Heavy guitar feedback. Moments of silence. And then we hear those memorable words: “Hello, we are Nirvana. We are from Seattle,” announces Kurt Cobain at a small club called Dreamerz. The next 13 tracks bring out the magic of Cobain (vocals, guitar), Krist Novoselic (bass), Chad Channing (drums) and Jason Everman (guitar) from 1989. The recording is online for everyone to hear. It is available on the Internet Archive as part of the Aadam Jacobs Collection Project, for anyone to download.
Not just Nirvana, thousands of concert recordings are becoming available online, all thanks to a music superfan named Aadam Jacobs. The Nirvana recording is only one of the gems from a treasure trove captured on a Sony cassette recorder. There is Joust recorded in 2014; John Cale and Chris Spedding from 1987; Depeche Mode from 1985; R.E.M. from 1986; Elf Power from 1998; and Dinosaur Feathers from 2011. This is not even the tip of the iceberg.
Jacobs has done what every true music fan wants to do — attend concerts. Unlike many of us, he has been to over 10,000 shows across 40 years. His first live concert was in 1984, though he does not remember who the musician was.
What Jacobs has done is among the most generous acts in music history — offering his entire collection online through the non-profit digital library, Internet Archive. A small group of volunteers cleaned up each of Jacobs’ recordings, digitised them and uploaded them to the site for free listening. You too can access the collection by searching for ‘Aadam Jacobs Collection’. So far, around 2,500 concerts have made it online.
Now 59, Jacobs always took a tape recorder with him to concerts. At first, it was a Dictaphone-type device borrowed from his grandmother and later, a Sony Walkman-style tape recorder. Eventually, he moved to digital audio tape (DAT) and then to solid-state digital recorders.
Jacobs has been known in music circles for decades. His archive reflects the underground music scene of the 1980s and 1990s, along with punk and rock concerts. In an article from Reader in 2004, it was mentioned that the archivist attended around 15 gigs a month, setting up his microphones and deck to tape performances for his private collection. By then, he had already crossed 3,000 recordings when he stopped updating his show log two years earlier.
He has also had his share of trouble, such as at a Bob Mould solo gig at Metro. The staff barred him from the venue for six years until Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker pleaded his case.
There was also a phase in the 1990s when he tried his hand at running his own label, Dead Bird, but it folded after releasing a handful of singles over four years. He realised he was no businessman.
There is also a 2023 documentary about “Chicago’s taping guy”. The film explores the need to preserve historically important music.
Every month, 10 to 12 boxes are collected from Jacobs’s home, each containing 50–100 tapes. The task is to transfer the analogue recordings into digital files, which are then mixed and mastered for upload to the archive. Around 5,500 tapes have been digitised since late 2024 by Brian Emerick, whose job is to convert the analogue recordings into digital formats. These files are then worked on by volunteer engineers in the US, the UK and Germany, who provide metadata and clean up the audio.
One aspect of the work that requires particular attention is ensuring the setlists are correctly documented. Though Jacobs kept notes, volunteers still need to consult one another and, at times, the artistes themselves to ensure factual accuracy.
Under anti-bootlegging laws, artistes technically own the original compositions and live recordings. However, since neither Jacobs nor the archive profits from the endeavour, lawsuits seem unlikely, according to AP.
“Music will always be the most important thing to me because it was so ingrained in me. My parents listened to music, but this I did myself. I had mentors, like radio station RJs, people in record shops… these were mentors who were not my family. I had to find them on my own. It was about the people I chose to meet, who would influence my love of music and how I chose to enjoy it,” Jacobs said in the documentary.