Friday, August 22, 2008

Viral advocacy

Googling our band name last week, I stumbled across a post on Behind the Surface, an ME blog, that mentioned "Everybody Knows About Me":
At the moment [RESCIND has] got a "Friend-raiser" going on that includes a song about ME by Susan Wenger, of the band Cinder Bridge (yeah, I hadn't heard of them before now either) that you can download. The song does feel very ME-ish. Very slow and heavy. Indeed as I was listening to the opening verse, I thought, hell, has this woman been spying on me but got the apartment floor wrong?
It was exceptionally cool to hear someone with ME affirm that the lyrics (at least in the first verse) are accurate. But you know what felt even more amazing? The fact that she found "Everybody Knows About Me" through no direct efforts of the band.

Then, this morning, I got e-mail from a woman who lives in North Carolina. She'd read about "Everybody Knows About Me" in an ME newsletter and wanted to know where she could buy the song.

And I thought, newsletter? Yeah, I've been planning to contact some ME newsletters, but I haven't done it yet ...

It appears that our little advocacy song is s-l-o-w-l-y going viral. This shouldn't surprise me. It's been our goal from the beginning. Still, it blows my mind just a little bit to connect with people who weren't even looking for us ... who had never heard of us before now.

5 comments:

Kim Ayres said...

Thanks for dropping by my site and taking the time to comment. I've left you a wee reply in the comments.

I've just donwloaded your "Everybody Knows About Me" MP3 and really enjoyed it. You've a wonderful voice.

I play the mandolin and bouzouki, but have never been able to get my vocal chords to work out what they should be doing with tunes :)

cinderkeys said...

Hey, thanks for checking out the song! When I was first learning to sing, I couldn't make my vocal chords do what they needed to do either, and I thought I was completely hopeless. It helps to get a vocal coach who can teach you a few tricks. The rest is hard work and practice, but the tricks give you enough hope to continue.

Now I have to find out what a bouzouki is. :)

DeppityBob said...

A bouzouki is a medieval Albanian warship, rarely used since Albania is landlocked.

This is severely and supremely cool. Word of mouth and an advocacy song is carrying Cinder Bridge much farther than anything yet! I'm not sure what ME stands for, but I know what it is and know a couple of people who suffer from it...and suffer from it myself. "Everybody Knows About Me" is just like that: Who's been watching me?? How did she know exactly how I feel?!


You should be very proud of yourself as a musician, lyricist, and singer. You've done a marvelous job.

Anonymous said...

Rock on, Susan!

And if Kim is wrapping his lips and arms around a medieval Albanian warship and making music out of it, I want to see it on YouTube. ;)

cinderkeys said...

Thanks, guys. :)

ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis, and I can usually pronounce it now without having to think about it too much. :) It shares a lot of symptoms with fibromyalgia.