toomanydaves…words by davelms

I’ve updated my Leeds Gig Tickets site as I was having some trouble with club nights infiltrating my event aggregation rules – the easiest way around this, I decided, was to farm the nightclub events out to their own page.

So I did.

I now have a Leeds Club Tickets page, with a change of design to differentiate between the varying parts of the ticket websites.

If you’ve not come across these sites before, my aim was to try and make the whole I’m looking to buy gig tickets process easier for the music fan. With many agencies covering the same event, each with their own availability (some sell out far quicker than others) and different fees, I thought it would be better if I could aggregate all 13 or 14 ticket agencies for an event, place the links onto a single webpage, and allow the user to find the ticket links more easily. I then developed software to filter out and remove sold out events and to keep the page fresh.

So think of the site as a specialised ticket search engine. Simples.

So if you’re buying tickets for Leeds gigs, check out our band tickets and nightclub tickets pages.

I have a few Twitter accounts. And thought I’d tell you about them.

Firstly, my personal twitter account is @davelms.

I also run a few more for Leeds Music Scene related tweets, Ticket Alerts and announcements, and Musician Adverts.

Please follow any that sound like they may be of interest to you.

Update Leeds Gig Guide site now live at www.leedsgigs.co.uk.

Bit of a dull update considering this is my first post in over two years!

I’ve recently spent a bit of time creating a more general Leeds site. I started off with the idea of having a portal (-style) front page mixing and matching the best bits of other sites (ahem, legally!) and then creating a web directory of Leeds websites.

Regarding the Web Directory – one of the annoyances I had with DMOZ and hence Google, and Yahoo too, was the fact they are global directories and don’t quite suit all regions. I also found the regional navigation a little difficult. Well, less difficult, more bugging.

Finally, I couldn’t manage to get a domain name of choice, so went for leedz.co.uk ! Zzzzzzzzz… haha.

With two young children it’s always an early start in our household on Christmas Day. But with Santa’s presents now opened and the kids playing with their new toys it’s time to reflect on 2006 and look forward to 2007.

I recently wrote a summary of the Leeds music scene in 2006, where I tried to rattle through most of the news releases I had come across throughout the year. There’s so much that went on in 2006, so why don’t you have a read of that article and add your own thoughts.

For me personally (i.e. my tastes in music), 2006 was an excellent year. The bands I like most in Leeds enjoyed a rapid rise in public awareness and nationwide popularity. In particular, the two bands I’d single out most would be Forward Russia and The Sunshine Underground. The former band feature a few friends of mine, whereas the latter were a band I first encountered during 2005 when they sent me their demo CD. I farmed it out, as I do, to a new and amazingly talented writer (Lauren Strain, who now writes for Plan B amongst other publications) and from that first listen she was hooked. As was I.

Both Forward Russia and The Sunshine Underground have albums out now.

Other bands I’d single out from 2006 would be The Pigeon Detectives, who I have seen a handful of times but most memorable was at Middlesbrough Music Live where they played just before headline act Bromheads Jacket. My gig of the year!

Emerging bands for 2007 would be Wild Beasts and Sky Larkin. Wild Beasts have just released their debut single, whereas Sky Larkin release theirs early in 2007.

I’ve also been listening to the debut single from Voltage Union and the album from Piskie Sits. If these new releases are an example of what to expect from 2007, then the Leeds music scene is definitely marching onwards with strength.

Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!