You are what you listen to?

This is a bit of a tease…

As I’ve been sitting here working away for the last couple of hours I’ve also been listening to much excellent music:

• Steve Lawson’s soulful bass guitar
• Missy Higgins’ plaintive vocals
• Muse’s in your face assault of the senses
• My Chemical Romance’s flirtation with pain and premature death
• Adele’s warmth and tenderness
• Danny Rhymez and Matty B’s anarchic audio artistry
• The Streets brilliant description of teenage pain
• The strange funkiness of Vampire Weekend
• The manic-depressive insight in to Roger Waters’ head
• The goth-rock of Evanescence

These are just some of the sounds that my randomly shuffling laptop has thrown at me.

And although it’s been fun to have these works as my soundtrack, they have underlined the scope of a problem I’m working on.

Let me explain, you might be able to help!

I am building an on-line questionnaire for a talented but unsigned band. They are looking to sample a range of public opinion to help decide what should be the band’s first major single release.

The on-line questionnaire will carry some examples/excerpts of their work and ask questions about each sample. The responses to these questions should bring us down to public opinion on which would be the the most highly-rated piece for a single.

We need to have a few hundred people involved to give the survey a decent weight of numbers.

My cunning plan is to stand outside a couple of record stores with a clipboard and just ask people if they’d like to help.

There will also be a bribe or two; we need to have a prize draw for those who take part.

I’ve got a bunch of stuff that we could use as prizes; T-Shirts, CDs etc.

It’s going to be a few days before the questionnaire is up, but I was wondering if you’d like to take part?

Because, you know, you’re pretty excellent, right?

I was also wondering if, when it’s all up and running, you’d like to spread the word to your friends, colleagues, bank managers etc?

I’ll put a note here when it’s up and running – just feel free to nip over and give us the benefit of your wisdom.

Thanks.