The Times They Are a'Changing

So, you're probably asking ... why "Tom's Music Continuum"? (Or maybe you're not asking, but I'll answer anyway.) Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, I realized a little while ago that music is not a finite series of neatly separated genres, as some of the more narrow-minded business types in the music industry might have us believe. Maybe we used to be able to define music as belonging to one genre or another, but that's become more difficult lately. Genres are blending together and crossing over like never before, and music really has become a continuum (defined by Merriam-Webster as "a coherent whole characterized as a collection, sequence, or progression of values or elements varying by minute degrees"). There's probably at least one album in my collection that could be tagged as belonging to just about each primary genre out there, at least as it might be described on the surface. But there's something about all of them that appeals to me on some basic level -- that level probably being that undefinable thing that makes music music.

But, enough of the deep philosophical/metaphysical stuff. The other reason for the blog's new name is the simple fact that I kind-of look at my CD collection as a "continuum" ... constantly evolving, with items I've lost interest in always being rotated out and new items of interest always being introduced in. Being a "Star Trek" fan, I chose the word "continuum" carefully, not only because of the Q Continuum (yes, that's what the "q" is doing in the URL ... but partly because I wanted to keep it short and easy to type too -- and also 'cause the first few URLs I tried to claim were already taken), but also because of a concept called "The Great Material Continuum", which is explained here ... kind-of a curious notion, fitting right in with the forementioned nature of my CD collection.

And, last but not least, I was kind-of getting tired of the whole "Thnairg" bit and wanted to start using a real name for a change. But anyway, I hope you like the new look and new title, but rest assured that you'll be getting the same kind of content you've come to expect from me in the past. Enjoy, and let the music play!

Seeing Some Results

Okay ... I was half-right with my prediction (and half-right with my "wish list") ... sort-of. I thought there would be four chosen, 'cause doesn't it go from the Top 36 down to the Top 12? I heard there's something about a "Wild Card" ... is there one from each group of twelve, but they don't get announced until the third group's results show two weeks from now? I'm mildly confused.

It was majorly cool, though, to see Michael Johns and Carly Smithson, wasn't it?!? An album from Michael in May ... yeah!

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I thought this was priceless...!

American Idol 2009 - The Top 36, Round 1

Well, color me surprised ... I wasn't going to watch the mass-audition episodes of "American Idol" this year, but I ended up doing so (though I missed the San Francisco round). And then I didn't think I was going to start doing my weekly on-the-fly blogging again this season either ... until I heard how this round was going to work. I thought they'd be eliminating two each week from each of the three groups (and being a little puzzled 'cause that would take forever) -- but when I heard that ALL BUT FOUR would be walking away from each of the next three rounds, I knew it was going to be interesting. I've got a few early favorites picked out already, and it'll be a bit nerve-wracking seeing how many of them get tossed out in just this first round. So, without further ado, here we go with the first twelve of the Top 36!

Jackie Tohn ["A Little Less Conversation" by Elvis Presley] -- Paula's comments were right on the money: excellent stage presence, and not the best vocals in the world, but more than good enough -- after all, if a singer has a perfect voice but no stage presence, how entertaining can they be?

Ricky Braddy ["A Song For You" by Donny Hathaway] -- Wow! What is this, the Top Four?!? An absolutely stirring performance ... excellent, gorgeous voice! If these first two are any indication, this is going to be a hell of a decision for the voters!! And, for the second time so far this evening, I'm harrumphing at Simon's comments....

Alexis Grace ["I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" by Aretha Franklin] -- Decent voice, but then this is what you have to be afraid of when you follow two strong performers. Very good, but not good enough, I fear. The judges loved it more than I did, that's for sure.

Brent Keith ["Hicktown" by Jason Aldean] -- One of the few "All-American boys" in this year's contest ... Not bad at all, but then again, he couldn't help but leave me just a little cold after Jackie and Ricky. Still, though, he may have promise down the road (to carry the country metaphor). Aha ... Kara's comments point out what I think bothers me about his performance ... a little too "safe".

Stevie Wright ["You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift] -- Hmmm ... how can I say this nicely? She started out very weak and didn't really get any better ... I'll be flabbergasted if she makes it past this round. To put it another way, I agree wholeheartedly with Simon for the first time tonight ... I would have said it more nicely, but there you have it.

