Let’s take a look at the image above, shall we?

What you see there is one burned CD, a single word written on it in fine-point Sharpie.

This is what came in a plain brown envelope earlier this week.

Just this.

No bio. No track list. Not even a flimsy little slip of a cover for the poor naked CD.

Here’s the thing: We get a lot of mail. While it’d be nice to be able to thoroughly research every piece of mail that arrives, there is this thing called time — limited amounts of it. Things that take extra time are the first things to get shoved aside until a later that often takes its own sweet time getting here.

I’m not saying you need to do a lot of work to get our attention, mind you. I’m saying that a tiny bit of information goes a long way. For example, had this plain silver CD come in a paper sleeve with a sticker with the name of the band and the album, the band’s website and any relevant tour dates, it would have been a whole different item. Not an example of what not to do.

While I’m talking about the difference between useful and frustrating items, let me offer up a quick reminder about calendar and music deadlines:

Calendar submissions are due by noon on the Thursday prior to the issue in which your listing should appear. Calendar submissions should be emailed to cal at eugeneweekly dot com; the receipt of these messages cannot be confirmed due to the sheer volume of email in the calendar editor’s box. If you send interesting, high-resolution photos along with your listings, they are more likely to get in the paper. Tiny, poorly Photoshopped images of you on a mountain or four dudes leaning against a wall are regarded with heavy sighs, and your SonicBids link isn’t helpful if the photos there are the size of postage stamps.

The deadline for consideration for a music story is the Thursday two weeks prior to the issue in which a story would appear. This does not mean two weeks before the show, but two weeks before the relevant issue. Please be sure to include (in your email to music at eugeneweekly dot com) all the pertinent information about your show: who, where, when, price, etc. Local CD releases are a priority, but nothing is guaranteed; the space we have available for music previews is limited, unfortunately. I wish it were otherwise. (Another aspect of the limited space is that we don’t run CD reviews that are not associated with an upcoming show.)

When you’re sending stuff to the calendar or music editor — or anyone at EW, really — please be sure to include the basic information in the body of the email; a too-brief message with an attachment is often greeted with mild expletives.

Any questions? I would very much like to answer them.

(The amusing postscript to this story is that, against my better judgement — who’s to say it wasn’t going to contain some weird virus that, oh, eats all my email? — I popped the mysterious Europeans CD into the computer. It wasn’t too bad.)