Plenty to say thanks for this year

Getting to cover the likes of Kenny Chesney, Josh Groban and Fergie for a living, I have a lot to be thankful about -- namely, earplugs and alcohol.

Seriously, though, I have the best job, and considering the holiday before us today, here's what I'm most thankful for in 2009:

Leonard Cohen. If you told me at the beginning of the year that I could choose any living artist to see in concert, it easily would have been Leonard Cohen. And with expectations outsized enough to imperil high-flying aircraft, Cohen exceeded them all with an equally commanding and vulnerable performance, often sung on bended knee, with such grace, beauty and poise that his songs felt like they could have sutured up the most broken of hearts.

The fine citizens of New Jersey. Kudos to a group of Jersey residents who declined to grab their ankles for Ticketbastard and sued the company for jacking up prices to big shows. Here's how the rook works: Tickets go on sale, are immediately listed as being sold out, and then customers get redirected to the TicketsNow.com resale site, owned by, you guessed it, Ticketmaster, where they command exponentially higher prices. These fans, though, stood up, exposed it all and refused to have their wallets waterboarded any longer.

Georgia. Back in the day, the Bay Area was the center of the metal universe, then Tampa, Fla., then Gothenburg, Sweden. And now? It's the state of Georgia, believe it or not. Look at what has come from there in '09: three bona fide album-of-the-year candidates in Mastodon's majestic and monolithic prog metal masterpiece "Crack the Skye," Kylesa's sweeping and abrasive "Static Tensions" and Baroness' all-over-the-place "Blue Record," which contains more twists and turns than a David Mamet potboiler. Toss in a wicked hunk of carcinogenic doom in Zoroaster's "Voice of Saturn," and for heshers, the Peach State has become as sweet as its namesake.

Toby Keith. The Academy of Country Music Awards can be a crash course in eye rolling, mostly because of the unabashedly sycophantic country music press ranks who delight in chapping their lips on the backsides of the big names. Sample question: "So, Mr. Brad Paisley, when God sculpted you out of awesomeness and puppy dog tails, did you know right then that your voice would make angels sound like upchucking Grizzly bears?" But this year ruled because of a gnarly blowup from Toby Keith, who went all Mount Vesuvius on a Nashville reporter who wrote about an alleged spat between Keith and Kris Kristofferson. Nostrils flaring, the dude melted down quicker than a hunk of Velveeta hurled into the burning depths of hell, which the ACMs occasionally approximate. Not this time.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.