A new 4 CD box set from Tom Rapp's Reprise years is due March 25th. Titled Jewels Were The Stars, after a line from "Rocket Man", it will contain the albums These Things Too, The Use of Ashes, City of Gold and Beautiful Lies You Could Live In. Sadly, Reprise would not allow the inclusion of any "extra tracks". I don't know why. And the Familiar Songs album is not included either, for the same reason.

An outtakes/rarities/etc. box may come out in the future, but for now, here's a big "Shut Up" to those of us who have been clamoring for a CD release of these psychedelic folk classics for the last twenty years. Newbies will find Constructive Melancholy a much more cost-effective introduction to this body of work.

Oh, and Jeffrey Alexander's latest label, Secret Eye, is preparing a second Tom Rapp / Pearls Before Swine "tribute" album, including a cover by Thurston Moore of the Vietnam War era "Fourth Day of July". (A sequel to the Magic Eye LP/CD For The Dead In Space...)

UPDATE: As expected with a Pearls Before Swine reissue, it's been delayed and is now due to be released on April 1, 2003. On the plus side, Amazon has knocked 10% off the price (now $53.99) and offers free shipping for orders exceeding fifty bucks.