Kaye’s hammond organ riffs and as always, Chris Squire’s basslines. Above all, it rocks so hard, like Heart of the Sunrise, but they find such a great groove on this one. In the pocket. Things of this nature.