Greatest hits warm audience

Alan Jackson's voice and his collection of greatest hits were enough to make the good-sized crowd of country fans at the state fair Grandstand whoop Friday night.

Jackson and his true-blue, solid seven-piece band, the Strayhorns, started the show with one of the Georgia native's earlier hits, "Gone Country." Fourteen albums with more than 42 million sold under the bridge, Jackson can still call that one his theme.

Get himout on stage in his beige cowboy hat, with his acoustic guitar and deep, down-home voice, and that's as country as today's country music gets.

The hits just kept on coming, too, as fans thrust signs of love in the air, waved their cell phones and, most importantly, mugged for the TV cameras that captured the images that mingled on the myriad of big screens.

Video is a huge part of Jackson's show.

In this day and age when so many acts bring cameras and big screens to every town they visit, Jackson and his crew are arguably the very best at connecting the fans, the music and the images.

There were three big screens over the band's heads on the stage, used to mix and match videos and live shots. Two bigger screens on the flanks were reserved for live pictures. A long panel of screens under the trio on stage beamed even different images.

Yet somehow, the producer/director who runs the whole shebang crafts the images to enhance the music, not overwhelm it.

So when Jackson sang his ballad "Remember When," shots of him and his wife over the years filled the screens.

When he performed the fast and fun "Little Bitty," the squares were filled with pictures of smiling, waving youngsters in the Syracuse crowd.

And when Jackson delivered the down-home "Where I Come From," the roars were loud and many as images of Syracuse landmarks paraded across the screen: the Carrier Dome, the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Hancock Field, the Syracuse Fire Department, the Anheuser-Busch brewery, Yankees hats, Red Sox hats, Mets hats.

Jackson toldthe crowd he enjoyed his stay in Central New York on Friday. No, he didn't accompany the crew that sped around town taking pictures. Instead, the country star took one of the two cars he brings in a trailer on tour with him up to the Adirondack Mountains.

"I had a nice time," Jackson volunteered in his understated way.

There were other greatest hits to cheer. "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)" had some fans in tears with a Sept. 11 video capped by New York City firemen planting the American flag at ground zero.