Spider Robinson

For my money, this was Yes’s last great album. Everything released after this disappointed me…though not quite enough to keep me from buying them.

A very well-researched and -written account of one of the most implausible true stories in the history of monkeys, a story of magnificent, moronic obsession that succeeded beyond its victim’s wildest dreams, at the cost of everything he had. In the year I was born, an Australian named Ben Carlin took a notion to drive completely around the world, oceans and all, in a jeep. An *amphibious* Jeep, built only in the last year of WWII and designed strictly for crossing streams or getting through swamps, which it was very bad at. Carlin was *so* confident, he persuaded a woman to marry him and accept the voyage as their honeymoon. What followed was endless months of sitting side by side in an enclosed jeep, sharing a bucket. The name he gave his craft, lifted from a deodorant ad, sounds like courageous bravado. It was wild delusion. Half was nowhere near the correct fraction, which would have required at least four zeroes after a decimal point. I will never forget this book or its excellent author, James Nestor, who rescued an astonishing story just before it could vanish into unread history. I’m also grateful to my brother James, who gifted me with it.

This is as good as music gets. The cast is stellar, the arrangements stunning, the performances inspired, and the recording impeccable. Don’t let it get away.

This is every bit as good as Mr Crow’s wonderful books about jazz, both the one with the same title as this album, and his classic JAZZ ANECDOTES—and that’s some of my highest praise. He is what the doctor ordered and why the preacher danced. Jump on.