Back Home - Me, that is

Hi everybody!
All of August not a single blog message was posted here. The reason was simple: I was traveling Denmark for some weeks - on a bike. A report will be posted soon at a different place on this site.
What did we miss in terms of Chuck Berry recordings? Nothing I know of. No new releases, no strange items found. So you did not miss anything.
Something you may have missed is Berry's performance at the U.S. TV show hosted by Jay Leno. You can view the segment on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVYh8i4_gh0. There's a discussion taking place at chuckberry.com about the quality of the performance with most forum writers highly praising Chuck. My view is a bit different:

Chuck's guitar 'playing' is next to inexistent. Whatever comes out of his guitar has nothing to do with the song - And I really LIKE the original recording! Also his singing misses all of the melody of the original. So just like Chuckie Boy I am disappointed when Chuck acts as a parody of himself such as in this show. Sorry!
Chuck created some of the nicest recordings of the rock music and authored a number of its greatest songs. But seeing him downplay these songs worse and worse over the last 40 years really hurts.
There's an old story about Chuck refusing to "dance" (playback) to his music in Dick Clark's Bandstand show. But seeing a performance like the one at Jay Leno's I wish he'd learned better.

In addition what you may have missed are the problems with Berry's last European tour where he missed some shows and the uncertainties about his upcoming European shows. I will not comment on those here as this site is dedicated to Berry's music - only! But I recommend you read some of the other Chuck Berry sites on the net before spending too much money on tickets.