Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

302 points - last Wednesday at 9:11 AM

Comments

rwmj today at 8:28 AM

https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection

The Nirvana gig mentioned is https://archive.org/details/ajc00795_nirvana-1989-07-08 The quality is surprisingly good for a bootleg and the band are super-tight!

Donate to the IA here: https://archive.org/donate

mannyv today at 12:56 PM

The team needs to talk to Charlie miller et al, the ones who have been cleaning up and posting the grateful dead archive for the last few decades. They are audio magicians.

bookofjoe today at 2:25 PM

"... fan's recordings of 10k concerts..."

59-year-old Aadam [sic] Jacobs made his first recording 42 years ago in 1984 when he was 17.

He would have had to average 238 recordings/concerts per year — nearly 5/week — over those 42 years to accumulate 10,000 of them.

textfiles today at 4:47 PM

Shout out to everyone in this thread who seem unable to understand a club might have three unrelated acts on, so each performance is called a "concert" under this collection. Aadam and the crew are focused on making each performance a separate entity instead of grouping them up. Substitute "performance" for "concert" if it helps.

Carry on.

selfsimilar today at 12:34 PM

I saw Aadam at almost every show I went to in the early aughts, and he recorded a few of my shows, too! Great guy!

steveBK123 today at 1:40 PM

This snippet is funny:

> “Especially after the first couple years, he’s got it so dialed in that some of these recordings, on, like, crappy little cassette tapes from the early 90s, sound incredible,” deMause said.

I think in some ways we’ve come full circle such that it doesn’t matter.. because people are listening to various compressed streaming music sources, with loudness-wars mixing, output to airpods, phone speakers, laptop speakers, and all sorts of suboptimal listening devices.

xnobodyx today at 1:30 PM

i've always been impressed by the work put into the nine inch nails live archive https://ninlive.com (and the tour history site as well https://www.nintourhistory.com )

throwaway2046 today at 10:59 AM

Absolutely amazing collection, and it has lossless FLACs too! Many thanks to the fans and IA for making this possible.

Remember to donate and help keep the Internet Archive alive.

pwr1 today at 5:36 PM

Just lost an hour going through this. Found a Nirvana show from 1989 at Dreamerz. The recording quality is surprisingly decent for a cassette tape. This is exactly the kind of thing the internet was supposed to be for.

justinclift today at 9:11 AM

Found a few bands whose names I recognise. :)

* Midnight Oil: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

This one has a fairly decent quality recording of "Beds are Burning" too. Australian Classic Rock. :)

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* Tracy Chapman: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

Audio quality is decent here too. Listening to "Fast Car" now, and the quality is solid. :)

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* Ben Folds Five: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* R.E.M: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Björk: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Born to Run: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Captain of Industry: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Depeche Mode: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Lemonheads: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: https://archive.org/details/aadamjacobs?and[]=creator%3A%22n...

* Nirvana: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Sonic Youth: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* Suzanne Vega: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* The Bangles: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

* The Cure: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...

Myzel394 today at 11:43 AM

Glad they're uploading it publicly and not to some private torrent trackers like Concertos

DM70 today at 7:43 PM

It is genuinely hard to create anything in the music area now, even music itself. I grew up as a kid when music reached its peak and started declining - 1990s-2000s. Frankly, it i very sad because new generation is missing on something very big and good now. I listen to some new stuff and its literally created for robots, not humans. I call it zombie music because it is hard to recognize the difference between artist or band - they often us literally the same melody and phrases. I am not sure if tech industry can resolve this problem - the world is losing its music soul. Hence, that's why concerts are possible way to go - back to the ancient basics - personal performance wins - because you see actual perosn doing it and you either get very engage dor not.

exossho today at 9:55 AM

this reminds me of the old internet

TrailingArbutus today at 3:09 PM

2001 era internet vibes, what is this doing here in 2026 haha??

bsenftner today at 11:10 AM

I remember when a collection like this had to be kept secret, otherwise the recording labels would sue. Nobody cares anymore?

ktallett today at 11:05 AM

Some fantastic albums here. Clearly dedicated to his craft of recording. There are still a few quality bootleg bloggers out there that give me hope the web can still be special and enjoyable.

soumyaskartha today at 1:01 PM

The stuff that never got officially released is always the most interesting. Live recordings capture something the studio versions were never trying to.

sassymuffinz today at 12:01 PM

So if my maths is right, 10K concerts over ~ 40 years - this guy was at a concert 5 nights a week every week?

dancemethis today at 6:16 PM

Wait until people discover Zappateers...