You know how to use gruvr to find upcoming concerts by your favorite artists and connect with nearby fans beforehand by commenting on the event page.   But after the gig occurs, it is gone from our map, along with any discussion – gone for good!   Yet the greatest thing about group experiences can be – well, sharing those fond memories that nobody can take away!

This summer, we ran across a nice site called Gig Memories global gig and event archive .   The point of GigMemories.com is to allow concert fans to build an archive of past performances and capture their recollections along with videos,photos, etc.    You can enter gigs and put them into a ‘pool’ shared with other users.  If you find a gig you attended already in the pool,  you can “adopt” it and add your thoughts.

There are some sites with similar functions, but we like Gig Memories because it is similar to gruvr:  it’s a small, independent, grassroots style service.  It’s got a simple design, not overly ‘featurized’… and its creator is a Deadhead from way back, just like gruvr’s founder.Gig Memories was conceived two years ago when its founder realised how difficult it was to find info on past gigs on the web.

Over the summer, we integrated gruvr events with GigMemories so that expired gigs from gruvr are now stored in the GigMemories archive, where they can accumulate commentary and recollections from fans who shared the experience.  Problem solved!  If you like, you can search for gigs from gruvr archived on Gigmemories

Go check it out and let us know what you think!

As you probably know, grüvr is all about helping you discover the music that’s all around – right next door, and often free.  What’s great about small events is that artists are so accessible, seating is great, and it’s a more social venue – you get to chat without being deafened by a monster PA system. Grüvr finds these more obscure artists mostly from myspace – but sometimes the band doesn’t even post gigs on myspace.. so they aren’t on grüvr.

On Nantucket, the Dreamland Foundation is sponsoring a series of free concerts on Wednesday afternoons – usually local folk musicians – so I figured I’d go check it out. The venue is the grassed-over lot where the old Dreamland Theatre will be rebuilt. I took my Kodak Ki6 and captured this nice 720p hi-def video of Dave performing Bob Dylan’s Visions of Johanna. You can even see some dense clouds of Nantucket fog blowing around the corner.

It might be nice to see Bob Dylan himself live but he’s not playing near Nantucket. The cool thing is I got to heckle Dave by requesting Desolation Row (which is so long nobody without a laptop can remember the lyrics!) but also Tom Thumb blues, which he played a great version of later. The vid is a bit jumpy because I used my knee as the tripod and well – just had to keep tapping my foot

Enjoy!

Here’s something simple & fun you can do to win concert tickets from  grüvr :  make  a grüvr tshirt and post a video or photo of you  (or anyone)  modelling it and we will send you a discount code for $25 off tickets for the concert of your choice from grüvr tickets.

Details:

1. Have fun and make your own design – tiedye, magic marker art, iron-ons, needlepoint –  get creative and use map imagery, dancing stick figure, recycle your fave band T  - whatever!  It just has to feature the grüvr logo prominently and permanently.  Or if you want, you can just buy a shirt from  our merch page (most are under $20, so basically that way is like getting a free shirt…)
2. Post a video or photo of someone wearing the shirt on blip.tv or similar site- follow the video embedded in this post to blip.tv for an example.   Tell us specifically which artist/show you want the tickets for in the comments below your video, so we know it qualifies.
   For an event to qualify, there must be a grüvr listings of tickets available for that event.  For example, grüvr does have tickets for the Kings of Leon Oct 10th show in Lexington KY as you can see here:  http://tickets.gruvr.com/?concert=Kings-Of-Leon-in-lexington-on-Oct-10-09
3. Then tell us @gruvr on Twitter about your post.

We will send you a code that can be applied to the purchase of grüvr tickets,  good for one use and will deduct up to $25 from purchase price for tickets for that specific event.  Limit one coupon per household /tshirt.  Offer good until Sept 1, 2009 or until discounts run out, whichever occurs first.

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the grüvr blog.    Here are the topics we plan to be covering in the near future.

• Contests & Giveaways for concert tickets!
• What is gruvr.com and how did it come to be?
• New feature releases, design-oriented discussion
• Mapping and Geo-web technology and standards as relevant to this site
• SEO: how hyper-local geographic data poses challenges (and opportunities) for current search technology
• Observations on web-based promotion of live music
• News/opinion on the rapidly evolving state of the secondary ticket market
• Recent research in GIS, web technology, social media

… and lots more.

Although gruvr has been live on the web for a while now, I have avoided creating a blog. I’m not much of a blogger – more of a twitterer. I’ve feared the following scenarios:

• that I’d put too much time into the blog and not have enough time for site work
• that I’d put too little time into the blog and create something dull.
• that no matter how much or how little time I put in, few would follow it!

Here’s hoping none of that happens! So check in. Say hi.

Mark