Somebody recorded 40 years of concert audio and put it all online for free
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If you have ever stood at a concert thinking, “someone should be recording this,” Aadam Jacobs was probably already doing it from three rows behind you. Jacobs, a 59-year-old music lover from Chicago nicknamed “Chicago’s Taping Guy,” has spent four decades sneaking recording equipment into concerts and quietly archiving what he heard. We are not talking about a few dozen tapes of his favorite bands. We are talking about more than 10,000 recordings from the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s.
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These recordings capture everyone from pre-fame Nirvana to a previously uncirculated 1990 Phish set, R.E.M., The Cure, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Björk, and hundreds of bands most people have never heard of but probably should. The entire collection is now free to stream and download on the Internet Archive. It is easily the most remarkable music preservation project I have ever seen. It started in 1984 when Jacobs borrowed his grandmother’s voice recorder and brought it to an AMM show in Chicago. The recording came out warped because he ran the tape at the wrong speed. For something this unique, this is a fitting origin story.
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He continued recording, continually processing better equipment and expanding his reach outside Chicago. He was motivated by the wish to preserve the recordings that would remain the most in history. What makes this a nostalgia trip is the value of history in everything he recorded. There are performances of Nirvana before their rise to fame with Nevermind. A Phish concert from November 1990 hadn’t been heard for over 34 years until a team of volunteers located the tape, sent it cross country for a transfer, and remastered it from a 35 year old cassette. It is either a miracle or a testament to Jacobs’ expertise that this sounds as great as it does.
A small handful of dedicated volunteers across North America and Europe are currently sifting through the archive, digitizing and uploading recordings at a pace of approximately 25-30 shows a day. They have already posted over 1,500 shows and recorded more than 133,000 streams and downloads. At this rate, they expect to finish this archive in 2-3 years which is being optimistic considering they are barely done with the first 5% of the collection. What’s nice about this is that Jacobs was not doing it for fame or money. He was doing it because he loved music that much. That kind of passion does not get old.
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