Hey fans. Back from a ramble around New York state to watch my son's high school cross country team run in the state championships. An 800 mile round-trip drive for less than 18 minutes of running. Great to see all the various and varied regions of New York even at a frenetic pace. Frequent poster Larry was kind enough to send me some Chris Bell discs and they were a fine soundtrack for the ride. Thanks, Larry!

Hope everyone down in NYC is gearing up for tomorrow night's Big Star show. Please file reports! We fans on the other end of the state (memo to those who think New York state is a big city with some suburbs: go look at a map...it's actually mostly mountains and rural areas and Buffalo is over 400 miles away from the Big Apple) are wondering if Alex Chilton's Box Tops will perform Eddie Floyd's Stax chestnut Big Bird at their local appearance next week in a nod to Thanksgiving.

No need to hold off on your holiday shopping...the Big Star box set is now only $41.99 at Amazon. Just click on the link to the right and fill those stockings!

http://www.eastbayri.com/detail/132254.html

The above article addresses how bad most recordings sound today i.e. "the loudness wars." It's a short article and obviously the author can't touch on every great sounding record ever made (i.e. Radio City) but it makes a good point. Recordings used to be easier to listen to beyond the music. They certainly were more pleasing to the ears. I'm not sure I'd feel the same way about Radio City if it had been recorded using today's standards. Everything sounds loud, harsh, and brittle. No breathing room. Makes it hard to make it through half a disc. How would you discover September Gurls if your ears screamed "no mas!" before you could get that far into the disc?

http://artvoice.com/issues/v8n45/i_want_a_witness

Hot off the presses. Here's a link to a Big Star feature in Artvoice, Buffalo's arts weekly, written by Donny Kutzbach, local promoter and music fan extraordinaire. A huge Big Star fan. We have sometimes fantasized about a double bill of, say, Cheap Trick and Big Star. Something that would equal the 1974 Boston double bill of Big Star and Badfinger.

Been a big behind on the blog here due to some magazine assignments but today I received a CD dub of a cassette tape that Jim Dickinson put together in the mid-80s of a Chris Bell "album" (comprised of material that ended up on the Ryko release). Will delve more into this and report back. Not sure about whether he mixed or just sequenced so some of you might be able to weigh in on this. But I'll report back with the track list. Not sure how much Jim was involved in this or whether he was just passing along something that was passed along to him.

Got my tickets to see Alex Chilton's Box Tops on November 27th. You Keep Tightening Up On Me probably isn't on the set list but that track (the band's last single) was one of their best. Check it out.