Anoop Desai ["Angel Of Mine" by Monica] -- Ready to say it? "Anoop-dawg in da house!" Maybe not the best performance of the night, but very good, and I think he's enough of a favorite that it'll get him through to the next round ... but then again, we've only heard half of this group so far.

Casey Carlson ["Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by The Police] -- A gutsy gamble, doing a song by The Police ... and I'm not sure it paid off. Not bad ... she was definitely good to get through to the Top 36, but I think that's as far as she'll get. Sweet spirit, though ... she was still able to smile and say she had fun!

Michael Sarver ["I Don't Want To Be" by Gavin DeGraw] -- Here's one of my early favorites ... how can you not like this guy? Let's see how he does ... Very good performance, but is it good enough to pull him through to the next round? I have a feeling that he and Anoop will be fighting it out in the "likeability" category. Simon said it all.

Ann Marie Boskovich ["(You Make Me Feel Like a) Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin] -- Ah yes, the "come back as yourself" girl ... Ted Danson seemed to like her, and I liked her, too ... maybe not as much as Jackie, but I think she's the second-best girl of the night. Too big a song for her? Maybe ... I guess we'll see tomorrow night.

Stephen Fowler ["Rock With You" by Michael Jackson] -- I have mixed feelings about this guy ... never should have been allowed through for giving up on his performance in the final Hollywood round. But then, maybe the point is moot, 'cause this one was not much better than lukewarm. As Randy might say, "I wasn't feelin' it."

Tatiana Del Toro ["Saving All My Love For You" by Whitney Houston] -- (Isn't she the hysterically-babbling "oh my god!!!" girl? I'll try not to hold that against her.) Hey, now that's a pleasant surprise ... I expected her to crash and burn, but she was pretty damn good!! In fact, I think she might take Ann Marie's place as my second-favorite female performance of the evening. Will that get her anywhere...? Hmmm ... I think she was doing just fine until she practically begged for votes just before Ryan took the show to commercial.

Danny Gokey ["Hero" by Mariah Carey] -- Now why did I know they were going to save him for last? Let's see if it worked to his advantage ... I haven't heard a bad performance from him yet, and tonight is no exception. I know he's already got a fan base, and I'm pretty sure it'll carry him through, especially with a fine showing like this!

Who I think will make it to the Top 12: Danny Gokey, Jackie Tohn, Anoop Desai, and Alexis Grace.

Who I think should make it to the Top 12: Danny Gokey, Jackie Tohn, Michael Sarver, and Anoop Desai.

Oh, and one thing I won't be doing this year is voting ... I don't know why I bothered doing so last year, 'cause since people can vote as many times as they want to, it's pretty much pointless. That's one big problem I have with "Idol" ... but that's another discussion entirely. Happy voting, for those of you who choose to do so!

Thnairg's Podcast - February 2009

My apologies again for not having a January podcast to give you, but here's the February edition! What's it about? Well, I'll give you a vague little hint: it starts out with a crappy (and artificially enhanced) Ryan Seacrest impersonation!

Thnairg's Podcast - February 2009

Coming next month ... I'm not sure yet, but probably "stuff I've recently gotten". But I've got a couple of lofty plans in mind for my podcast's future, which I'll discuss soon.

Note: Thnairg's Podcast is delivered at the bitrate of 64kbps ... below CD quality, but still perfectly listenable. This is done both to make for quicker downloading, and to discourage piracy. As always, if you enjoy the music featured in my podcast, I encourage you to buy the artists' CDs or MP3s through legitimate means. After all, that's why my podcast is here!

Stay Tuned

Yes, I'm still alive. I'm sorry for the delay in the next podcast (and yes, there is going to be one). I really want to get it out to you -- I meant to do it last weekend and again this weekend -- but for some weird reason I just haven't been able to find the motivation to actually do it. (It might have something to do with the fact that I was a little unhappy with the way my voice sounded in the last podcast ... thought I had mastered how to tweak it so that there wouldn't be any distortion, but obviously I miscalculated somewhere.) Apparently it's possible to psych yourself up too much for a task. I guess I just need to totally take my mind off of it for the week (since I do have it all planned out) and it'll happen naturally.

