Volunteers Preserve Treasure Trove of 10,000 Concert Recordings

A music fan's decades-long collection of indie and punk rock performances is being digitized and shared online.

Apr. 8, 2026 at 4:43am

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An abstract, minimalist illustration featuring bold, jagged geometric shapes in striking red and white, conveying the raw energy and emotion of a live music performance.A volunteer-driven effort to digitize and preserve a trove of over 10,000 live concert recordings captures the spirit of indie and alternative music's golden era.Chicago Today

For over 40 years, Chicago resident Aadam Jacobs has amassed a collection of more than 10,000 live concert recordings, capturing early performances by influential alternative and experimental artists like Nirvana, R.E.M., The Cure, and Sonic Youth. Now, a team of dedicated volunteers is working to digitize, catalog, and upload Jacobs' trove of cassette and DAT tapes to the Internet Archive, creating an invaluable online resource for music fans.

Why it matters

Jacobs' collection provides a unique window into the indie and punk rock scenes of the 1980s through the early 2000s, a formative era when many now-iconic artists were first breaking through. By preserving and sharing these recordings, the volunteers are ensuring that this important musical history is not lost to time, and that future generations can experience the raw energy and evolution of these groundbreaking performers.

The details

Jacobs began recording concerts in 1984, using a small Dictaphone and later upgrading to a Sony Walkman-style cassette recorder. Over the decades, he amassed recordings of over 10,000 shows, often sneaking his equipment into venues to capture performances. The collection includes early Nirvana shows, as well as sets by R.E.M., The Cure, The Pixies, Depeche Mode, and many other influential indie and alternative acts. A team of volunteers is now working to digitize the tapes, clean up the audio, and upload the recordings to the Internet Archive for free public access.

  • Jacobs began recording concerts in 1984.
  • On July 8, 1989, Jacobs recorded Nirvana's debut show in Chicago.
  • Jacobs stopped recording concerts a few years ago due to health issues.
  • In late 2024, volunteers began the process of digitizing Jacobs' collection.
  • The project is expected to take a few more years to complete.

The players

Aadam Jacobs

A Chicago resident who has amassed a collection of over 10,000 live concert recordings spanning four decades, capturing early performances by influential indie and alternative artists.

Brian Emerick

A volunteer who travels to Jacobs' home each month to pick up boxes of tapes and transfer the analog recordings to digital files for further processing.

Neil deMause

A volunteer engineer in Brooklyn who helps clean up the audio and provide metadata for the digitized concert recordings.

The Replacements

A foundational punk-alternative band that was so pleased with Jacobs' recording of their 1986 show that they mixed it with a soundboard recording and released it as a live album in 2023.

Internet Archive

The nonprofit online repository where the digitized concert recordings are being made available for free streaming and download.

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What they’re saying

“I was using, at times, pretty lackluster equipment, simply because I had no money to buy anything better.”

— Aadam Jacobs, Music Fan and Collector

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

— Bob Mehr, Author

“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.”

— Neil deMause, Volunteer Engineer

What’s next

The volunteers expect to complete the digitization and upload of Aadam Jacobs' full collection of over 10,000 concert recordings to the Internet Archive within the next few years.

The takeaway

Aadam Jacobs' decades-long passion project has created an invaluable online archive that preserves the history and evolution of the indie and alternative music scenes, ensuring that these formative performances by groundbreaking artists will be accessible to music fans for generations to come.