Inside a rare collection of 10,000 concerts, from Nirvana to Björk

On July 8, 1989, a 22-year-old Kurt Cobain greeted a small crowd at Chicago’s Dreamerz club with a simple introduction: “Hello, we’re Nirvana. We’re from Seattle.” As the band launched into their opening song “School,” music enthusiast Aadam Jacobs stood in the audience with a Sony cassette recorder hidden in his pocket, capturing what would become a historic moment in rock music.

This recording of Nirvana, made more than two years before their breakthrough album “Nevermind,” represents just one highlight from Jacobs’ remarkable collection of over 10,000 concert recordings spanning four decades. Today, a dedicated team of volunteers across the United States and Europe is working to preserve this musical treasure trove, methodically cataloging, digitizing, and uploading the recordings to the Internet Archive.

The Aadam Jacobs Collection has become an invaluable resource for music historians and fans, particularly those interested in the evolution of indie and punk rock from the 1980s through the early 2000s. The archive features early performances by alternative music pioneers like R.E.M., The Cure, The Pixies, The Replacements, Depeche Mode, Stereolab, Sonic Youth, and Björk.

The collection’s diversity extends beyond rock, including a 1988 concert by hip-hop pioneers Boogie Down Productions and a previously uncirculated 1990 Phish show that delighted the jam band’s devoted followers. Hundreds of recordings from lesser-known artists are also being preserved, documenting the rich underground music scene that flourished during this period.

Jacobs, now 59, began his recording journey in 1984, initially taping songs off the radio before a friend suggested bringing a recorder to concerts. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s cool.’ So I got started,” Jacobs recalled. His first recordings were made with a borrowed Dictaphone-type device from his grandmother, later upgrading to a Sony Walkman-style recorder.

“I was using, at times, pretty lackluster equipment, simply because I had no money to buy anything better,” he explained. As technology evolved, so did his methods, progressing from cassettes to digital audio tape (DAT) and eventually solid-state digital recorders.

Though some club owners initially resisted his recording efforts, Jacobs gradually became a fixture in Chicago’s music scene, with many venues ultimately allowing the “taper guy” in for free. Author Bob Mehr, who profiled Jacobs for the Chicago Reader in 2004, describes him as “one of the city’s cultural institutions.”

“He’s a character. I think you have to be, to do what he does,” Mehr said. “But I think he proved over time that his intentions were really pure.”

The preservation project gained momentum after filmmaker Katlin Schneider released a documentary about Jacobs in 2023, prompting a volunteer from the Internet Archive to reach out. Facing the reality that his aging tapes were deteriorating, Jacobs agreed to have his collection digitized.

The digitization process is painstaking work. Brian Emerick, a key volunteer, makes monthly trips to Jacobs’ Chicago home to collect boxes of tapes – each containing 50 to 100 recordings. Emerick has dedicated an entire room to his operation, featuring multiple vintage cassette and DAT decks that he’s personally repaired.

“So many of the machines I find are broken. They’re trashed. And so I learned how to fix those, get them running again,” said Emerick. “Currently, I have 10 working cassette decks, and I run those all simultaneously.” He estimates he’s digitized at least 5,500 tapes since late 2024, with several more years needed to complete the project.

Once digitized, the recordings are distributed to volunteer audio engineers across the globe who clean up the sound and provide detailed metadata. Brooklyn-based volunteer Neil deMause marvels at the quality Jacobs achieved with limited equipment: “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.”

The project has even benefited established artists. The Replacements were so impressed with Jacobs’ recording of their 1986 show that they incorporated parts of it into a live album released as part of a 2023 box set.

Regarding copyright concerns, Jacobs maintains a respectful approach, willing to remove recordings if artists object. However, he notes that only a handful of musicians have requested takedowns. Copyright attorney David Nimmer observes that while anti-bootlegging laws technically give artists ownership of live recordings, the non-profit nature of the archive makes legal challenges unlikely.

Though health issues have prevented Jacobs from attending and recording concerts in recent years, his legacy lives on through this digital archive, preserving a crucial period in music history for future generations. As he reflects on today’s concert documentation landscape, Jacobs simply observes, “Since everybody’s got a cellphone, anybody can record a concert.”