I don’t know what it is about the rock and roll but for some reason the good shows always seem to show up in bunches all at once. After a drought lasting since last fall there are no less than 6 shows in the next 2 months that I’m planning on hitting. 4 of those are weekend shows which is huge plus now that I’m Worky McWorksalot from OldFogeytown. To get me out on a weeknight anymore it either has to be a band that I just can’t miss (like Yo La Tengo) or be at a venue that’s really close. The shows are:

³⁄₁₇ – TV on the Radio – Voodoo Lounge

³⁄₃₁ – Explosions in the Sky – Bottleneck

⁴⁄₀₆ – Neko Case – Liberty Hall

⁴⁄₁₁ – Yo La Tengo – Granada

⁴⁄₂₁ – The Decemberists – Uptown Theatre

⁴⁄₃₀ – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Voodoo Lounge

While they should all be awesome shows, I’m especially thrilled to finally get a chance to see Neko Case, and Yo La Tengo is definitely one of my favorite bands to see live. Finally having some shows to look forward to also gave me a chance to try out Last.fm’s sweet new Events system for keeping track of local shows. In fact, that’s also where I found out about a number of them. Even though there are tons of other ways to check for shows, like upcoming.org or Google’s public calendar search, I think so far I’m liking Last.fm the best. For one thing it recommends things based on all the artists you’ve listened to and its also cool that you can see what other users are going to that show (ok, that one would be more useful if I actually, um, knew any other Last.fm users that went to shows around here, but it’s cool nonetheless). Also, in keeping with Last.fm’s penchant for generating RSS feeds for everything you can subscribe to an artist or venue’s feed of upcoming events. They even publish them as iCal feeds so you just have them displayed directly on your calendar (providing your calendar supports iCal. I’m looking at you, Outlook.)