Fragile play Yes quite well

I never had the opportunity to see Yes play live, for some reason they always missed Weymouth Pavilion when touring, so seeing a renowned tribute band seemed like a good idea. And it was.


The bad news first. The venue was the Boom Boom Club which is a) in Sutton and b) pretty awful acoustically and visually. The light show was a couple of lights shining on the low ceiling.

The good news is that Fragile play Yes songs and they play them really quite well.

As their name suggests, their set veers towards Yes' early years and we were treated to, for example, Heart of the Sunrise, Perpetual Change, Close to the Edge, Starship Troopers and Yours is no Disgrace.

But we also got a couple of songs from Yes' most approachable album, Going for the One and the later hit single Owner of a Lonely Heart. I was also delighted to hear Gate of Delirium from Relayer.

Fragile play close homage to Yes without trying to be a carbon-copy, which is just as well as some aspects of Yes' music are hard to simulate. So, for example, we got a reduced Gates of Delirium and an extended Starship Troopers.

Yes fans will have done the maths on the songs and worked out that it was a long set, actually it was something over 140 minutes. How much over is hard to say as we managed to arrive late and Fragile had started to play when we got there. Being late also meant that we had to stand at the back, which to be completely honest, I much preferred to sitting in one of the plastic chairs.

If you like Yes, give Fragile a try next time they are in your area. You won't regret it.