Miscellaneous,  New Orleans

iConcertCal and a Concert Dilemma

DDBB

Peter at Bars & Guitars recommended a cool (and free) iTunes plug-in called iConcertCal. After you install it, you click View > Show Visualizer on your iTunes menu bar, and it shows you a calendar of concerts in your area by the artists in your iTunes library. Very cool. The calendar interface could be a little bigger and the layout a little more pleasing to the eye, but the concept itself is brilliant. One quick look, and you’re plugged into the latest concert info for the artists you like.

At first glance for me, I found out that the weekend of February 17th will be a great one for New Orleans music in the Phoenix area. Saturday the 17th, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band will be at the Orpheum Theater in Phoenix. The following night, it’s the Dirty Dozen Brass Band at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts. Decisions decisions. Realistically, I’ll only be able to hit one of these. Which one should I choose?

Dirty Dozen Brass Band: Jesus on the Mainline (mp3) – from Funeral for a Friend
Here’s what my iConcertCal looks like:iconcertcal

5 Comments

  • JimH

    I put this in and found it a little creepy that the plug-in without any prompting from myself knew what city I lived in. It was also funny to see a whole bunch of bands I thought I never heard of – mostly due to downloading the odd thing off an mp3 blog or SXSW, not being impressed and never following up on the band. Downside to this is that it only covers the major venues in my city, so the smaller clubs appear to be ig’ed or they aren’t contributing to whatever aggregator this thing is getting its info from. It is very cool though, ick.

  • Pete

    Jim – For location, the tool looks at your IP address:

    When iConcertCal first starts up it will try to automatically figure out what city and state you are in by checking your ip adress. But you can easily change your current city and state to search for shows in another town near you, or in a town where you plan to visit.

    To change your city and state simply click on the current city and state text boxes and type in your new location. iConcertCal will recognize either your full state name (“California”) or the 2-letter abbreviation for your state (“CA”). If you live in Canada, then you can enter your province in the state field.

  • jazzmaster

    Pete ~ I haven’t seen the DDBB, so I can’t really help on this. I am confused, though… When I went to Preservation Hall, I could have sworn they said the bands rotate. I didn’t think there was “1” band.

  • Pete

    I think it may be a rotating band, and whoever the members of the band are at the time are the ones that tour? That’s my guess. We’ve got a couple of N’awlins readers / experts who can chime in… CJ?

  • Jeff

    Hey, this is Jeff. I wrote iConcertCal. I noticed from your screen shot that you have your vizualizer in small mode. If you set it on large mode (preferences | advanced) it will fill your whole screen and be alot easier to use. Thanks for the blog!

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