Again & Again-John Christopher Thomas

2018-05-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, procrastination rules...here's the cover for my latest CD album. A bit sophomoric, but it's been awhile. I definitely need to paint more!

Album Art: What is, always was

2017-03-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

Ana Maria in Novela Land

2015-02-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

Happy that a song I wrote a couple of years back made it into a new movie coming out this month. The film is called "Ana Maria in Novela Land", and it comes out on February 27th. My tune called "Have Some Fun", which my wife translated, then sang in Korean. It was nice to record something together.

Post by Ana Maria in Novela Land.

Age of the Wandering Sand

2014-05-23T21:35:00.000-07:00

So here's the lowdown: I've been working on this CD called Age of the Wandering Sand for a few months now, while adjusting to a new position here in the lovely city of Abu Dhabi. A lot of changes, a lot of adjustments, but hopefully I plan to have these group of songs finished by September of this year. This CD is a nice change of pace, since I'm collaborating with live musicians this time around. It's been fun. One of the songs I released last year was a single called Fair Enough. It had more of a rock vibe to it. This year, I had a chance to re-record a more laid-back version with Paul Bursiewicz on the drums. George Mccarten also made a video for it as well. Thanks guys! So, this album is coming along, slowly but surely. BTW, I also released an EP called Get Rid of Them Blues (say it quickly, and you'll get the joke.) If I were more business-minded, I would have promoted that EP first, eh? Oh well... Thanks, as always, for listening!

Back Online--Sort of

2014-04-09T19:42:00.000-07:00

It's been more than a year since I've last posted...ouch.

Since then, I've moved to the lovely city of Abu Dhabi, and put out 2 EPs and a single, not in that order. It's pretty obvious that I'm not very good at self-promotion, but will be posting some liner notes soon!

2013-01-21T09:30:00.001-08:00

Okay, so it's been awhile. It's slow going, here's some promotional stuff so you can hear some more of my tunes:

Send Newsletters to your fans from ReverbNation.com

Ah...The Upanishads

2012-12-04T08:48:00.006-08:00

Whenever you're busy obsessing about your success, achievements and ambition, read a bit from the Upanishads. It'll always bring you right back down to earth. Here's my favorite passage:

‘Sir, in this ill-smelling, unsubstantial body, which is a conglomerate of bone, skin, muscle, marrow, flesh, semen, blood, mucus, tears, rheum, feces, urine, wind, bile, and phlegm, what is the good of enjoyment of desires? In this body, which is afflicted with desire, anger, covetousness, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, separation from the desirable, union with the undesirable, hunger, thirst, senility, death, disease, sorrow, and the like, what is the good of enjoyment of desires?

Don't you feel grounded now?

Songs for an Autumn Day

2012-08-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

My new CD, Songs for an Autumn Day will be available this September, 2012.

Here is the cover, which is an oil painting I did of my backyard, about 16 years ago.

Thanks for listening!:-)

-John

Bleak Stuff About Digital Music..But Someone Has to Write About It

2012-07-09T22:49:00.000-07:00

Just read this article from Digital Music News: Our Digital Innocence Just Died. And David Lowery Killed It...

Earlier during the day, I was thinking to myself about the salad days of the working musician are pretty much over..then wham! This article came up out of the blue. Oh well...

Songs to Play at 3 a.m. -- Online Liner Notes

2011-10-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

It was way back in 1988, and I just got back home from a late night gig. Having still not come down from the adrenaline rush of lugging all my keyboard equipment back in the house, I got the guitar out and messed around with a tune. The song was called “I Will”, and the lyrics needed some work, but at least I became calm enough, after playing, to go to sleep. The time was a little bit after 3 a.m. Since then, I’ve always had a plan to get in a studio with some friends at the same exact time everyday to record an album. The title would be “Songs to Play at 3 a.m.”

Time has a way of playing tricks on you. Perhaps your internal clock seems to be extremely slow or fast for some reason. Mine moves really slow. So we jump from 1988 to 2011, and I find the dusty lyrics to the song one strangely cool September evening.

The idea to record a CD at 3 a.m. seemed interesting again. But people don’t buy CDs anymore. The market is too saturated, but luckily that’s not a large concern for me. Originally I wanted to do everything in the studio live, but that wouldn’t be feasible with no budget…as usual. So, why wait? The idea is there, and it should just be released out there. Perhaps someone, somewhere will find it, and hopefully also find it engaging in some way.

