'Yes Day' Celeberated In Philadelphia

08/08/2002 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Brett Anderson

(8/8/02, 4 p.m. ET) -- Mayor John Street of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has declared Thursday (August 8) as "Yes Day" in the city. The Yes bandmembers were on hand when the proclamation was read at City Hall on Wednesday (August 7), and each received a miniature replica of the Liberty Bell.

Yes is being honored for having sold out more shows than any other act in Philadelphia history, and bassist Chris Squire told LAUNCH that there's one particular show that stands out in his mind. "I suppose the most memorable show we did there was in '76, when they had the 200-year Independence Day celebration, and we, we played on that day in the JFK Stadium, which has since been pulled down, actually, but I believe it was the largest-ever actually enclosed gig that there ever was. We had a little help from Peter Frampton, who was doing very well at the time, to fill it out. But yeah, we...There was 130,000 people there."

Yes--on tour in support of its new boxed set, In A Word: Yes (1969-), as well as last year's Magnification album--plays Thursday at the Tweeter Center in Camden, New Jersey.

-- Bruce Simon, New York

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