Some of you may have experienced the experience of immediately moving to a new city and being told that you missed out on the golden age of live music. To some extent, this has been happening to a greater or lesser degree at every point in the last 50 or 60 years. But what if the person who captivates you with such stories also has an archive of more than 10,000 concert recordings to back it up? Chicago’s Adam Jacobs has created just such an archive, and a few years ago he and it were the subject of a documentary by Katrin Schneider. melomaniac. The various rock musicians and club owners interviewed there, aside from talk of Jacobs’ exploits with increasingly extensive recording equipment, express one concern above all else. That is, what will happen to his tapes in the future?
As always, the Internet Archive comes to the rescue. At the newly opened Adam Jacobs ArchivesYou can listen to approximately 2,500 concert recordings that volunteers have digitized and uploaded to date. The over terabyte file contains the following concerts: nirvana, Phishing, tracy chapman, depeche mode, flaming lips, stereo lab, liz phair, sonic youth, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, björk, they may be giants (recorded four times in 1988 alone), and mekongand many more.
If you have a certain taste in rock, especially if you belong to a certain generation, over time you’ll likely find a show by your favorite band that Jacobs recorded. But there’s just as much chance of discovering a performance by the best act you’ve never heard before.
Jacobs pursued his hobby of concert recording with professional diligence and, indeed, obsessiveness, recording multiple shows each night at the height of his career. As highlighted in , he has unique tastes. melomaniacbut it also shows that there is surprisingly little discrimination about which bands are “cool” and which are not, not to mention their level of commercial success. When Chicago musicians first saw Jacobs’ familiar long-haired, heavy-backpack-toting figure appear at their show, they knew they had a chance to make it. Yet, as Jacobs admits, there is little correlation between which bands have had big hits, which bands he likes as a person, and which bands have produced his favorite records. his tape They constitute a rare record of Chicago’s sound from the ’80s through the ’20s, and the more accessible they become, the more valuable they become. But as we enjoy it, we must also keep in mind the effort of the person who made it and the love for music that he embodies. input Click here for the archive.
via Kottke
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Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages ​​and cultures. he is the author of the newsletter books about cities books as well Home page (I won’t summarize Korea) and korean newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter. @Colinbemust.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