Songs to Play at 3 a.m. is a concept EP. All of the songs were written very early in the morning. As the title claims, they were also designed to be played during that time. Each song deals with decisions made in the wee hours of the morning as well. 3 a.m.: Entropy has to do being happy that someone is staying—and that surrealistic feeling early in the morning; Kill Some Time deals with wanting to hang out with friends after closing time; I Will is a song about being together; Gone, Gone, Gone deals with leaving someone unexpectedly; and Allowed is about an overwhelming sense of sadness. These songs are best heard repeatedly at low volumes, unless you’re driving. Thanks for listening, as always. -JCT

Another Shameless Plug

2011-03-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

Don't you hate people trying to sell you stuff every where you go?
I sure do, and I'm tired of trying to sell my new CD, I feel a little bit
funky doing it.
So this will be my last sales pitch for awhile...until the next CD is finished, of course.

Here we go...:-)

"Again and Again" is now available at iTunes. Here's the link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/john-christopher-thomas/id416905073

For just $.99 cents, you get minutes of listening fun...or just minutes of listening.

Now, back to your regularly programmed viewing...

Thanks,:-)

John

Again and Again -Liner Notes

2011-03-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

The Real UnderGround
One thing I really miss about getting a big, bulky vinyl record, apart from enjoying the almost poster-sized artwork, is reading the liner notes. Sure, alot of it can be pretentious, self-congratulatory stuff, but it's simply fun to read about the artist in a format that urged you to listen while you read.

So here I am, sitting highly caffeinated at a coffee shop, writing some virtual liner notes for Again and Again. Honestly, I'll be very surprised if this CD sells anything at all. Two other CDs I've made sold absolutely nothing--nada, zilch, zip...you get the idea.

So, that pushes me to another category altogether: I'm a member of the underground--the people that you might glance on the street, who secretly have 1,000 poems written, songs recorded, or tons of pictures painted. We can also be the people who have a passion for collecting bottle caps, or building model boats out of balsa wood, or design and re-designing a dream house that they may never build. The people who have a project or passion that probably seem pointless or an absolute waste of time to others. The outsiders...

Who We Are
Like so many of the people that you may on MySpace, Facebook, Jango or wherever, we fund our own projects, we spend countless hours tweeking and honing our craft, with the hopes that somebody, somewhere will listen--and with the sobering knowledge that listening is never guaranteed. And there are many times when no one listens.

That said, it can be a healthy process to create something, and then release that creation.It must have something to do with letting go of something that is so precious to the creator.You just may find somebody, somewhere who will appreciate what you do.

The Songs
The songs for Again and Again span about fourteen years; the oldest being Forever (1996) and the newest being All Messed Up (2010). More than a few hundred songs have been written during that time, (some I like more than the songs one the CD) but some tunes just don't move well together.The songs that made it for Again and Again were written for people who may feel a bit worn down, but are too busy with their lives to think too much about anything. There also might be an unsettling realization that they are closer to the end of their lives than the beginning.

Again and Again doesn't have much ambiguity; each of the songs are about something very specific. Sometimes the point is made over and over again, hence the title.

Songs 1-3 are things that are talked about during a drunken conversation between two close friends. Oh Lord, the first song, occurs when one speaker tells his buddy that he's about at the end of his rope.
Songs 4-7 cover the span of time when both of the friends return to their own homes with their families later that evening/morning, and the eventsthat occur the following day. Songs 8-10 focus on the rush of thoughts thatgo on before both of the friends fall asleep, after a long day. Song 11 is when one of them wakes up with an undisclosed epiphany, but also understands that its impact will soon fade away when the day goes moves on.

And that's about it. All of these songs were recorded either in a walk-in closet, a bedroom or a bathroom, depending on where the vocals sounded better. Toy bongos,toy keyboards and a cajon was used for the drums, along with some drum loops. Rick Bryant played drums on It's Over Again, thanks Rick.
I'm guilty of all the other noises. You do what you can. Thanks for reading!-John

Why the Blog?

