Mike Mettler

Forgive the imagery, but Jon Anderson is like the Energizer bunny of progressive music—he just keeps on going and going. The legendary founding Yes vocalist/lyricist forges ever onward like a man perpetually possessed by his muse, whether he's adding to his own solo canon or collaborating on shared-name releases with the likes of violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, Flower Kings guitarist/vocalist Roine Stolt, or his former fellow Yesmates in the short-lived but quite well-loved musically acrobatic acronym known alternately as ARW, or YES Featuring Jon Anderson - Trevor Rabin - Rick Wakeman.

"I miss going to concerts."

It's a common refrain these days. Perhaps you've even said it yourself out loud on occasion to no one in particular but yourself, and/or to whomever you're jointly commiserating and quarantining with, and/or have typed it out as a comment-cum-lament underneath one of those incessant social media "memories" reminders that really only serve to bum you out about what you're missing—not to mention what you most decidedly won't be able to replicate in a comparable fashion in the near future.

In a galaxy far, far away—well, to be more precise, it was actually in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh—I received a home-made C-60 compact cassette for my 11th birthday in October 1978. My audiophile grandfather had dubbed Charles Gerhardt conducting the National Philharmonic Orchestra's performance of music culled from composer John Williams' original scores for Star Wars on Side 1 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Side 2.

Welcome back my friends, to the sheltering that never ends! Well, I suppose that assessment technically depends on just how good your home state has been in adhering to our respective pandemic guidelines, but I digress. Regardless of whether you're following a strict lockdown or beginning to safely venture out and about (albeit while wearing a mask, please!), we can all still agree there's nothing quite like spending some quality screen time with top-shelf streaming content, no matter what's going on outside as summer gets into full swing.