So we haven't heard anything new from Neutral Milk Hotel in more than a decade and, strictly speaking, we're not about to now. But they did just "make an appeal to the good people who might have enjoyed the music over the years." It's a rare publicist-issued statement about an unusual cause that, somehow, is befitting of the rogue band whose sound has, more than once, been described as a marching band on acid. A message signed "Julian Koster with Jeff Mangum, on behalf of Neutral Milk Hotel," states that a certain carousel is in danger of going the way of the band: becoming history.

Unfortunately we live in a world where the great whirling contraptions of mechanical music and light are not as profitable to operate as other things," writes Koster. "And carousels are worth much more taken apart and sold in pieces to museums, where one must pay to look at them behind glass, rather than having them simply exist in the world that we now all share."

The carousel is up against 24 other historic Massachusetts structures for a $100,000 grant. Fans (and amusement park lovers) can vote once a day here until May 16.

If we all vote, and it wins, how about some new music from Neutral Milk Hotel? Even just one song. Deal?