In the meantime, so that this post isn't a total waste ... I thought I'd share an upcoming release with you, a promo of which I just got sent in the mail. It's the new album, "The Quiet Hype", by electropop group Jupiter Rising. It's not usually my sort of thing, since it has a lot of hip-hop in it (although the lyrics in the raps are more inventive than I usually find them), but it was an interesting listen, and I'm thinking I may be hanging onto the CD for awhile. Here's the video for the dandy single, "Falling Away". Enjoy!

Thnairg's Podcast - 2008 Top Ten Favorite Albums Countdown!

It's that time of year again already, boys and girls! Ready or not, here I come with my special, year-end, two-part podcast, counting down my ten favorite albums of the past year! Part 1 gives you the bottom five (#10 to #6), along with a quick shout-out of my other five (#11 to #15) favorite albums in no particular order; and part 2 counts down the top five. There are sure to be surprises and treats for all ... so, enjoy!

Thnairg's Podcast - December 2008 - part 1 (#10 to #6 favorite albums of the year)

Thnairg's Podcast - December 2008 - part 2 (#5 to #1 favorite albums of the year)

Coming next month ... probably the usual "stuff I've recently gotten" podcast.

Note: Thnairg's Podcast is delivered at the bitrate of 64kbps ... below CD quality, but still perfectly listenable. This is done both to make for quicker downloading, and to discourage piracy. As always, if you enjoy the music featured in my podcast, I encourage you to buy the artists' CDs or MP3s through legitimate means. After all, that's why my podcast is here!

Hey Whatever, Indeed (or: How I Learned to Stop Loving Westlife)

A couple of weeks ago, I put a Westlife album in my trade-ins stack for the first time. What surprised me is that it ended up being such an anti-climactic thing. (Or was it? I am devoting a long blog entry to it, after all....) It's made me look at the last few albums they've put out, and ... well, don't take this the wrong way (remember that I have been, still am, and will probably always be a loyal fan of boybands) ... but why are Westlife still bothering to record and release albums? And more to the point, how can they still be topping the charts?

I mean sure, they are and consistently have been a very fine bunch of vocalists, and there's that one characteristic voice whose soaring resonance and tight vibrato make it one of the most listenable in pop. (Is that Mark's or Shane's voice?) But what good does it do to have talent if it's dragged out over an endless stream of bland, room-temperature ballads, only occasionally stirred up by a perfunctory, rarely-better-than-okay uptempo ditty? Surely I'm not the only one who's noticed their descent into that rut over the course of their last two or three albums.

To be entirely subjective, I do like my boyband pop more on the upbeat side: NSYNC, Five, V and Take 5 (short-lived though the latter two were) have always had more of a place in my heart than Backstreet Boys, Code Red, or the snoozer of all boybands, 98 Degrees. And yes, Boyzone may arguably have been as ballad-heavy as Westlife, but at least they knew to stop after three albums (Westlife's first three were arguably their best), and to take advantage of the fans' lengthy anticipation of a comeback with a reasonably strong single. Besides, they had Stephen ... how can you not like Stephen?

To be honest, my Westlife fandom did diminish for a year or so, until Mark's brave coming-out in 2005 reignited it. And that's part of a somewhat embarrassing fact about me: There was a time when I'd buy a CD just because the artist was gay. Although that period of "unwavering fag loyalty" yielded a few singers who continue to be favorites of mine (Rufus Wainwright, Will Young, Anthony Callea), most of them were passing fancies for me at best, or downright duds at worst (names withheld to protect the semi-innocent). And now, I almost have to laugh at how the total opposite seems to be happening: I've recently become a fan of a few different artists (Ferras, Sam Sparro, Dan Gillespie Sells of The Feeling), but didn't discover they're gay (or they didn't come out) until after the fact. Not that it matters, of course. But, I digress....

For as long as my buy-each-of-their-albums-as-they- come-out-no-questions-asked loyalty to Westlife lasted since buying "World Of Our Own" in 2001, it took comparatively little time for the spell to break. I suppose I should have sensed the first inkling of "the beginning of the end" when I heard "Hey Whatever", a goofily insipid butchering of a way-cool but little-known quasi-gospel anthem by Irish rock band Relish. But despite that travesty and their completely unremarkable cover of Barry Manilow's "Mandy", I hung onto the album anyway, since a few of its other songs are decent.

