Lay Me Down: update + call for action

16 months ago, we took the time to write about a song we’re feeling passionate about, and what makes it so special.

A few things to note:

• we’re not alone: checking out our referrer logs — a ton of people want to find out more about this song; not too bad for a track that hasn’t been released. Checking out our inbox — a bunch of emails from fans of the song wishing us good luck and hoping we get our hands on the track. (Some even took the time to send us live versions of the song — thanks!) This is odd — 16 months ago, when the original “Lay me down” entry was written we thought only we and maybe some people that frequented over at Branch’s message board cared. Turns out this is not the case.
• hey Josh, nice talking to you: two weeks after we posted about it, we got our very first email regarding this — from Josh Abraham, himself. (Pause for a minute, and think about it.) Unfortunately, Josh was rather, shall we say, cryptic in his message (i.e. told us nothing except from a “you guys are pretty funny!!!!”) and chose not to follow up in our emails (two of them, we didn’t want to spam the guy). Bummer, but we respect his decision — and thank you for sending us that email anyway, Josh; we’ve almost had a heart attack when we noticed an email from “Josh Abraham” waiting for us in our inbox.
• do something about it: finally, there idea of writing to Michelle’s label and asking for “Lay me down” to be released as a b-side on one of The Wreckers’ singles (their album drops on May 23rd) has been tossed quite a few times. Let’s sit on that for a while…

Call for action
How do we go about it so that our actions have the best possible result? Do we gather a list of names/emails first and then send a single letter to the company signed by that list, or each one of us sends a separate email? And are we talking email or snail mail? Maybe go with an online petition?

The “Comments” section below is yours — discuss, help us with writing the text, whatever. We’re all in this together.

(Also post a comment if you’d like to stay updated on the “Lay Me Down” front — just make sure you use a valid email address in the “email” field; don’t worry, it’s never published, we hate spam too.)

UPDATE — March 27th, 2008: You can now listen to the original version in its entirety, in streaming mode from Michelle Branch’s official website. Click here for more. √ May 15th, 2006

This post is 1000+ words long

I’m far from a fan of her music, but I can tell a good picture (and a great composition, really) when I see one. This is Imogen Heap’s cover for her latest single, “Goodbye and Go” (click on image for larger version):

UPDATE: The cover for her “Speak for Yourself” album (circa 2005) is quite good too.

√ May 9th, 2006

Yahoo! what have thou done to our blo.gs?

Ever since Yahoo! acquired blo.gs the service has gone downhill. The “Search has been disabled while we fix a problem!” appears pretty often, and it seems like this time, it’s here to stay — it’s been like that for nearly a month I think.

I assume everyone over at Yahoo! is too busy with RSS and they’ve pretty much abandoned the service, but the question is then: why get it in the first place? RSS was there, and showed signs that would it grow big, when blo.gs was about to change hands so it’s not like they couldn’t see it coming — what did they have in mind then? √ May 8th, 2006