Updated: Wednesday, 27 June 2001 AD

The Faithful Axe Challenge is proud to support Voyager CDLink! Windows devotees now have the opportunity to hear the exact riffs at the exact times without downloading any lengthy audio.

If you've listened to Mike Keneally's wondrous solo effort, Boil That Dust Speck (and who hasn't?) you are no doubt familiar with track number twenty-one: Faithful Axe. If you are familiar with the music of Yes then you will also recognize that this is an "affectionate tribute" to said band, as Mike himself writes in his always-insightful liner notes.

Perhaps, while listening to this track, you have asked yourself "Gosh, I wonder what songs Mike is quoting from?" or "Is that Jon Anderson I hear?" or even "Is that a Rickenbacker bass?" For now, we'll concentrate on the first question which, effectively, is "What the hell is going on here?"

Hell, that's half the fun, sport! If you don't have your very own Boil That Dust Speck then get one pronto! Then rush back here with all speed and read on.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to see how many Yes references you can identify in Faithful Axe. There are, at last count, forty-six such references. For extra credit, identify which track/album each reference is from, and the approximate time where the reference may be heard. Yes aficionados will especially relish this task (or dread it, depending on your knowledge of Yes material and overall level of patience).

Ready? Headphones only, please.

ATTENTION! ATTENCIÓN! ADVERTENCIA! AVERTISSEMENT! ARÊTÉ! AVVERTENZA! ACHTUNG! The following sections contain ALL THE ANSWERS to The Faithful Axe Challenge. Proceed with caution if you intend to play along at home. Consider inviting an unwitting friend over to check this page for you and keep score. (Wow! Can you think of anything more riveting than this?)

To start off, a few clues. Take it easy, I won't give everything away just yet (certainly not the guitar parts -- that's in the next section). Just some of the framework to get you started. No fair peeking if you're playing along at home!

Gadzooks! The Faithful Axe Challenge supports Voyager CDLink! The CDLink player is available for Windows platforms. If you have CDLink software installed, select anything in the following table to hear the exact excerpt being described. You must also have Boil That Dust Speck in your CD-ROM drive to take advantage of this way-cool feature.

Here is where we give everything away. All guitar quotes are numbered. L/C/R == Left / Center / Right Channel. For example, guitar riff #5 occurs in Faithful Axe at 0:10, it can be heard in both channels, and the original riff can be found in Yours Is No Disgrace at 4:46.

Hail Eris! The Faithful Axe Challenge supports Voyager CDLink! The CDLink player is available for Windows platforms. If you have CDLink software installed, select any timestamp to hear the exact riff. You must also have Boil That Dust Speck in your CD-ROM drive to take advantage of this way-cool feature.

Jeepers! The Faithful Axe Challenge supports Voyager CDLink! The CDLink player is available for Windows platforms. If you have CDLink software installed, select the CDLink logo anywhere in this treatise to hear the exact excerpt being described. You must also have Boil That Dust Speck in your CD-ROM drive to take advantage of this way-cool feature.

This has to be the biggest example of hubris I can think of. A play-by-play account of how I came to this point. Hey, it's a good creative writing exercise at any rate and ... oh, you don't really want to know, do you? Gluttons for punishment, all of you.

Off we go ... (wait, that's Genesis):

While preparing for a flight to San Jose, CA in February 1996, I packed away the requisite "random CDs". While I enjoy listening to music almost any time (even at 30,000+ feet above-ground), I do so because of my predisposition to flying. That is to say, I am predisposed to disliking it. Listening to music keeps me "well occupied" at such high altitudes.

I especially like picking a composition/performance apart and putting it back together -- my somewhat twisted form of music appreciation. To be sure, I avoid doing this while listening to "Star's End" or "Hearts of Space" on NPR, but I digress.

It started out with my Swedish Prog Rock Fix (tm) -- some of the new Anekdoten CD, followed by a few tracks from Tori Amos' latest, a little Carl Nielsen, and then Boil That Dust Speck. I was already familiar with track 21, and with turbulence abounding I decided to torture myself further. The self-inflicted challenge: Identify every guitar quote in "Faithful Axe."

I had somewhat of an advantage here, at least I felt I did, in that I was very familiar with Yes' studio material thanks to years of "intense" study. So, from my POV, I figured it would prove to be a nice, brain-intensive, harmless diversion for the remaining four hours.

Over the next four hours, diversion yielded to obsession.

The more I listened to "Faithful Axe" the more evident Mike's musicianship became. Not like I needed any more proof. I have long since admired his contributions to FZ recordings and the integrity of his solo projects. Nevertheless, he did a more-than-credible job in crafting this track. While one could argue that some of the guitar quotes are not 100% spot-on (irrelevant in my opinion), the results are impressive. Now when I hear it I don't laugh so much as beam. It really is the "affectionate tribute."

Right, enough gushing.

During this initial odyssey I didn't even know Mike had an e-mail address, much less a web page, and I had no intention of informing him of my efforts. By the time I returned home I had confidently identified nearly thirty-three of the forty-one guitar quotes. The rest certainly sounded familiar, but they were mighty difficult to place. Keep in mind that I was purposely keeping away from the Yes CDs -- I wanted to go on memory alone. Tricky.

