Showlist DC : More

Hey, DC-area Phish fans! We’re giving away a pair of tickets to see Strange Design at the Fillmore Silver Spring this Friday, 20 January 2012. We all know how much Phish fans love listening to live recordings of the band, so all you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me your favorite Phish live show or song, and I’ll pick a winner at random on Thursday, 19 January at 5 PM Eastern. Be sure to use a valid email address when you enter, so I can contact you if you win (and don’t worry: your email address won’t be posted publicly when you comment on this entry).

A little bit about this show: Strange Design is a group that recreates Phish shows in their entirety, and at this show, they’ll be performing the second night of Phish’s legendary two-night stand at Arrowhead Ranch in 1991. The unique thing about that 1991 concert is that Phish performed with special guests the Giant Country Horns– and at the Fillmore show this Friday, Strange Design will have The Big Apple Horns to help them recreate that sound. If you’d like to hear how Strange Design sounds covering Phish, check out this video of the group performing “Reba”.

So again: leave a comment below telling me your favorite Phish live show or song, and I’ll select a winner at random (via random.org) at 5 PM Eastern on Thursday, 19 January for this pair of tickets. I’ll contact you via email if you win, so be sure to use an email address you check regularly! (and again: it won’t be posted publicly when you comment below.)

And if you just can’t wait until then, note that tickets are available via livenation.com for just $5 plus $3 in fees, for a total of $8. That’s a damn bargain since tickets for the original show were $17.50 and that was two decades ago when everything was cheaper! But still, the best bargain of all is to get ‘em for free, so head on over to Phish’s tour archive and let me know what your favorite Phish show or song is!

UPDATE: We were able to give away TWO pairs of tickets to this concert! Thanks to all who entered– contest is now closed and winners have been notified!

Happy New Year! As we wrap up the first full year of ShowlistDC, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who’s been using this site. Thanks for sending me emails, thanks for telling me about shows, thanks for inviting me to your events on Facebook– oh! and hey, thanks to all the musicians out there who put on such awesome shows for all of us!

The idea for this site was hatched in November of 2010, when a friend of mine pointed me to ShowlistAustin, a show listing site started by one of my friends from back when I lived in Austin (unfortunately for me, that site was launched after I had already moved up to DC). I had been keeping track of a ton of DC-area shows already, since I’m a freelance writer, so I decided to take all of my information and put it up on the web for other people to use.

Here’s a little wrap-up of what ShowlistDC did in 2011:

• We listed 7,857 shows at over 200 different venues in DC, Virginia, and Maryland.

• October was our biggest show month, with 894 different events listed. The next busiest month was September, with 794.

• Not surprisingly, most of our events were listed on Saturdays (1,624 shows) or Fridays (1,497 shows).

• Only two venues had over 400 events listed in 2011: the Kennedy Center (437 events) and Jammin’ Java (417 events).

• In December, we launched this blog and gave away our first pair of tickets, to the 9:30 Club‘s New Years Eve show with the Drive-By Truckers, Booker T, and the Alabama Shakes.

• We ended the year with 306 facebook likes and 328 twitter followers.

• We recommended 131 different shows.

• We saw venues open (Fillmore Silver Spring, Baltimore SoundStage, the re-opening of Lubber Run in Arlington) and close (Bourbon Street, the Corpse Fortress in Silver Spring, the art space Hole in the Sky, the Hexagon in Baltimore). As of today, Jaxx in Springfield now has new owners (check out the article I wrote about Jaxx on TBD.com).

I’ve got a lot planned for 2012 as well. In addition to all the concert listings and recommendations that you can currently find here, I’m working on fuller venue information pages (with details about parking, public transportation, and tickets for each venue, as well as other info like which venues have cash-only bars and which venues sell food). I’d like to give away more tickets, and I’ve been talking to some local bands about doing some giveaways of their albums here as well. If there are any ideas for things you’d like to see on ShowlistDC or on this blog, please let me know (either comment here or send an email to showlistdc[at]gmail.com)!

Oh, and feel free to look for me at shows too– I went to 132 shows in 2011 and plan to double that in 2012! (Ok, I probably won’t be able to double that, but I do go to a lot!) I wear a ShowlistDC hoodie when it’s cold out, so I’m pretty easy to spot. Come up and say hi– and keep supporting live music in 2012!