The Long Afternoon Joins with Travel Industry for National Plan For Vacation Day

Cryptic Indie Band Cites New Research Showing Americans Let Millions of Vacation Days Pass, Squandering Opportunities to Rock

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29, 2018 — The Long Afternoon, a shadowy organization producing independent rock music, is joining with the travel industry to raise awareness of National Plan for Vacation Day. Celebrated on the last Tuesday of January, this national observance encourages Americans to plan their vacation days for the rest of the year at the start of the year.

Having opted out of conventional rock industry careerism to pursue a strategy of deliberate obscurity, The Long Afternoon see the event as an opportunity for people to plan to spend more time acquiring and experiencing the recorded documents and live performances the organization provides.

The song “Just the Sun” is an example of The Long Afternoon’s cryptic, independent rock.

“The Long Afternoon has long been concerned about the lack of slack in the lives of American workers,” said Ginger M. Armalade, the organization’s spokesperson and leisure activities coordinator. “When people labor without adequate refractory periods, they lose the ability to enjoy anything—including rock music produced outside the conventional system. This is bad for individuals, bad for the economy, and bad for The Long Afternoon.”

Fewer than half of Americans (49%) take the time to plan their vacation days out each year, according to new research from Project: Time Off, held back by lack of certainty with personal schedules (64%), work schedules (57%), and children’s schedules (50%). The findings, from The Power of Vacation Planning report, offer an in-depth look at why Americans’ planning behavior based on GfK survey research of 2,076 U.S. employees who earn paid time off for National Plan for Vacation Day.

By failing to block the calendar, Americans are creating a stockpile of 662 million unused vacation days and a $236 billion missed opportunity for the U.S. economy. “A lot of people are squandering a lot of opportunity to rock,” Armalade noted. “They need to act now now to set aside the time to enjoy independent rock and roll later in the year.”

[tweetshare tweet=”A lot of people are squandering a lot of opportunities to rock. #PlanForVacation ” username=”longafternoon”]

“At the beginning of the year the calendar is still full of possibility and there is no better time to start planning vacation days,” said Katie Denis, chief of research and strategy at Project: Time Off. “Americans who want to use more of their vacation time can put themselves in a better position to do so by planning ahead—and their request is more likely to be approved by the boss.”

The lack of planning has implications in the office. Managers are near universal (91%) in saying they want to approve vacation requests, but a significant 43 percent say they are sometimes unable to because their employees did not provide enough notice. Nearly half (48%) of employees give six weeks or less notice when taking at least a week off; just 19 percent give three months or more.

Better advanced planning could help alleviate the mountain of work employees fear returning to. As it stands today, the majority (57%) of employees are leaving all or more of their work for when they return or taking it with them on vacation.

“This is most unfortunate,” said The Long Afternoon’s spokesperson. “Preoccupation with irrelevant things will definitely hamper your ability to really concentrate on and enjoy the music put forth by The Long Afternoon and like-minded providers of independent rock music. As they used to say in a different context, it’s all about set and setting. That’s why planning ahead is important.”

“No one wants to spend their precious time away with work stress hanging over their head,” added Denis. “The more time you have to prepare before you leave, the more enjoyable the vacation experience—it’s no wonder that planners are happier people.”

To help Americans plan, Project: Time Off launched a vacation planning tool that lets employees enter in the number of days off they earn, plot out how they want to spend them, save to their calendars, and export to their friends and family—and even their bosses. Travel organizations are also offering discounts, giveaways and sweepstakes, and itineraries for vacations.

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About National Plan for Vacation Day

National Plan for Vacation Day, celebrated on the last Tuesday of January, is a day to encourage Americans to plan their vacation days for the rest of the year at the start of the year.  Launched by the U.S. Travel Association’s Project: Time Off initiative in 2017, National Plan for Vacation Day provides an opportunity to come together at a single moment to rally around the importance of planning for vacation. In its inaugural year, more than 600 organizations, representing all 50 states came together to encourage Americans to plan for vacation. Learn more at ProjectTimeOff.com/Plan and join the conversation online with #PlanForVacation.

About Project: Time Off

Project: Time Off has uncovered an alarming trend over the last 40 years: Americans are taking fewer and fewer vacation days. To reverse this trend, we aim to prove that vacation travel is valuable and necessary for strengthening personal relationships, inspiring creative thinking, improving professional performance, and promoting better health.

About The Long Afternoon

Reclusive Pennsylvania-based indie rock pioneers The Long Afternoon formed in Pittsburgh in 1985 and consolidated in State College in 1987. The organization has pursued a strategy of deliberate obscurity, opting not to participate in conventional rock and roll career-building activities and eschewing traditional notions of success entirely, leaving their ultimate ambitions and intent unknown to any but the group’s inner circle.

The Long Afternoon creates complex sinusoidal plane waves of carefully selected and configured frequencies, transmitted primarily but not exclusively via pulse code modulation. The organization facilitates and enhances cognitive separation and spatial location in ways that foster a pleasurable and stimulating yet challenging environment for clients, constituents, and consumers, as well as the group’s individual contributors.

The organization’s first recorded statement, the album entitled The Luxury Problem, came out in 2006 to enthusiastic reviews. Their second album, Signifying Nothing, arrived in 2009 and was named one of the 10 best indie albums of the year by A Future in Noise. The group’s third album, 2011’s An Index of Maladjustments, contained “The Chameleonaires,” a single that, despite its ambiguity about wealth and class, was adopted as an anthem by Wall Street protestors. In keeping with their iconoclastic approach, The Long Afternoon neither encouraged nor discouraged this use of their statement. The organization’s fourth album, Regression, arrived in August 2016 and featured the single “Autoresponder,” an attack on institutionally endorsed and enforced thoughtlessness.

The Long Afternoon continues to issue recorded statements and proffer live demonstrations as situations demand.

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