Yet, last week, I got to listen to, not one, but five great bands playing gigs all during the past two months, January to February. First, there was Umphrey’s playing a show in early February in Wisconsin, followed by the jazz-funk-rock-hip-hop fusion of Galactic, a New Orleans band, from a gig they played this January aboard a cruise ship to Jamaica. Then came Bob Weir and his band, Ratdog, with an interesting new version of Hell in A Bucket.

After Weir, came the trance-infused sound of Disco Biscuits playing an 11-minute version of a song called Digital Buddha, and the funky Radiators (also from New Orleans) playing a January gig in their hometown. All of this and more were on a single mp3 track that I downloaded free within weeks of the actual concerts taking place.

The website, Nugs.net is a virtual treasure trove of live concerts by hundreds of bands. While it’s partial to jambands, it also has shows by a host of others. I found Monk ‘Round the World by the Thelonious Monk Quartet, a compilation from the European concerts that the late jazz maestro played between 1961 and 1965. Burrowing through Nugs, I found another concert. This one was by Old & In the Gray, the band that was formed by David Grisman, Peter Rowan and Vassar Clements after Jerry Garcia died and their erstwhile band, Old & In the Way (where Garcia used to play banjo) disbanded.

In case you think Nugs is only about niche bands and esoteric music espoused by people like the author of this column, let me tell you what else I found on the website: almost every concert that Metallica has played since 1982 to, well, last month. Now, I’m no Metallica fan but if you are, you may like to check out the 9.22-minute version of Disposal Heroes that they played in Nurburgring, Germany, in June 2006, or the entire gig that they played in 1986 at the Hammersmith Odeon, London.

Nugs, as I realised, is the A to Z of gigs and the one-stop website that you must go to if you want your music live. You’re a Barenaked Ladies fan? Nugs has all their gigs. You like the Swedish psychedelic band, Dungen? You’ll get them. It’s a great place to discover unknown bands too. I got introduced to PUJA, a quartet led by Melvin Seals (formerly of the Jerry Garcia Band) that does thoroughly enjoyable long jams and takes its name from the Indian ritual, and discovered other interesting musicians like Rachael Yamagata (American blues-rock singer-songwriter), Robert Mirabal (Native American flute player) and Patrick Park (folk-rocker) from Nugs.

Besides the concerts that you can buy on Nugs, there are freebies on offer. There is a huge stash of free music by several bands and an occasional Nugscast, which is a smartly edited downloadable mp3 that compiles recent gigs. You can sign up for an alert so that every time there’s a new Nugscast, your in box gets notified.

If, however, you’re one of those old school types who doesn’t much care about the new (newish) bands that Download Central goes on about and would rather fall back on your old favourites from past decades, don’t lose heart. On the web, there’s always a way. One of those is a website called Wolfgang’s Vault, a free live music-streaming site where you can get your fix of anything from Aerosmith and Allman Brothers to Van Morrison and The Who. Oh, and the last time I checked, there were The Beach Boys there too!

Sanjoy Narayan is Editor-in-chief of Hindustan Times