I returned to my buy-without-hesitation pattern with "Allow Us To Be Frank", since I pretty-much can't get tired of listening to boybands doing Rat Pack standards (or Motown hits, for that matter -- shout-out to Human Nature!). As it turned out, I also found quite a bit to like in "Face To Face": decent covers of The Eagles ("Desperado") and Nick Carter ("Heart Without a Home"), a couple of the best upbeat tunes I'd heard from them since "World Of Our Own" ("She's Back" and "Hit You With The Real Thing"), and a totally scrumptious Motown-styled song ("Change Your Mind"), which is definitely ranked in my Top Three favorite Westlife songs of all time. As you can imagine, by this time I thought that the mediocrity of "Turnaround" was just a fluke.

But then came "The Love Album", a release so pointless that one wonders why they bothered. Westlife specializes in covers, and sappy ballads -- so do we really need a whole album full of sappy ballad covers, and most of them from the extra-sappy '80s? The fact that I'm an '80s kid and do kind-of like a few of the songs is the only reason I haven't jettisoned that CD by now ... and believe me, it's hanging on by a meager thread. And let's face it, the forementioned first Westlife CD I traded in, "Back Home", isn't anything to write back home about. For Pete's sake, would it hurt Westlife to not have any covers on an album of theirs, or at the very least to not release any of them as singles? I still like Westlife's earlier work as much as I ever have, but at this point the guys are going to have to come up with something pretty remarkable to make me want to buy it. I think their taking a year off is a very wise move ... maybe it'll stir them into making some more of the bouncy pop from their good old days.

I honestly don't know if there's a point to posting this, but I kind-of wanted to get it off my chest ... and since I'm not posting as much as I used to, I thought maybe you'd appreciate something new to read in these pages. Plus, I have to say I'm curious to see if anyone comments on what I've said here. I just hope the staunch Westlife supporters can come up with a better excuse for why they still love Westlife other than, "Because they're Westlife!" Hey, New Kids On The Block are still New Kids On The Block ... but it sure as heck ain't making me want to buy their new album.

Thnairg's Podcast - November 2008

As promised (but not as early as hoped -- what else is new?), here is my November podcast. It's the latest in the "Discography" series, and features one of my favorite artists of all time. If you're one of the few who are familiar with them, I hope this podcast rekindles some fond memories. If you're not familiar with them, I hope you end up calling them a new favorite artist ... or, at the very least, enjoy them enough to check out one or more of their albums.

Thnairg's Podcast - November 2008

Coming in next month's podcast ... yes, it's my special, two-part, year-end countdown of my favorite albums of 2008!

Note: Thnairg's Podcast is delivered at the bitrate of 64kbps ... below CD quality, but still perfectly listenable. This is done both to make for quicker downloading, and to discourage piracy. As always, if you enjoy the music featured in my podcast, I encourage you to buy the artists' CDs or MP3s through legitimate means. After all, that's why my podcast is here!

Another Idol On The Rise

Who can forget Josiah Leming, the misty-eyed contestant from Season 7 of American Idol? The Tennessee-born singer and songwriter will release his eagerly anticipated debut album for Reprise Records in early 2009. The 19-year-old newcomer, who made a splash with his powerfully expressive voice and passionate performance style, recorded the songs, all of which he wrote himself, during several weeks over the summer with producer/musician David Kosten (Bat For Lashes, Faultline.)

Leming left his home in Morristown, TN, at age 17 to make it as a musician, hoping to find a way to help support the family he was leaving behind -- eight siblings (six of whom are adopted), an out-of-work stepfather, and a mother with terminal cancer. Leming traveled around the Southeast playing open-mic nights in any club or coffeehouse that would have him, sleeping in his car and taking odd jobs to pay for food and gas, all the while dreaming about the album he would make one day. His appearance on American Idol landed him a manager who brought him to Warner Bros. Records, who signed him in June 2008. For Leming, the dream of making an album has finally arrived.

To give listeners a sneak peek at the album, Leming is releasing Angels Undercover, a five-song sampler of tracks from the album. It is now available digitally on iTunes and Amazon.com, and on CD from Josiah's MySpace page, where Leming’s songs have been listened to nearly three million times collectively.

Downolad "Arctic Outcry Wind" for free here!

Another Reason...

As if I needed any more reasons why I'd do Pete Wentz in half a second, here's one more....




















Yay, Pete Wentz! And shame on you, California.