As of today, it’s been exactly one year since I released Bored Games. In some respects, my life has changed in so many ways, perhaps due to the record, perhaps in spite of the record release. I know that the difference between making a record release successful and a record release fade quickly into the ether is the ability to take the release and think of it as the starting line rather than the finish line (as many an independent musician might have once heard). I like to think of it as the halfway point in an album’s cycle. Theoretically, you spend time writing the songs, recording the songs, planning the artwork and design of the album, put together a marketing plan for the release, schedule a tour for once it is released, bombard the internet, radio, newspapers with your album and hype, and then release the album to the ears of many. Still, once you’ve release the album, that’s when the push really begins. You need to play the shows you book, answer the questions to the interviews you’ve scheduled, follow up with all of the people you’ve sent your recording out to, and all of that fun stuff.

With Bored Games, I had the first half totally worked out, from the album, which looks and sounds great, to the proper marketing plan (for the first time), where I was able to send out my album in advance to a number of blogs, radio stations, magazines and papers, and ended up having a successful release “house party” broadcast on the internet to over 100 fans on a Tuesday night. In addition to that, I did a weekend Northeast tour, and booked a number of shows over the next few months. The ball was rolling, and I felt the momentum carrying me forward.

Until it stopped with a screeching halt. In April of last year, I got into a serious hit and run that derailed my plans of touring. A month into the official release of the album, with a second leg of my tour to book, and the first leg to finish, I had to reschedule the rest of my 2010 to accommodate physical therapy, doctors appointments, lawyers consultations, insurance visits, and my usual full time desk job in the music industry. Fortunately because of that full time job, and the insurance that I paid for on my car, I was able to be covered and received the treatment I needed (to a certain extent, although that is for another type of post), but my music career, and the time, energy and funds spent on this album release had all but dried up under the strain of recovery.

I played out the last couple of shows that I had booked, but didn’t actively pursue additional gigs, knowing that each show I played put an added toll on my injured back, shoulders and knees. For some time I was discouraged, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to perform as often or as enthusiastically as I would have liked. I knew that if I had just not happen to have had to move my car for alternate side parking at that moment, I wouldn’t be in the situation I was in, but I also quickly realized that feeling sorry for yourself and living in regret is the worst thing you can do if you want to get better. I began to focus on my physical therapy and my job, and ended up getting promoted in September, and dealing with music publishers’ day to day issues, instead of the general music industry questions.

Eventually I realized that I’d be okay scaling back with music, treating my “second job” as more of a hobby, and less of a job, as long as I have music in my life in some form or another. So with that in mind, this past February, I decided to go for a personal music challenge. While I signed up for both FAWM (February Album Writing Music) and the RPM challenge (write and record album of 35 minutes or ten songs in February), I didn’t push myself over the edge by getting stressed about it for too much.

Still, I’m always a sucker for a concept album, so I decided to flesh out one of the ideas I had been working on for a little bit. I wanted to do an album based off of the idea of Celebrity in our modern world, so I took the letters of the alphabet, decided to write a song based off of celebrities for each pairing. Thus Alec Baldwin, Charles Darwin, Ella Fitzgerald, and so on. I used Google’s auto-populate feature to find the most popular names, went on Twitter to do a crowd sourced vote (included Facebook’s votes as well), and in the case of a tie-breaker, chose the one who I found more interesting. Then I went to good old Wikipedia, and did a quick bio reading of the person to refresh myself, or in some case get acquainted with the celebrity. In a few instances, the celebrity in question did not have a fleshed out Wikipedia page, so I had to resort to subsequent internet pages to confirm information. By the end of February, I had all 13 celebrity songs written, plus a bonus track about Borders bookstore going bankrupt. However, I still haven’t recorded these tracks, although the lyrics can be found here:

http://fawm.org/fawmers/mattjasper/

So in honor of Bored Games, give the album a listen. For those of you who are watching Charlie Sheen’s latest press junket rant, just think of the Celebrity Couplets that are about to be captured in song.