Just back in June I was *floored* hearing, for the first time as far as I know, "Lady of the Lake" from Starcastle's eponymous debut and "Fountains" from their second album FOUNTAINS OF LIGHT here on SA. I'd certainly heard of Starcastle before, but had no idea how good they really were or how much their music would appeal to my own tastes.

Only two and a half months have elapsed since that first exposure to Starcastle's music and by now I have the entire Starcastle CD catalogue in hand here! Well, almost all of it--one piece, REAL TO REEL, isn't easily available and is almost unanimously not recommended in discussions and reviews. I've even got CHRONOS 1, the out-takes, working tapes, and demos collection released in 2001. The expansive, positive spirit behind the music and the love and care reflected in often delicate craftsmanship and distinctive, intricate arrangements have obviously captured my attention and enthusiasm.

Right now I'm listening to SONG OF TIMES, which I received about a week ago, and which was released just last year, almost 29 years after the next-most-recent studio piece (the aforementioned REAL TO REEL). I'm so thrilled and relieved that this is a completely worthy reunion effort, unlike so many disappointing comeback efforts. It features all the original members plus several other excellent musicians, most notably Al Lewis, formerly of Alaska, singing lead on most tracks. I'm finding the disc rich, powerful, and rewarding, with a denser, often heavier sound than the original classics, while retaining their uplifting spirit and certain stylistic signatures.

The ALIVE IN AMERICA Concert Classics live set (from 1978) is such a strong set of performances that I imagine this band must have been something to see in their heyday. I'd love to see here in this thread reflections and reminiscences from those who saw the band back in the 70s, as well as any who've seen either or both of the relatively recent ROSFest performances. I'd also love to see any other comments, information, anecdotes, or opinions--positive, negative, or mixed--from any and all SA members concerning this band and their recordings. Thanks!

huntr_22 wrote on 18^th Aug, 2008 at 11:32pm:


Yes, I *believe* Oliver Wakeman performed with them at ROSfest. Cool, huh? Very interested to hear from anyone who witnessed those performances. Oliver Wakeman is s not, however, among the personnel on SONG OF TIMES.

I have two *Starcastle* CDs now.As usual I heard them first on SA!

huntr_22 wrote on 21^st Aug, 2008 at 12:38am:


Cool!  Which albums are those? How would you compare the vocals on those albums to those of Dream Theater?

Dan Joy wrote on 21^st Aug, 2008 at 4:53am:



I have *Fountains of light* and *Starcastle*.I am will have to buy some more soon!


I am not sure about this comparision between Dream Theatre.

I think I took several listens at Starcastle and decided they were too...shiny(?) sounding for me. It was as if Yes had been turtle waxed and buffed to a painful level. It almost kind of hurt my ears. I'll perhaps give a few of their other albums a listen or revisit that one, though!

Have you heard Cathedral's "Stained Glass Stories" or Deluge Grander's "August in the Urals?" (Both of which were SA introduced to me!) If you're Yes-friendly, you may like them.  Cathedral especially sounds vaguely Yes inspired but also as though they're solidly off into their own thing.

huntr_22 wrote on 18^th Aug, 2008 at 11:32pm:


A follow-up, Lumo--here's the web page where Oliver Wakeman himself tells the story of his work with Starcastle! How cool is that? 

http://www.oliver-wakeman.co.uk/html/starcastle_show.html

Anyone else? Starcastle -- love 'em? hate 'em?

Seen 'em live? it would be great to hear from someone who's actually seen them in action!

Wanted to add my two cents.I  am actually old enough to have bought the first Starcastle album (yes, old enough to know what an album is as well) when it hit in 1976.

Keep in mind, we were tremendous Yes fans and this was just after Relayer had just came out and the word was it was their last album, Granted, we smoked a lot (too much?) weed back then and the combination of that, as well as the last track on the Relayer album being "To Be Over", made us believe that this was Yes' way of saying goodbye. Like I said lots of weed back then.

And when I think of all the months we spent analyzing Tales and the meanings only to find out later that Jon made the words up as sounds just to be another band instrument..but, that's for another day...


... anyway, Starcastle filled our immediate Yes void back then, thirty-two years ago. Yes, it was polished and shiny and not necessarily adventurous. But it was awesome. A musical comfort zone, if you will. I get teary-eyed when I think back nostalgically to cleaning my reefer on the inside cover of Close to the Edge, whilst listening to Fountains or True to the Light.  

Life was a helluva lot simpler back then.

Jeff (from Illinois)


P.S. in case no one has yet to post it, here is a great history of the band...  http://www.starcastlemusic.com/history.html

Thanks so much, Jeff! That's exactly the sort of reminiscence and input I was hoping for on this thread.

Allow me to date myself -- I too was old enough to be buying Yes, Crimson, and other progressive rock records by the late 70s. To be specific, I was 15 in 1978 and by that time was into prog. I had my own weekend job and could buy a few records: Nektar, Hawkwind, Focus, Genesis, FM, Sahara, and solo efforts by Robert Fripp and Jon Anderson were also to be found in my small stash of vinyl. But I somehow missed Starcastle entirely (which might have been harder for me to do had I the advantage you may have had in this regard, if you were in Illinois back then as well).

The first time I ever remember hearing of Starcastle was in 1996, when Jimmy Wagner and I became friends in San Francisco. Jimmy had been the keyboardist for a mid-eighties San Francisco-based incarnation of Starcastle, formed around Gary Strater who lived in the Bay Area at that time.

I remember Jimmy talking quite a bit about Starcastle and offering to loan me a cassette of the first Starcastle record (I definitely recall being struck by the castle-on-a-cloud image on its cover). I turned down the offer simply out of fear that I might misplace the only copy that Jimmy had, back in the days before Amazon and eBay made it much easier than it was then to locate or replace out-of-print items.

