SRMED
Englishعربي
Englishعربي
A Chicago music superfan, Aadam Jacobs, has amassed over 10,000 cassette recordings of live concerts spanning four decades from the 1980s to the early 2000s, and volunteers are now digitizing them for free public access on the Internet Archive. So far, about 2,500 tapes have been uploaded to the Aadam Jacobs Collection, preserving rare early performances from artists like Nirvana in 1989—two years before their breakthrough album Nevermind—alongside Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Phish, Liz Phair, Pavement, Neutral Milk Hotel, Tracy Chapman, The Cure, and numerous punk bands, as reported by TechCrunch and Euronews.
Now 59, Jacobs began taping shows he attended using often mediocre equipment, creating a personal archive that captures musical history at risk of deteriorating on fragile cassettes. The effort gained momentum after the 2023 documentary Melomaniac about his life as a "melomaniac"—someone obsessed with music—prompted an Internet Archive volunteer to contact him. Since late 2024, volunteer Brian Emerick has driven monthly to Jacobs' home to collect batches of tapes, digitizing at least 5,500 using vintage cassette decks before passing files to others across the US and Europe for cleanup, mixing, mastering, organization, and labeling—even identifying obscure punk songs.
This preservation project matters deeply for music fans and historians, offering time capsules of artists in their experimental phases, from global icons to underground acts, freely accessible online. The Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, hosts the collection to safeguard cultural artifacts against physical decay, echoing efforts like the Great 78 Project for old records. Volunteers have enhanced the audio quality remarkably, turning rough audience bootlegs into listenable gems that evoke the raw energy of live shows long forgotten.
Copyright issues have arisen minimally; Jacobs notes most artists appreciate the preservation, with only one or two requesting removals so far, and he's willing to comply. As the painstaking process continues, thousands more tapes await digitization, ensuring Jacobs' lifelong passion endures for global audiences. Melomaniacs worldwide can now explore these recordings, celebrating how community-driven archiving keeps music's past alive and accessible.