so anyway.....

.....I'm finally back, all rested, refreshed, and ready to roll.

Thanks for all those cards and letters, I'll try to get to some of the requests that have been piling up before too long.

So what happened? I guess if one was trying to think up ways for a music-oriented blog to lose big chunks of its readership, having a five-month period with a lead post that links to National Review Online might be a good idea, but the real story is just that I used a hard-drive crash as an excuse to get away from it all for a while.

Back in September, I had some computer trouble and stopped blogging. When I finally got around to doing something about it, I ended up having some very bad experiences with a popular computer-repair company that shall remain nameless. Sort of like the old "Niagara Falls" routine, the very mention of their name is enough to give me some serious conniptions! ("Slowwwww-ly I turned.....")

After waiting FOUR WEEKS for a diagnostic, it turned out my hard-drive was damaged, and A FEW WEEKS LATER when the computer was back up and running I was reluctant to get right back into blogging, and I've spent the past several weeks just catching up on various stuff around the 'net. Particularly the amazing Purple Chick Beatles' Deluxe series. Looks like they're working on putting together *all* the available Beatles recordings. With their 10-disc Complete BBC set, their 83-disc A/B Road set, and the studio recordings series, they're up to about 150 (yes 150!) Beatles CDs. All the stereo, mono, alt mixes, outtakes, sessions tapes, etc. And they've just started to put together the live recordings, with a 2-disc Star Club Deluxe set.

Here's a link to tracklistings and artwork for what they have so far:

http://x3mkungen.mine.nu/wogev/beatles/pc/

I was able to get most of what I needed from a few fantastic blogs:

http://www.yourmothershouldknow03.blogspot.com/

http://www.octaner.blogspot.com/

http://losslessbeatles.blogspot.com/

Of course I don't know if the links are all still good, but poke around and give 'em a try. What a wonderful Beatle-filled world we have here!

So anyway, its good to be back, and thanks for being here. Stick around, I've got plenty of stuff to post, including some of the requests I've been receiving.

See you soon!