On instagram I made a comment about hoping a We Love Life special edition would follow the Different Class reissue under Marks post and he liked it. It may mean nothing but if the band are in conversations with Universal about other reissues maybe its potentially on the agenda.
It seems to have stalled at 380 signatures (~15%).
Yes, a day of action would be a great idea. Tomorrow is the 24th anniversary of "We Love Life" but probably too late as it would take a bit more planning.
The petition has a presence on Instagram, X, Bluesky, TikTok and I have shared in Facebook groups. Does anyone have any other ideas how we can boost awareness?
Celebrity endorsement. Olivia Rodrigo was singing along to Common People at Glastonbury.
Get her handlers to play 30 second preview clips of The Night That Minnie Timperley Died and Bob Lind, she'll soon be on Insta reels to wax lyrical about We Love Life.
In terms of celebrity endorsement, Nick did share one of my posts on Bluesky so he certainly implied that he would be up for it. As per a previous post, an ex-member (Steven Havenhand) has signed the petition. I did find a few ex-members on Facebook and sent them messages but I think they fell victim to a spam filter.
Handing out flyers with QR codes on at concerts would be a good idea (I have got a friend who is a printer and would provide them at cost price) but there's nothing planned just yet. They were playing to audiences of over 10,000 people this summer so even a couple of hundred signatures from those would give the campaign a decent boost.
I may contact Universal just to ask if they would consider releasing some of the unheard material. I severely doubt it but the album's 25th anniversary is next year so you never know...
What about just asking Mark to covertly leak the CDs, and have them put up on Ian's site? If there's no strong commercial interest in them.
They are no different really from say the Sudan Gerri demos. Just have them exist as the full Wessex and Depot demos, rather than have them packaged as WLL discs 2 and 3. 9 of the 42 tracks from those sessions are already in the world anyway.
Maybe we could arrange a spy film style handover at the Crookes Social event? Mark could slip the CDs into my book during the signing (I'll use 'Selborne Road' as the code word, if you are reading this Mark). If there was ever any come back from Universal, he could say one of his kids' mates must have pinched them during a house party or something.