Our fellow humans in Haiti are going through hell.

So, what should you do about it?  How about getting out to hear some great live music?

Yep!  just make sure to find a local Haiti benefit concert to attend!  How?  Check it out – we hacked gruvr to  locate Haiti concerts near you .   Just go to gruvr ,  type “haiti concerts” in Band Search, and it will do the rest.  Or, use this shortcut link:  Haiti concert finder

If gruvr can’t find haiti events within your desired search radius, it will at least put up the 10 closest events, no matter how far away those are.

Here’s the scoop:  for the past week, we’ve been seeing lots of searches for Haiti concerts and talk about them on twitter. We’ve been seen lots of “haiti benefit” concerts get added to the gruvr map – dozens per day!  Some have been big artists- like Lady Gaga, but we did a quick search and found over 600 small events planned, happening everywhere - in VFWs, churches, schools , museums – you name it!  As of today, about 30 new haiti events are being discovered per day.

If we can help more people find these events, more will attend.  And if more people help Haiti, well – it’s worth the hacking.

Now some details:

• The normal gruvr reminder function will work for events you discover.  Just add shows to your favorites list by visiting them, tell gruvr your email, and it will remind you.
• Want to add your event? Just post the gig on a myspace band profile,  use the word “Haiti” in the venue part, and put the band on the map
• We disabled all adsense ads for the time being since that’s not the point, but they’ll be back in a week or so.
• got a legitimate haiti relief ad you want to show to 15k people/day? contact us.

So now it’s up to you.  Please share this and spread the word, so these events get discovered by your friends, too.
Go experience one of these events.  Dance a little, cry a bit,  give until it hurts… and you’ll be glad you did.

Let us know how it works out.

Thanks, and let’s hope your country never collapses on top of you.

Mark

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!