A week later I learned that my remaining wisdom teeth had to be removed. Why I only had one tooth out back in 1991 was beyond me, but there you are. At home, drugged-up on copious amounts of penicillin and other elixirs, I briefly forgot about "Axe" and turned to track six: "Top Of Stove Melting." I read the liner notes for the n-th time, and I got to thinking:

"Mystery lyrics? Bagels? That's right, I read this when I got the CD. Well, someone must've figured this out by now. Oh, I'll try, just for fun. Not like I'm doing much more around the house. Lessee here: <play ... click ... scribble ... replay ... click ... scribble ... replay ... click ... scribble>. Hey, this might be it. How soon can I mail this out? Maybe he has a web page: <AltaVista ... click> Zoinks! He even has e-mail ... at A-O-Hell. Eh. It'll have to do. Say ... I wonder if Mike would want to keep score for my Acquired Axe Affliction? Worth a shot -- I'll take care of both at once."

So off goes the e-mail at 11:31pm on 2/8/96, which described everything in gory detail (the e-mail was entitled "Son of Walden"). I continued on my road to recovery.

Wow, this is becoming one long diatribe. Bryan Beller, my friend, it looks like you have company in the "Able to Stun Several Oxen" department.

It didn't take very long to receive a reply from the maestro himself -- just over twelve hours. Now, as for what happened with the mystery lyrics, I went on to win the bagels (go figure). As for Faithful Axe, I had set the ground rule that I would be allowed only three attempts at scoring a complete list of guitar quotes. In addition, I asked Mike not to tell me which ones I got correct, only the number of correct guesses.

• 2/8/96: 33 out of 42 ("An aesthetically pleasing numeral, at the very least." observed Mike. Why, yes ... especially if you like Rolling Rock.)

For Attempt #1, everything was guessed by rote. The rest proved to be increasingly difficult, and I started to play random Yes studio recordings to help jog my memory.

Mike scored me at 33 out of 42 as I was including the percussion quote from "The Fish" in my numbered list. Truth be told, I was actually missing ten out of 41. The mystery ten were 1, 3, 4, 11, 14, 16, 29, 34, 35 and 38.

If you thought I was obsessed up to this point, it got worse. By now I had dubbed the entire track onto my workstation, spliced up the mystery ten and began playing them over and over again, one by one, 'till they were firmly etched in my mind. Upon the slightest hunch, I'd find the suspect Yes song and play it, looking for the quote. For the most part, this strategy worked.

All of this in my infinite spare time, mind you. (I swear, I have a life. Honest!). ANYHOW ... "there was nothing else to do -- it was Somerset County, New Jersey ..." ahem.

• 2/18/96: 37.5 out of 41 (I couldn't decide if guitar quote #1 was from Awaken or The Gates of Delirium. Mike judiciously awarded one-half point for my indecision.)

Ack! The torture. From my perspective, I thought I knew which ones I had correct (although Mike proved otherwise). Now I had moved "The Fish" out of the guitar list, making the total number of guitar quotes to guess 41. Mike offered to tell me which ones I had wrong, and I accepted. Now all that was left was to guess 1, 4, 16 and 35. At this point, Mike advised me thusly: "As with 1, there (is) always the possibility that some of these licks appear in different songs, but I must insist that you read my mind."

Great, so now I get to read minds cross-country. One more clue from Mike before I proceed: None of the remaining riffs are from live recordings or b-sides. Just as well.

These were the toughest four of all. One-by-one, here was the deduction path (hang on tight, folks):

• #1 - The Gates of Delirium: For the longest time I was thinking this was from Awaken. A close listen reveals triplets, which is more like what is heard in The Gates of Delirium. Plus, the riff in Awaken starts on a different note each time through. Subtle but important. Mike was true to the original riff!
  
  
• #4 - Yours Is No Disgrace: I was foiled by my sense of pitch on this one. I convinced myself that this couldn't possibly be Yours Is No Disgrace, no matter how much it might fit, because it was slower and in a different key. Or was it? What if it was recorded at a faster tape speed? That is, if I sped up this riff, would the tempo and key be correct? It may be, but that doesn't prove it's the correct answer. Fortunately, it turns out that my sense of pitch was on vacation when I correctly guessed riff #38 , also in the same key and from Yours Is No Disgrace (the same recording, no doubt). Guilt by association!
  
  
• #16 - Perpetual Change: Now this one was the toughest, and the reason was the cymbal crash . It hits on the 'E', such that I was convinced it was the downbeat at the start of the measure of what Mike was quoting. Not true. Give it a listen, then compare it to the original and you'll discover it starts mid-measure. Nasty, isn't it?
  
  
• #35 - Starship Trooper: The only wild guess in the whole list. Somehow, some way, I managed to trace this riff to the first guitar you hear in the Würm section of Starship Trooper. A cursory listen today still wouldn't convince me 100%. As far as I'm concerned, it was pure chance that I even deduced this one.

• 3/8/96: all 41 ("More bagels for you!" -- MK)

Wonders never cease.