It came out in 1989 but I didn’t get it until a few years later.

My cousin Mega actually purchased it, but he didn’t like it and he gave it to me, without even wanting a trade back. Which was strange because one thing Mega was good at, it was making trades for albums he didn’t like and making the person he was trading with part with an album they loved. Basically Mega would have been a good negotiator in the NBA draft.

“I will give you these 5 CD’s for that ONE CD” was his motto.

Anyway, I remember playing this CD a few times and I just put it away.

Why?

Circa 1991/92 wasn’t really the time for Jon Anderson vocals for me and Steve Howe’s guitar playing didn’t really do anything for me, nor make me want to learn any song on the album.

So playing it again today was like putting on an album I had never heard because I seriously couldn’t recall how any song went.

“Fist Of Fire” has a lot of Wakeman synth riffs and leads in it, which gets me thinking that they might come across as pretty cool guitar riffs.

“The Big Dream” (which is a sub song in the song “Brother Of Mine”) has a pretty cool vocal melody when Anderson sings, “In the big dream, we are heroes, we are dreamers.”

But by the end of the CD, I could see why Mega wanted to trade it. And I still can’t recall how any song goes.

And this brings me back to the concept of a sale equals a fan.

In this case, Mega purchased it, heard it once, didn’t like it, gave it to me, who heard it a few times, put it away for 25 plus years, heard it again today and I will probably never listen to it again.