The official blog for the live-music calendar Dar Dar Dar. There is a feed.

I looked through the database today to try figure out what bands or musicians have appeared on Dar Dar Dar the most often since the site was launched three years ago. As of today, Ash Reiter has appeared on Dar Dar Dar the most often, with 55 shows. Ty Segall and Shannon and the Clams round out the top three with 51 and 50 shows, respectively, while The Fresh and Onlys close out the top ten with 37.

1. Ash Reiter (55)
2. Ty Segall (51)
3. Shannon and the Clams (50)
4. Bare Wires (49)
5. Grass Widow (45)
6. Psychic Handbook (44)
7. Grand Lake (41)
8. High Castle (40)
9. Ava Mendoza (38)
10. The Fresh and Onlys (37)

The Blank Tapes and Dominique Leone barely miss the top 10, with 36 shows each.

We do miss out on shows every now and then, so this isn’t quite a list of the top-ten most active performers in the Bay Area, but it’s probably a reasonably close approximation.

Happy Friday!

Dar Dar Dar has a new and improved submission form! Let me know if you have any problems with it; there may be some issues here and there.

Not counting spiders/crawlers, we had 1,760 unique visitors in the month of August.

Some changes to the site over the last few weeks:

• The “browse artists” and “browse venues” pages are now always current.
• The front page now has date markers for the first 5-6 days.
• Events on the front page further ahead in time are now hidden (but can be easily unhidden).

That’s mostly it. I also have a couple other changes planned over the next few weeks…

Hi all, I just finished migrating Dar Dar Dar to a new web host. It might take a while for the changes to take effect on your end (which means you won’t see any updates to the site… and also won’t see this message). Basically, if you’re seeing black links, it means you’re still accessing the old server, and if you’re seeing blue links, it means you’re accessing the new server. Unfortunately, if you’re seeing the black links, there’s nothing to do except wait. But, please get in touch if you don’t start seeing the blue links by Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ll be deleting all the files off the old server in approximately 7 days.

Also, please please please get in touch if you’re on the new site and notice any breakage. Everything should be working the way it used to, but it’s possible that things got lost in the transition.

In other news, we’ve been nominated for SF Weekly’s Web Awards! We’re in the running for “Best Local Concert Listing Site” (category 17). Please vote for us!

I’ve been curious for a while why the features on Dar Dar Dar aren’t more widely used. I’m also curious what features you might be interested in seeing added to the site in the future.

Here, as a reminder, is a quick summary of some of the site’s current features (a similar summary appears on the site’s About page):

• Commenting: every listing has a discussion page; look for speech-bubble icon () next to the listing you want to comment on. Note that a counter appears next to the icon when comments exist.
• “Heart”-ing: analogous to Facebook’s Like feature, or Google’s +1 feature, but self contained; this is a good way to draw attention on the site to shows you think are worth going to. Look for the heart icon () next to the listing you want to “heart.”
• Artist and venue pages: each artist and venue has its own page (eg, Hemlock Tavern‘s page is at: http://dardardar.org/?tag=hemlock-tavern), with a list of upcoming and recent shows. You can find these pages by clicking on the search icon () next to a listing of interest; clicking on the icon will launch links to artist and venue pages for the artists and venues belonging to the listing you just clicked on. Alternatively, you can browse the list of all artists with upcoming shows or the list of all venues with upcoming shows (these links appear in the header).
• Saving and sharing: you can save and share listings; look for the forward icon () next to the listing you want to share. Supported systems currently include Google Calendar, Twitter, and Facebook.
• Feeds: yes, we have a feed. Note that each artist and venue has a feed too, just look for the feed icon () on the artist or venue page (see above).
• The submissions page: yes, you can (and really, really should) send listings in.

Some features I’m thinking about implementing in the future:

• Customized email subscription or feed: notifications based on artists and venues you care about.
• Frequent updates to the lists of artists and venues: currently, the list of artists with upcoming shows and the list of venues with upcoming shows are updated roughly once per day (note that the artist pages and venue pages themselves — see above — do not suffer from this problem). This issue will probably be resolved soon-ish.
• Site redesign: probably not something dramatic, but I’m open to suggestions.

Some features I’m reluctant to implement:

• Facebook Like buttons for each listing: I’ve been tempted to implement this, but there are practical constraints. Notably, it’s only possible to implement Facebook’s Like feature with Facebook’s Like buttons (eg, a text-only implementation is not possible) and the buttons are hard to customize and are too tall to be nicely placed “in line.” I’m also concerned about privacy issues. Given that Dar Dar Dar already supports the (older) Facebook Share feature, I don’t see a strong reason the Like button needs to be implemented.

Please get in touch — either in the comments or via email — if you have thoughts on the site’s features, or suggestions regarding features you’d like to see implemented in the future.

Playing this Saturday, July 9!

Horaflora and Teen Aged Mush Ash will also be performing.

From Wikipedia: songs about San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Yes! What are your favorites?

Grass Widow’s “11 of Diamonds.”

Grass Widow is playing June 22nd at Verdi Club, July 2nd at Bottom of the Hill, and August 4th at Sugar Mountain.