Now He's Plug Award Nominated Ferris O'Brien...

Got a jubilant bit of e-mail from our own Ferris O'Brien, which reads as follows...

I am very excited to announce that I have been nominated for a Plug Award this year for SPY RADIO!!!!...and I would encourage all to please vote (for your choice, of course.)

What is Plug, you ask?

PLUG is different from all of the institutional accolades for the music industry ? the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, Radio Music Awards, GRAMMY Awards, Teen Choice Awards, MTV Music Awards, etc. etc. Those are all devoted to recognizing the mainstream hits. Very rarely do these honors reach, let alone embrace, independent music or the community of artists and fans who now represent more than 25% of the global music market. We?re a community that thinks for ourselves ? we don?t take our cues from mainstream media or marketing.

PLUG is about the independent music community coming together to recognize our own. We?re fans from every walk of the music world who gather together each year to celebrate these artists who live and flourish in the margins. PLUG is about the artists who inspire and the music that disrupts the artistic and corporate mediocrity that dominates our culture. Some of the artists on the ballot each year are well known to us, but most all are no where close to the household names we wish they were.

We?ve discovered these records on blogs, in magazine blurbs, fanzines, recommendations from our local record store, in IM conversations, in links from friends and passionate testimonials overheard in line outside a club... PLUG is the experience of trading mix tapes with friends. The most satisfying thing for us is to see how often fans of one artist become new fans of another during each year?s get-out-the-vote campaign.

Important note about major labels: PLUG recognizes that there are talented and important, artists whose careers develop on major labels. Although many of these artists are forced to fight their own upstream battles within the large companies that adopt them, there are opportunities and resources afforded them that only large companies can provide. PLUG devotes its resources to those artists, labels and media who operate outside that market share.

Again, thank you so very much for listening & supporting these artists, labels & other media...

So if you're ready to vote, go here and sock it in for O'Brien!