Prog Walk – Going For The One To Toyama Park

My sleeping patterns have been odd lately, I often find myself crashing to bed at the relatively early time of 11:30 and waking up a quarter after five, wide alert and ready to start the day. It’s equal parts infuriating and refreshing. I wish I could sleep more, but getting an early start to the day can occasionally be great, especially during the blazing days of a Tokyo summer. Leaving the house after 10am can feel like an exercise in masochism, as temperatures have been well into the 90s almost every day for the past few weeks. So I’ve been taking advantage of my newfound early bird tendencies and trekking out around 6am for a prolonged early morning constitutional, always with musical accompaniment of course.

My intended soundtrack for the morning journey was to be Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans. I’ve been on a Yes kick as of late, but I hadn’t revisited that album in well over a year. I thought I’d give it another chance. But it seemed that I only put the bonus tracks of the recent reissue on my iPod and not the album proper, so instead I opted for Going For The One, another album in Yes’s vast discography that I hadn’t listened to for a while.

Going For The One was released in1977, four years and two albums removed from Topographic Oceans, a divisive record for fans, critics and even the band itself, as it created splits within the group that caused keyboardist Rick Wakeman to quit after the album’s tour. He returned on Going For The One, an album that couldn’t be more different than the one that caused him to take off. Unlike the side-length multi-part movements that comprised all of Topographic Oceans, Going For The One focuses almost entirely on shorter, more accessible pieces.

The album opens with the title track, and as I leave my apartment and press play on my iPod, my ears are assaulted with an intensely trite rockabilly guitar riff and I wonder for a second if I chose the wrong album until I hear Jon Anderson’s ultra-falsetto. That opener always throws me for a loop.

As the song settles down into more familiar Yes territory (needlessly complex time signatures, wonderfully ornate keyboards by Wakeman), I walk past a nearby hospital that seems deserted. My neighborhood is just two stations removed from Shinjuku Station, the busiest mass transit hub in the world, yet right now the city looks like a ghost town. I’m reminded once more that Tokyo is a city that definitely sleeps, and it tends to sleep in. It’s 6:30 and not a coffee shop, bakery or grocery store is open yet. My only company on the streets are fellow morning joggers/walkers and the occasional dreary-eyed salaryman heading off for an early day at the office. When I see one decked out in a full suit-and-tie I scoff to myself and imagine just how drenched in sweat they’ll be by midday.

As track two, “Turn Of The Century,” begins, I begin to realize that this might not have been the best album to listen to for a morning stroll. “Turn Of The Century” is a largely acoustic number, and a long one at that, clocking in just shy of eight minutes. It also kind of meanders about with no chorus or hooks. Sure, it serves as a proper musical backdrop to the sleepy morning setting I see all around me, but it’s not helping my steps-per-minute.

“Parallels” kicks in just in time and gives me a boost as I head towards my goal for this morning walk: Toyama Park. As the blast of guitar wankery at the tail end of “Parallels” comes to a close, I turn into the park, enveloped in a beautiful canopy of trees, and a cacophony of cicadas so loud that they nearly drown out the ballad “Wonderous Stories.” That’s probably for the best though, as that song is atrocious. I know that both the band and critics enjoy the tune, but it’s never clicked with me. Saccharine tripe if you ask me. 

The park, like the rest of Tokyo, is mostly silent and empty still. I don’t even see many joggers or walkers, just businessmen leaving from the nearby apartments. The last time I was here I saw what seemed like countless tiny lizards scattering across the paths, but I guess they’re sleeping in today, or hiding from the crows that are out in abundance. I head deeper into the park while “Awaken,” the album’s finale, begins to play. Unlike most of Going For The One, “Awaken” is typical epic-length Yes, coming in at about 15 minutes. It’s more my speed, both musically and in terms of my intended step pace, a fast number with a real sense of urgency to it.

It serves me well as I make my way up Mount Hakone, a miniature “mountain” located in the middle of the park that peaks at about 40 meters. It’s a good early morning challenge, not to demanding but still requires a bit of work to travail the uneven, jagged steps to the top. I make my way to the peak mid-Wakeman solo and feel newly invigorated.  The more sedate second half serves as a nice comedown as I gingerly navigate the precarious stairs back down the hill and to the park. I come to a strange stage/platform. I often go past it on my walks and wonder what its intended purpose is. I know it’s often used as a place for late-night drinking, based on how often I see beer bottles strewn about it.

The bonus tracks to the album start, beginning with “Montreux’s Theme” as I walk around a man-made river that is currently disabled. I’ve never seen it turned on, but I’m rarely here in the afternoon, perhaps it’s only on then. “Montreux’s Theme” is a calm, tranquil piece that has almost a pastoral quality, fits very well with my surroundings save for the aforementioned beer bottles and generous amounts of dead and dying cicadas that seem to surround me.

Most of the remaining bonus tracks to the album are rehearsals and demos, and I’m not in the mood for that. I go back one album in the Yes discography and put on Relayer. Their follow-up to Topographic Oceans, it still focuses on longform pieces, but does scale it back a bit, opting for one side-length track followed by two (relatively) shorter numbers on the second side. Its manic energy serves me well as I head back home. The heat, while minor compared to what the city was subjected to earlier in the week, is starting to kick up and get to me. And the rather languid conclusion to Going For The One didn’t do much to help me either.

While Going For The One was seen as a return to more “accessible” music and a return to form for the band when it was first released, for me it’s the least enjoyable of the “classic” era of Yes albums, save for the much-maligned Tormato. I still think it’s a solid record overall, but give me bombastic overblown prog epics over radio-friendly 70s rock-ballads any day. I did choose the right place to play it though. It’s mostly a quiet record. If I had opted to play a Relayer track like “The Gates Of Delirium” while walking up the Mount Hakone I probably would’ve killed myself. Going For The One would be a suitable soundtrack for a hike. Relayer might best fit a journey through midday Shibuya. I might try that once this heat dies down.