Controversy and pessimism seems to be fueling a lot of blog posts and ideas of mine lately, but not today. I’m going to be all sunshine and rainbows with this nice little story about the power of social media on a local level…

A couple weeks ago, I went with some friends to catch one of Ann Arbor’s better bands, Starling Electric, play a show in Pontiac, which is a little over an hour’s drive from Ann Arbor. After a couple hours, it became quite clear that we missed their set. (Granted, this is mostly due to my inability to read signs and therefore miss the fact that they were up first and NOT second, but still, we drove all that way for almost nothing.) Being the pseudo-Japanese tourist/social media geek that I am, I documented the journey from dinner to the crap headliner band we didn’t mean to see and posted everything on Flickr.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon when I get a Facebook friend request from someone named Jason DeCamillis. While uncontrollably rolling my eyes from what I was sure was another spam profile, I decided to check it out. Turns out he is from Starling Electric.

*Side note: I felt bad not knowing who he was considering one of my best friends used to work with the guitarist at Whole Foods and my ex still works with the lead singer at another health food store in A2.

**Side side note: This town is too damn small.

Somehow Jason came across my Flickr photos and felt so bad about the situation (I guess they went on earlier than expected too) he offered to put me on the list for the next Starling Electric show at the Blind Pig in two weeks as well as invite me to the after-party. W00t!

Moral of the story: If you bitch loud enough about something online, there will always be someone there to make things right, whether it’s a company as big as Comcast or an up-and-coming indie band.

Kidding (sort of).

Check out Starling Electric on MySpace or on Last.fm. And while I’m pimping, here’s the really weird Second Life-esque video for The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.


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