Newsflash!: LET Birthday Contest!

As some of you know, on the first of this year we celebrated birthday number 3. We're getting old! But we like to think we still look pretty good for our age. Anyway, digressions aside, Chris and I kinda felt like celebrating. And part of this celebration, dear friends, is for you. Yes you. We're offering one lucky, lucky son of a gun the chance to win a nice little bundle of musical goodies from your favorite DC bloggers.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, basically, friends, you could win a tidy little stack of grrrrrrreat CDs, including some that you'll see in my favorite records of the year, as well as some other fun stuff like band stickers and other little surprises. We like you so very much, we just can't not do this contest. To enter, simply email us and tell us why you love us. Hey, we're as narcissistic as the next guy, and we like heaps of praise. It can't be helped.

Details: Contest is open to anyone and everyone. If we like what you have to say the best, we'll ship your goodies just about anywhere. So make it good. Let's say we'll stop accepting entries on the 1st of February. That gives you plenty of time to come up with great reasons why you love and adore us. So Happy Birthday to us, and happy contesting to you! Good luck!

mp3: Subliminal Message (Happy Birthday from Happy Birthday)

Contest Time: Win Two Free Betty Davis CDs!

Much like a very young Ronald McDonald or a very old whore, the LET crew is delighted to announce that we've recently served our 20,000th satisfied customer! While it took us more than a year to reach 10,000 sets of unique eyeballs, we've kind of been rolling here lately, so the second 10,000 came much quicker. (I could make another very old whore joke here, but I won't. I respect us both too much for that softball.)

Obviously, the masses yearn for multiple takes on various old tunes just as much as they want to know the outcome of the Roxanne Shante vs. The Real Roxanne battle. You also seem to really like Ella Fitzgerald and zombies, in the for-whatever-its-worth category. Fortunately, these are just my lines of bullshit, so I see ours as a symbiotic relationship. I haven't decided who is the tick to the other's exposed skin in the woods, but I fear I'm running the risk of just rambling now.

To celebrate and/or bribe you fine folks to keep coming back for more, we've decided to have Contest Time! Our good, good friends over at Light in the Attic Records have kindly provided us with the two new re-releases from Betty Davis (Is It Love Or Desire and Nasty Gal) to give to you. For those of you somehow not in the know, we're not talking about the one with the eyes, we mean none other than Miles Davis' second wife. The former Miss Mabry is credited with funking up Miles' sound and thinking, acting as inspiration for both Filles de Kilimanjaro (that's her picture on the cover) and Bitches Brew (allegedly, Miles originally wanted to call it Witches Brew and she changed his mind). Legend even has it that it was Betty that introduced Miles to Jimi Hendrix. Suffice to say, the woman is so funky you're going to have to scrape the goo off your speakers every time you're done playing her grooves. Consider yourself forewarned.

While I was more than willing to accept pictures of our readers in various compromising positions and pick a favorite, it was brought to my attention that such a contest might actually cost us readers, as well as whatever legal fees arose from various lawyerly action take against us for giggling and posting the pix on your ex's FB page. Megan felt we should do a contest wherein participants described how funky they were and why they deserved these two excellent albums, but I couldn't figure out exactly how to set the parameters, so they went by the wayside. I got all meta for a moment myself, and was going to have two contests--one where the readers came up with a contest and a second where the previously mentioned winning contest actually was enacted. Then I realized just thinking about that made me dizzy, so that was dropped, too.

And so it happened
That I opted for haiku
To pick a winner



Your job is to write
A haiku describing why
You should win these discs

U.S. residents
Are the only ones who can
Participate now

Because contests hate
All you foreign-type people
Or so I am told

Drugs not required
To play along, but it sure
Doesn't hurt, either

Now have at it, kids. Deadline of whenever we arbitrarily feel we've received enough submissions and, more importantly, have enough good ones. And just so you know what you're getting for your troubles, some titular tracks for y'all:

mp3: Is It Love or Desire (Betty Davis from Is It Love or Desire)
mp3: Nasty Gal (Betty Davis from Nasty Gal)

There's Still Time for Winning

Hello friends.

Worried you may have missed the deadline for our celebratory 10,000th hit contest? Fretting about missing out on free music par excellence? Fear not. Our contest is open until the waning hours of the 31st day of this very fine month of May. That gives you plenty of time to concoct the perfect reason (or reasons, as the case may be) why you love us ever so much. If you tell us why, and we both decide your reasoning is flawless, you'll be the happy owner of not one but TWO Monks CDs. And two, most definitely, are better than one (well, with most things, like Monks CDs).

So get cracking. We've already received some stellar entries, but we feel that there are others of you out there who should be entering this contest. Sadly, it's only valid for you US residents, but we still love you non-US folks just as much.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Memorial Day weekend! We believe that in the case of weekends, three days are better than two.

We Have a Winner!

We like to think we're a little generous here at LET. So we teamed up with the fabulous folks at Light In the Attic to offer you the chance to win a copy of Serge Gainsbourg's seminal/legendary/necessary album Histoire de Melody Nelson. We'd like to give much thanks to everyone who entered our little Serge Gainsbourg contest. But the contest has been closed, and a name drawn out of a hat (yep, we're super fancy around here, eh?). Here's our winner, and the name of their favorite French song (which impressed us!)...

*Melissa K., from Richmond ("Comment Te Dire Adieu" by Francoise Hardy)

A hearty congratulations to Melissa, and we'll be in touch. Enjoy your brand-spanking new Serge album!

Newsflash: Win a CSS Office Party @ 9:30 Club

Admittedly, I'm not all that much of a fan of theirs, but the 9:30 has a pretty awesome contest running for all you CSS lovers out there. Here's the little blurb that came to my inbox this very evening:

"With the economy in shambles, your Scrooge-of-a-boss’ idea of a holiday party most likely involves a cobweb-covered fruitcake left in the office kitchen. Fear not: 9:30 Club and electro-pop Brazilians CSS are here to save the holidays for you and 29 of your coworkers. First, you’ll start off with a private happy hour with free drinks from Budweiser and a sampling of 9:30 menu items. After that, you’ll head to a private VIP viewing area for CSS’s off-the-wall indie rock antics.

Want to win? Simply send a YouTube video link to list_serve@930.com telling us why your office needs this party. Keep the videos funny, but clean, and under one minute. Deadline is Tuesday, December 16 by 7pm. The winning video will be posted in next week’s email blast."

CSS performs at the 9:30 on December 20th.