So, until hearing "Fountains" and "Lady of the Lake" here on SA a few months back, I had no idea what I was missing, and no idea of the quality and importance of what Jimmy had once been a part of. Now I fully understand why, over ten years later, Starcastle and his time as its keyboardist were still such important elements of Jimmy's life! Jimmy and his girlfriend Kismet left San Francisco some months or at most a year after I became friends with them, and I spoke to them only once after that...I hope life has been kind to them, and I hope we all cross paths again someday.

Jimmy, sadly, doesn't appear on any Starcastle albums, although there is some YouTube documentation of the iteration of Starcastle of which he was a part ( see http://www.markmcgee.com/starcastle.html ). And happily, two members from that version of Starcastle, Scott McKenzie and Mark McGee, do appear on three tracks each of the 2007 reunion release, SONG OF TIMES.

Meanwhile, Jeff, from the last few months of listening to Starcastle, I totally relate to your description of their music as a "musical comfort zone." I find their music consistently comforting and uplifting--emotionally powerful, but in a different way from music that is edgy and boundary-pushing.

Btw it is *possible* that I too smoked perhaps a *little bit* of weed back in the late 70s, and it has occurred to me that if I still permitted myself such indulgences, I'd definitely want to combine them with listening to a little Starcastle...

Like Gandhi, we were born again!  The solos, especially Fish Out of Water, kept us going, but it was not quite the same. Thus the Starcastle timing for us.

Keep in mind, there was no internet back then, so the gossip trail was
not as open. Maybe a week prior to release, we heard it was happening. Huge excitement for us and the album was not a letdown at all!.

My take is that GFTO is arguably one of Yes' Top 5 albums. And, just as arguably, Awaken could be considered their "truest" Yes song of all time. Jon is on record (pun intended) as saying it is his favorite Yes song of all time and represents everything that a Yes song should be). That being said, I still to this day get chills during the "Four Masters" -- an emotionally exhausting, knee-buckling passage of music within an awesome piece of music. I was at the Chicago '79 show that is off The Word is Live and that Dee plays. Hearing that live and seeing the triple neck bass is something I will remember forever. Branded inside my soul, if you will.

By the way, and off topic, if you have never heard Yes acoustically breaking down Awaken on their XM acoustic set, you are missing something special. Anyone wanting a copy, just PM me. It's truly special. In fact, I burned a copy for a buddy at a 2003 Yes show in Milwaukee and I could never find him, so I gave it to Rick after the show for his ride to Minneapolis. He said, "thanks, mate, had not heard it yet",  Maybe Dee can play his copy for us in lieu of Eno's Music for Assisted Suicides one day...

Anyway, GFTO was very well-received and got great reviews in the states. Wondrous Stories got air play as a single and the album was very Fragile-like, what with the song formats.  Still cannot figure out whatever the f**k they are saying at the end of Parallels, though.  LOL

And I actually liked Tormato. My wife and I renewed our vows 15 years or so ago and used Onward as the processional; love the happiness in Future Times/Rejoice, the fuzzy bass work in Silent Wings and even Circus of Heaven (play it in headphones; zone in on the background vocals - so Yes!) That being said, as a whole, it is one of my least favorite Yes albums, still better than Union though. Would not say I was disappointed in it, necessarily, just that it is not as righteous as GFTO.

Disappointed is waiting for September 1980 Yes tickets in a snowstorm in March (we did get first row), and have Jon and Rick leaving the band in June.  But that's for another day.

Dan_Joy, it's been a pleasure reminiscing.   

Jeff (from Illinois)

jabyes wrote on 27^th Aug, 2008 at 3:07am:


FISH OUT OF WATER (Chris Squire) was a favorite of mine, actually...I'm looking forward to having it again, this time on CD.

And just lately, I've acquired BEGINNINGS (Steve Howe), and I'm really enjoying it (not in the league of FISH, though).

jabyes wrote on 27^th Aug, 2008 at 4:35am:


Very true and especially well put, Jabyes!
And thanks for chiming in on this thread!

Moi aussi!Superb storys from Jeff!

Some more svp!

Very gratified to discover that others are enjoying this thread as much as I am!

fish_head wrote on 27^th Aug, 2008 at 8:53pm:


That's an easy one, f_h! The first album, which is just called STARCASTLE (see cover image below), and the second album, which is called FOUNTAINS OF LIGHT.

Last year's SONG OF TIMES is really growing on me as well, even though it didn't grab me much on the first one or two listens--I've given it three spins, all the way through, today alone! Lots of richness and depth...but very much an entity unto itself, a different beast from the 70s Starcastle material, although you can definitely hear the connections.

Thank you for this information Dan!

Maybe I did not make a deep analysis of the vocals like you did Dan...

But there where something that I did not appreciate in both bands and I've put it on the vocals. But maybe it's something else. I don't know maybe it's to much. But I don't know.. I've heard people often say things like YES is to much and I love YES.... But maybe just a question of getting used to it and enjoying it after a couple of listen!

Max

ino_100 wrote on 29^th Aug, 2008 at 4:20pm:


Same thing with Rush... The first listen, I though the voice was very irritating, but the musicianship was amazing. So I gave Geddy Lee a chance and now I don't mind him much.

I think its just a question to getting used to it! It's like when the Radiohead album "Kid A" came out. It was different from what we where used to and it was an experimental album. I wasn't sure what to think after the first listen so I've listenned to it another time the next day. I can say that it was maybe after 2 weeks and 10 listens that I really enjoyed the album in its entirety.

Max

Where's bostonba63? Previous posts have led me to believe he'd have some enlightening perspectives on the music of Starcastle...