Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe - Brother Of Mine (1989)

Maybe the main problem for artists like ABWH in the late eighties was that the music business of the record labels then was more focused in having Hit Singles in the Radio and also videos to be played by MTV, and they demanded from artists commercial music done in the fads that then were created and promoted by these very commercially oriented people. As Bill Bruford said in interviews done in the early nineties, it seems that the music business then was led "more by accountants than by people who really loved music" (more or less as I rmember now). So…with this in mind, many Prog Rock bands from the sixties and seventies had to please these people to have recording contracts with them.
Even with all this, ABWH, being a project which was led mainly by Jon Anderson, being very good musicians, still could not deliver to the record label the "very commercial music" that they wanted. So, even if "Brother of Mine" is a very good Prog Rock song, and even with the edits done to it to make it a single to be played in the Radio and with a video to be played on MTV, as the record label wanted, it still sounds and looks very "artistic". The arrangements and playing in this song are very good to be edited out for a single release, which it does not sound bad…but I still prefer the original version of ten minutes in lenght. Anderson was tired of some of the YES`s music of the eighties which was very much dictated by outside forces (a record label, again), so he left YES in 1988 to make music which he liked more. So, he formed ABWH and they recorded a very good album. Unfortunately, the "market forces" also demanded from them "money making music", so in the end they had to reunite with YES to make the "Union" album for the same record label they signed as ABWH. YES`s "Union" album, in comparison to ABHW`s album, was almost a disaster, a marketing trick which did not satisfy several of the eight members of the band. Anyway, the "Union" tour was better than the "Union" album. I think, like Bruford said in another interview, that if ABWH could have been left free to record the style of music that they wanted to do without the usual pressures from major record companies they could have lasted as a band for more years and making very good music. Unfortunately they also had some problems between them as members of the band. The eighties musical fads and marketing plans were not good enviroments for a band with very good musicians like them.

Anderson still reflects some of his lack of satisfaction with the demands of record labels in the eighties in the lyrics of "Themes", the album version of this song which also was released in this single. A song which also was not commercially oriented, with some New Age music arrangements.

But the main reason to review this single is the addition of a non-album track titled "Vultures in the City". It is also a good song which maybe was not very similar to the other songs which were included in the ABWH album, so this maybe was the main reason to be left out of that album. It is also not very commercially oriented song with very good arrangements. Maybe it also worked as a "marketing hook" for fans to buy this single as this song was not released in their album.

by Guillermo, progarchives