The AVC Music Meetup

I posted a few weeks back about a great music blogging experience with a new band called The Rural Alberta Advantage. The band is from Canada and had never been in the US until this week. Last night they played their first show in the states, here in NYC at Pianos. I was there and the cool thing is so were about half dozen (maybe more) members of this community. I met a bunch of readers for the first time last night. Thanks everyone for coming up and introducing yourself.

For those readers who came out, we got to hang out with the band before and after the show and were treated to a fantastic set. The only bummer was Fraser did not get to hear his favorite track off the new record, called In The Summertime. The band promised to play it when they are back in NYC next friday in Brooklyn at Union Hall.

Here’s a shot of the band at work.
RAA

There’s just three of them, Nils is the lead singer/guitar/piano, Amy (who emailed me to start this whole thing off) plays a bunch of fun instruments and sings backup, and Paul is a crazy good drummer. They make a much bigger sound than you’d think. Here’s the first song of theirs I ever heard. Click on the first play button, not the second one.

The Ballad of the RAA – The Rural Alberta Advantage

At the end of the show, instead of an encore, the band walked out into the middle of the audience and sang a song called Goodbye. You’ll probably see a few AVC community members in this photo. Too bad we can’t all tag ourselves in it.

#Music#My Music#NYC

Comments (Archived):

  1. kskobac

    Fred, it was great to meet you last night – and thank you so much for the recommendation – Rural Alberta Advantage was great, and so was The Loom, who’s album I bought after the show (I had to leave quickly at the end and didn’t get to buy RAA’s album)I recorded RAA’s performance of ‘Goodnight’ at the end, though of course it’s in the dark because there was no light out on the floor: http://www.youtube.com/watc…I’ll post a few more videos on YouTube this morning and send the links as well. Thanks again! – Kevin

    1. fredwilson

      that’s a great audio recording masquerading as a video. there should be a way to turn that into a mp3. i love that song

  2. fredwilson

    I would have enjoyed meeting youMaybe next time

  3. fredwilson

    Yes, it was fun FraserA good memory indeed

  4. Fraser

    Even though I didn’t get to hear In The Summertime, the concert was still great.A fun memory — drinking a beer with Amy before the show who calmly said “well, I should go play now.” Seriously, how cool is that?The live version of Don’t Haunt This Place was excellent.

  5. Nick Dinatale

    Hello Fred, I was there last night and saw you a couple of times but did not want to pester (I was the guy in front of you buying tickets).Thanks for the heads up on RAA, they were fantastic. A really excellent set. My girlfriend and I are new fans.

    1. Fraser

      Thanks for sharing these! I’ve listened to Don’t Haunt this place a few times today. Most excellent.

  6. dlifson

    Definitely a great show. I had their music in my head all the way home last night and when I woke up this morning. I feel lucky to have seen their first show in the US.My top two favorite Canadian Bands are Stars and Malajube (http://www.last.fm/music/Ma…. These guys are now on that list.

    1. fredwilson

      I don¹t know MalajubeI¹ll check then outIt was nice seeing you last nightGlad you enjoyed it

  7. Michael Lewkowitz

    Love how this transpired into a meetup. I think the meetup is starting to play a different role than it used to. It used to be that we start a conversation out of a meetup… using the meetup as an opportunity for people to gather around a shared interest. Increasingly people are gathering virutally around shared interests pushing the conversation and then turning to a meetup (or series of meetups) to taking things further/spread/deepen the engagement. We’ve seen some amazing things happen through that cycle in the Toronto community like #hohoto and #changecamp (search in twitter). Somehow much more fluid and iterative than it has been before and the interplay of physical/virtual in this seems to be changing the pace of innovation somehow. Wonder what implications/opportunities this represents for Meetup.com? Fun.

    1. kidmercury

      i think it’s actually bad news for meetup.com, because what i think is going to happen is that vibrant communities will be centered around content (like blogs). then, the site with the content will need an application like meetup.com that it can plug into its platform. so perhaps it’s bullish for meetup.com if they can integrate themselves into other platforms. though i think open source ecosystems will be far more effective at addressing this.but either way it’s great for avc.com and the new media revolution!

      1. fredwilson

        Meetup is a web service as much as its a destinationClearly they can do a lot more to facilitate this trend

    2. fredwilson

      Meetup is going to need to figure out how to harness conversations=>meetups

      1. Michael Lewkowitz

        yep and we’re seeing conversation -> meetup -> conversations -> meetups etc.in hyper iterative fashion. not sure if it’s unique to the toronto twittercommunity of the last few months but there was something very interestinggoing on. maybe related to density or diversity of users in a geographicarea? or maybe related to a deep/cold/long winter? who knows 🙂

        1. fredwilson

          Are these one time meetups or groups that continue to meetup on a regularbasis?

          1. Michael Lewkowitz

            A mix – one main meetup seems to spawn – have threads to – a series ofother ones. Some repeat. Some are cloned (different name/different place).Some die. For sure though, they are part of an iterative process that havemultiple conversation threads running through/coming out of them. Somethreads/events from Toronto recently: #convo01 #hohoto #thmvmnt #changecamp.

  8. Michael Lewkowitz

    heh… as with everything it can cut both ways. It will be interesting tosee how they respond and what it might mean for their business model. Andyes open source ecosystems respond incredibly quickly and are well suited tothis type of community. In the end it’s all about leadership and who picksup on the trends and delivers something that the community embraces. Thanksfor the conversation.