Hey everyone --
It's a lazy Sunday afternoon, and I figure there's no better time to write my first blog of 2009. If you'll recall, one of my New Year's Resolutions was to be better about blogging and keeping in touch with all of you guys. So yeah, I better get busy ;-)
To celebrate the beginning of '09, I got the chance to head up to Mammoth for a weekend with some friends. For those of you unfamiliar with Mammoth, it's a Winter resort town in the California mountains. Anyway, rather than skiing or snowboarding, this time we decided to go snowmobiling. Now I love roller coasters, but I'm hardly what you'd call an "Extreme Sports" kinda guy. Sky Diving and Bungee Jumping aren't all that high up on my "things to do" list. But I have to say, going snowmobiling was *amazing*. Flying down that mountain at about 40 MPH was the perfect amount of extreme for me. I've heard it's very similar to riding a jet ski, so that's next on my agenda. Sky diving will just have to wait for now, lol.
Check out these photos of me on the snowmobile:
One thing that I've been getting involved with this year is a new website called
"MTV Soundtrack". It's essentially a Myspace clone, but with one major twist. Once you sign up, you're supposed to vote for the artist or band you like the most. Those bands/artists with the most votes get featured on the front page of the site, and will probably get their music used on MTV shows! I've been pushing this pretty hard for the last few weeks, and currently am ranked 78 out of about 2,500 artists/bands on the site. Not too shabby, but I wanna get even higher. So please take a couple of minutes to sign up and vote for me :)
My page is located at
http://soundtrack.mtv.com/matthewjordan, and you can find the sign up link pretty easily from there. Oh, and one more thing... you're allowed to vote up to once per hour. So if you feel like having no life on my behalf, by all means knock yourself out ;-)
Matt's Pick of the Week:
Harps and Angels by Randy Newman. Some of you might not know Mr. Newman as much more than the guy who wrote and sang "You've Got a Friend In Me" from
Toy Story. But I have to say, Randy Newman has much more to offer than that. The man is one of my song writing idols, and I actually got the chance to meet him a couple years back at a function for the USC Thornton School of Music. It was a terrific experience, and I was thrilled when Santa brought me Newman's new album
Harps and Angels for Christmas. Some of the tracks are pretty "out there" - anyone who has heard Newman's other music knows he has a crazy sense of humor. That said, the tunes that resonate the most with me are his melancholy ballads "Losing You" and "Feels Like Home". Randy Newman finds a way to be incredibly straightforward with his emotions, while still finding a unique way to put his feelings into words. Check out
Harps and Angels, a fantastic outing by one of America's finest songwriters.
Anyway, that just about wraps things up for this blog. '09 is off and running, and I can't wait to see where it ends up. I've already got a few shows booked, including a couple of acoustic shows at Borders Books out in Valencia and a very special birthday gig at Genghis Cohen in Hollywood in February (It's on Friday the 13th... creepy, huh? lol). Check my MySpace page or
official website for more info. Also, I'm happy to report that some new music will be making its way to the internet (and your ears!) in the VERY near future. As always, keep checking back for updates.
Thanks so much to all of you for your continued support and friendship. Have a great 2009 everyone, and rock on!
Till next time,
Matt
PS: I almost forgot! Some of you may not know this, but I have an official message board. I'd love to keep in touch with all of you better, and I post very frequently on the board. So please, sign up and join the party :-) The link is:
http://matthewjordan.proboards13.com. See ya there!