Music Monday (Union, Side 1)

So now we have reached the point in 1990 where both ABWH and Yes are starting to compose and record material for a their next albums (the ABWH demos were covered here). So enter the record executives who wanted to resurrect the Yes brand name. Jon Anderson and Chris Squire came up with the idea of merging together both projects into one album. Goodbye ABWH II. We hardly knew ya.

What resulted was an album called "Union" (a lot of thought went into that huh?). At least it had a Roger Dean cover:

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The Music

1) I Would Have Waited Forever - Great song here. You can tell which songs came from the ABWH camp and this is one of them.

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2) Shock to the System - Maybe my favorite song on the album and  a powerful one at that too. I see this as the "Fist of Fire" of the album.

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3) Masquerade - Acoustic guitar piece by Steve Howe. Beautiful. Nominated for a Grammy.

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4) Lift Me Up - Yes's last #1 single to date. The video shows all eight (!) members including both drummers. It is a song about homelessness, in Trevor Rabin's own words: 

Lyrically, the verse was a little dark, we tried to make it somewhat vague as to what it was about, but one of the pictures is that it's a homeless person. 'Look around, I've got nowhere to stay... you look me up, you look me down' the guy who goes into the restaurant to use the bathroom and they look at him, 'No you can't come in here.' And he just looks to the sky and says, 'Lift me up and turn me over,' you know, help me out.

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5) Without Hope You Cannot Start the Day - This is a haunting song for me, especially the intro. After my breakup, all I could think was "In between this moving out to save your soul it came way, and took it out; Oh why?"

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6) Saving My Heart - The second single released from the album which peaked at #9. This is obviously a Trevor song and is very meh to me.

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