Goodbye, Nancies

File this under “Things I Totally Missed While I Was Out of Town and Not Paying Attention”: nancies.org is no more.

For the uninitiated, nancies.org was one of the first Dave Matthews Band-related web sites on the net, not to mention one of the best fan sites around (as the linked post above indicates, the site was named “Best Fan Site” by Vh1 in 2001). On a personal note, it was one of the first places I ever looked for DMB-related information, and much of what I know about the band aside from reading articles and listening to the music is thanks to Nancies.

I even tried, perhaps out of some false sense of hope, to put nancies.org into my web browser to see what came up. And nothing–no set lists, no archives, no boards. And although I never joined the boards on Nancies, I lurked enough to know that the vast majority of conversations were informative and respectful, something one doesn’t always get on DMB boards (or most web discussion boards, for that matter).

So the demise of Nancies is a loss; however, “dark clouds may hang on me sometimes/but I’ll work it out.” There are still several places on the Interwebs to get your DMB fix (besides the obvious: the band’s official website, which includes a discussion board for those in the Warehouse, DMB’s fan club), so one need not fear that Nancies has left too great a hole in the universe. My three favorite DMB-related sites are:

www.dmbalmanac.com: Your one-stop shop for all the DMB-concert related statistics you could ever want, including venue information and song lyrics.

www.antsmarching.org: Band news, setlists, torrent downloads, and much more. My advice, however, is to stay off the boards. While there are some lovely people at Ants, if I wanted to have conversations with guys who call each other “douchebag” while trying to out-awesome each other, I’d just go back to teaching college full time. But that’s just my two cents.

www.foolsthinking.com: While this site doesn’t have as much information as the previous two, the boards here are probably the most civil, supportive, and respectful as any in the DMB universe (or just about anywhere else on the Internet). If you’re looking for people who are into DMB but won’t ridicule you for asking a simple question, the Fools are your folks.

Happy DMB-surfing!