ABWH - Starship Trooper (Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA 1989)

Visit Bill’s online store for exclusive and signed items: https://www.shorturl.at/adnpq This week’s is a timely video, with the imminent re-release of ABWH’s ‘An Evening of Yes Music Plus’ 2CD/2DVD remastered box set in early 2025. I’ve already written too much on this channel about ABWH, and the newcomer here may wish to google ‘An Evening of Yes Music Plus’, or the group ‘Yes’, to find out who we are, or were, or may have been! Please do check out my descriptions on the other ABWH tracks you’ll find here on this channel. Meanwhile, listening to this track has stirred some thoughts. We don’t make music like this any more. I think that’s probably a good thing, not because there was anything lacking when this stuff was written way back when, but because all things evolve, and music must evolve to be relevant. At least one of ABWH has gone 80 years old now, and from what I hear, is performing well and evolving nicely. I feel empathy with Jon ‘J.A’ Anderson, the octogenarian singer on this video. We both had time-out, away from the concert stage, for a long stretch. His was occasioned by an illness which led to a parting of the ways with the band he formed, loved and sustained. Mine was a voluntary departure from another area of the music scene; exhausted, burned out, and, in my head, unlikely to play again. But after 13 years my batteries unexpectedly re-charged themselves, almost against my will, and no-one was more surprised than I to find myself back behind a drum kit in someone else’s band - the Pete Roth Trio - and under very different circumstances. It seems to me that J.A. also could no longer resist the idea of sitting on the sidelines, and had to be up there with the best, most willing compatriots he could find. I could no longer resist the violent urge to find some sticks and, like J.A., start again. It’s unwise to assume that everyone knows what you’re talking about, especially in that twilight world with a silly name – retirement. It’s a word I’ve always found particularly meaningless, based on a false dichotomy between two apparent opposites, work and play. When the pensions industry was growing, a clear division existed between the two. You had ‘work’, assumed to range from unpleasant to insufferable. On retirement day, that was to be surrendered for a life of ‘play’ on the golf course, ranging from pleasant to tons of fun, assuming you had health and money. The distinction between work (unpleasant) and ‘not work’ (very pleasant) is not at all sharp. Many of us are fortunate enough to spend our days navigating between activities that generate sufficient income. The activities that generate sufficient income, like performing Starship Trooper, may in fact be very pleasant, even life-affirming. Conversely, life on the golf course as a retired silver-head can be, I’m told, extremely tedious. Musicians seldom participated in this. They were held to be so enamoured of their ‘work’ that they would go on forever and keel over in a hotel room in El Paso. Moreover, should you be in a financial position to retire, you weren’t a musician, you were an 'entertainer' of some sort; deeply suspicious. I seemed to be that rare creature who wanted to surrender the stuff I found difficult - the travel, the business and the music-generation - but continue to make a contribution in a closely related field; in my case, by pushing words around as an academic author. Another drummer might have opened a teaching studio or a retail outlet, same difference. So Jon and I both have un-retired and look forward to many more years of music-making. Strangely, we share a more common purpose than some might think. #billbruford #kingcrimson #drummer #progressiverock #billbrufordsearthworks #jazz #progressiverockband #livemusic #abwh #jonanderson #stevehowe #electronicdrumkit