Even as the first sounds of new wave and punk rock were being heard in New York City in the mid-`70s, the first stirrings of indie-rock and guitar pop were occurring in the unlikely locale of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Chris Stamey, Will Rigby and Mitch Easter were recording arguably the first low-fi records ever in their band the Sneakers. Though heard by few, the reverberations from these recordings spread everywhere from New York - where Stamey and Rigby were to form the dB"s - to Athens, Georgia, where a band named R.E.M. hooked up with Easter to record their first two albums - to just about every college radio station in the land during the `80s. Now, Stamey and Easter have gone back into the studio to produce the definitive look at this seminal power pop band, consisting of tracks from their 1976, Don Dixon-produced EP The Sneakers, their 1978 LP In the Red and their 1992 "reunion" record, Racket, plus three unreleased bonus tracks, all (except the debut EP) re-mastered and/or remixed for superior sound. Notes by Scott Schinder!