2010-12-02T21:47:00.000-08:00

Well, to cut to the chase: earlier this year, I finished a new CD called "Again & Again". Whoo-hoo! Unfortunately, I'm not able to tour, or even play out live for that matter. Having three little boys, ages 3 and under, will do that to you. So, all of the CD promotion will have to be done online.

It should be fun, since I can't stop blabbing on about things that interest me. Hopefully they'll interest you as well. I hope to release the CD by around March of 2011, but who knows? In the meantime, you can listen to some of my tunes on Reverbnation. How's that for a plug?

A Sigh from Beneath the Sea...

2010-12-02T04:43:00.000-08:00

(This just blew me away...)
"Blue whales, the largest animals that have ever lived, have ten times as many neurons as we do, devoted entirely to picking up sounds below 100Hz, way beneath the lowest notes of the piano. We can barely hear what they are doing. A blue will make one long, dark moan, lasting up to half a minute, and then wait exactly seventy seconds and make the same sound. Over and over again, in an exact but very slow rhythm, for days. In the Indian Ocean, they do it every 140 seconds." (p. 196)

"No human musician could stay in time counting as slowly as these whales do. These incredibly low thumps and moans are rhythms at so lax a pace that they are barely perceivable by human beings. Speed a blue whale song up ten times, and thirty minutes becomes three. Move the pitch up to the realm of a cello, bowhead, or a human moan and exactly every three seconds comes the same soft moan. Only at this slow sense of time do we hear the thousand mile song, a great sigh in the deep sound channel, echoing from one end of an ocean to another." (p. 200)

-David Rothenberg, Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound (2008)

Two Performances

2010-12-02T04:40:00.000-08:00

(This is from John Miller Chernoff)

"Several years ago I had an opportunity to witness a concerto performance by the great Russian cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. I have not forgotten how deeply I was moved at the extra dimension of feeling this man managed to give to the music. When he came on the stage, people in the audience were already excited, and he acknowledged their applause with brief bows. Then he sat behind his cello; the hall became absolutely quiet, and people sat a bit forward in their seats. After a nod between Rostropovich and the conductor, the orchestra began, and when Rostropovich entered, it was with a clarity and precision that made some people involuntarily open their mouths. He did not look up from his instrument, and as he played, his body came forward over it until he seemed to envelop it. As he reached the technically most difficult section of the music, his concentration became so intense and his playing so perfect that the audience was riveted to attention and the slightest note impressed us with his dedication and virtuosity as he communicated the beauty of the music. The intimacy of his involvement with his instrument fascinated me, and when with a few definitive strokes of the bow he brought the concerto to an end, we in the audience joined together in wild applause for his genius.

"On another occasion I had the chance to hear Koyate Djimo play the kora when he was on tour with the National Dance Company of Sengal..." "...M. Koyate is famous throughout Senegal as a virtuoso on the kora, but when he stepped on stage, few people in the audience I am sure, were aware either of his prestige among his countrymen or of the potential of the strange looking instrument which he carried. He barely glanced at the audience and he looked down at his instrument in deep concentration as he began to play a simple melody based on an uncomplicated rhythmic foundation of three against two. As he played this simple music, he watched his fingers, and he seemed to be meditating on the musical theme which he quietly established. As he elaborated on this theme in greater rhythmic and melodic complexity, he began to demonstrate his incredible technical virtuosity. Finally, at the moment when his improvisations were reaching their most difficult and wonderful point, he raised his head and looked out at the audience, smiling slightly as he turned his head and his eyes to survey the scene. His demonstration of coolness and poise gave those in the audience, more clearly than the drummers and dancers they had come to see, their most accurate understanding of the depth and meaning of the tradition he was representing, and as he looked at them and smiled, they acknowledged this insight with a spontaneous gesture of applause which transformed the concert hall from a Western to an African musical context. When he finished his piece, the people in the audience actually looked around to smile at each other while they applauded him again."

"Both these artists, each a disciple of a great musical tradition, brought their aesthetic command to effective display, but the meaning of thir virtuosity was in each case different. Rostropovich's aesthetic effect was implicitly moral, an inspiration to be appreciated and internalized; Koyate's aeshetic effect was explicitly moral, a display to evoke participation and respect..."

-John Miller Chernoff (p.142-143) African Rhythm and African Sensibility,1979, The University of Chicago Press