Thursday 5 December 2013

Poll: Best Yes-related album of 2013, part 1

There were 169 votes (2 of which were for ineligible albums and 1 was blank). The results were as follows.

?) Days Between Stations: In Extremis (w/ Sherwood, Banks, R Wakeman) - 62 (37%)
?) Sarastro Blake: New Progmantics (w/ R Wakeman, Sherwood) - 57 (34%)
1) Gordon Giltrap & Oliver Wakeman: Ravens & Lullabies (w/ David) - 15 (9%)
2) Glass Hammer: The Inconsolable Secret Deluxe Edition (w/ Davison) - 13 (8%)
3) CIRCA: Live from Here There & Everywhere (w/ Sherwood, Kaye) - 12 (7%)
4=) Renato Zero: Amo - Capitolo 1 (w/ Horn) - 3 (2%)
4=) The Samurai of Prog: Secrets of Disguise (w/ Davison) - 3 (2%)
6) Angharad: Angharad (EP) (w/ Downes) - 1 (1%)

There were no votes for Nektar's Time Machine (w/ Sherwood).

You may have noticed my odd numbering above. Well, in the initial period the poll was up, In Extremis and New Progmantics (which was my personal choice for the period) received very few votes. And then my last blog post went up, reviewing the two albums, and sh-bam, voting for both exploded. Whether that was a deliberate attempt to distort the results with multiple voting (which I can hardly complain about as that's exactly what I'm encouraging people to do with Yes and the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame public vote; and keep voting - it's only up for a few more days) or an influx of new readers to the site, I don't know, but it's clear that most of those 119 votes are not representative of those who usually vote.

Anyway, it was an unusual half year in that there were no major releases from the better known Yesmen. There was nothing album-like released with Anderson, Howe, Squire, White, Bruford, Rabin or Moraz, and only guest appearances from Wakeman. And it's big releases by those which generally win. Instead, for much of the vote, it was a close run thing between new boy Jon Davison's Glass Hammer and the previous new boys Oliver Wakeman and BenoƮt David, with Sherwood's CIRCA: just behind.