One of the Things About The Bay Area

Something I appreciate greatly about the Bay Area of California is the amount of live music. Being the summer and as fall approaches there are a ton of musicians that are playing in nearby venues. I was reminded of this because I got an email from iRich about Grant Lee Phillips, which I didn't make it to, but also because I just got my Mike Doughty ticket in the mail today. I'm sure as the next few months go by, I will have plenty of opportunity to blog about the shows, but I thought I'd give a run down and then add my plea to the lord of the interwebs. Note: I'm using Google Calendar which is pretty sweet for keeping track of things like baseball games and shows.

August 12th (Saturday) - Death Cab for Cutie, Mates of State and Spoon @ the Greek Theater in Berkley. (World Party is also playing over in SF this same night, but I already had the ticket to these three bands who were all at ACL last year).

August 18th (Friday) - Ben Harper @ the Greek Theater in Berkley.

August 29th (Tuesday) - Boston Red Sox @ Oakland Athletics

September 6th (Wednesday) - Hothouse Flowers @ Slim's in San Francisco

September 10th (Sunday) - Mike Doughty @ the Independent in San Francisco

There are many more shows I'd like to get to. The biggest problem is there really isn't a central concert calendar for the Bay Area. Someone should develop one. I can go to KFOG's site and look at theirs, but it's not complete...so I've discovered a bunch of shows through MySpace, but it takes a lot of digging to find all the artists I might go see for $10-$20 or $50. I'm still looking at Roger Waters, Keane, Tom Petty, Van Morrison, DMB and Robert Randolph, and Willie Nelson, but they either require too much of a commitment from the wallet or the travel on weeknight. If you see someone who's playing in the Bay Area that I should go and see, here's your chance to get involved. I'm open to suggestions...and if you want to come down, over, up, around to see someone playing in the area, let me know and I might be able to help you out. Speaking of ACL, if you want to throw your money at me to attend, feel free to click the paypal button. I'd love to go, but ironically (considering last year I managed to make it down from Alaska) it's much more difficult to swing this year. I won't forget my camera when I go to these shows either like I did when I went to Strays Don't Sleep.