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<<Starcastle was really promising for a bit - Yes was on a kind of hiatus I think, between "Relayer" and "Going for the One", >> More like a working holiday. After touring Relayer, Yes took a break for about 6 months or so, during which each band member (Steve Howe, Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Alan White, and Patrick Moraz, for those who had trouble keeping score) recorded a solo album. The band then went out on tour in 76, with a huge stage set designed by Roger and Martin Dean, with the intention of performing material from the solo albums, along with certain other, older Yessongs. About a week into the tour, they decided to drop the solo material, and the show reverted to a sort of "Best of Yes up until now" type of setlist. The stage set was one of the most spetacular ever used by any band. This was also one of the first live shows to use lasers (The Who, Blue Öyster Cult and a few others started using them about the same time). Anyway, after the tour, they went to Switzerland, to start work on what would become Going For The One. So there really wasn't much of a hiatus, apart from while they were making the solo albums. <<the NY press at the time implied that Starcastle was the "next Yes". Their show was indeed impressive, but of course they didn't have that great Roger Dean stage setup... and I suspect the members of Strawbs, Gentle Giant and so forth probably had a good laugh at the idea.>> I met Starcastle's bassist last year at NEARfest 2001. They had a table setup as they were selling their discs, and also a video the bassist has put out. I overheard him talking about how Chris Squire got his whole sound from copying John Entwistle, so I joined in the conversation. I told him about how i got interested in Starcastle, because a couple people told me they sounded EXACTLY like Yes (and in fact, at least their first album, DOES sound like Yes). He goes "Oh, they weren't listening very closely then, we sounded a bit like Yes because we had the same influences as Yes". I didn't think to tell him that a friend mine told me that when he saw Starcastle back in the 70's, they not only sounded like Yes, they even DRESSED like Yes, right down the fur covered pirate boots that Squire used to wear back then. Would have been interesting to say what his response to that would have been. Starcastle were supposed to play at Progday in Chapel Hill, NC this coming weekend, but they had trouble finding a vocalist. They've gotten back together, but I guess their original singer has decided the band's music would clash with his present religious beliefs, and things didn't work out as planned with the guy they got as his replacement, so they had to cancel out. ===== May you never thirst! The Scuba Diver Presently Known As Chris "What do you get when you give a yo-yo to a flock of flamingos?"-James Earl Jones __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes http://finance.yahoo.com