If celebrities hate "Gawkwer Stalker", they'd haaaate TourBusID.

I think a Flickr pool would DEFINITELY be the way to start. Include some kind of guidelines for how people should tag the photos, and you're set.

So naturally, I fully support the idea :-D

TourBusID. Awesome. Count me in -- I'll snap some tour bus pics when I'm at Summerfest this weekend.

I just went through Flickr on a first pass and favorited a bunch of ones to include. Here they are, from Alabama to Tool to Johnny Cash to Dolly to Great Big Sea.

Fun summer project! I'll set up the pool soon and post back.

The last time we were coming back from Baltimore on 81 we saw the Girls Gone Wild bus - it was awesome, all painted up with GIRLS GONE WILD and so on. So the boys in the car flashed their tits and the guys driving the bus blew the horn at us and we all whooped and hollered. I took a picture! Want it?

Heh, mgl. Beck's tour bus is awesome, Meeks.

the main venue acts I like seem to end up at around here has the busses parked right in front.
And I don't recall anything destinctive about them.

Believe me, if the KMFDM bus was all tricked out I would have killed my camera batteries taking pictures. Same goes for Rev Horton Heat. Both seemed pretty much stock, though.

Maybe artists below a certin level just rent busses?

Either below or above, Kellydamnit. My (highly unscientific) survey of tour buses on Flickr was quite interesting. Some of the bigger bands actually had plainer buses - perhaps because they don't need to attract more attention when on the road and would probably prefer less. Then, as you say, smaller-time bands might just rent them and not have the custom artwork. Country (and some funky old-timey) artists seem particularly interested in having visible buses, but my theory is that it's because country is sort of a more community-oriented genre. The artists take some pride in having a little flash. Metal bands seem to have a fair few.

I searched on some particular artist and band names to see if they had bus pictures. A lot of pictures of happy, lucky fans partying inside buses showed up, but I'm only interested in pics of the bus exterior - or we would also have Phish, Dave Matthews, and some others.

Buses seem to have a particular place on the touring-band-income continuum. When you're really small time, you're in your car or a used van. When you're a little better off than that, you rent a tour bus. A little better off than that, but still wanting promotion and high profile, maybe you custom-decorate the exterior and customize your bus interior. But once past that threshold into comfortable degrees of fame, the bus gets plain/rented/incognito again (unless you're Willie). And once past THAT level, you're probably going to gigs in by flying between cities and riding in separate limos, like the Stones, or driving your own subtle set of Chevy Blazers, like Springsteen's band.

I just read somebody's online rant that suggested the tour-bus threshold is when a band can make $1000 a night and play four or five nights a week.

hm... maybe the bands I like are at the going incognito level of bus fame, but not yet at the flying level of fame.