Jacobs began recording concerts as a teen, using borrowed equipment and later upgrading through cassette and digital audio tape as the years passed. He built a personal archive that now totals recordings of roughly 10,000 shows, with performances spanning Chicago and other cities and covering genres such as alternative and experimental rock. As the tapes aged, the project’s continuity increasingly depended on volunteers who could preserve and convert them before they deteriorated further.
The collection, now known as the Aadam Jacobs Collection, is being processed for streaming and free download through the Internet Archive, according to the Associated Press. Volunteers in the U.S. and Europe catalog, digitize, mix and master individual shows one by one as they become available online.
A frequently cited anchor in the archive is a July 8, 1989, concert in Chicago where Nirvana played a debut show at the small club Dreamerz. The AP said Jacobs recorded the performance surreptitiously after Kurt Cobain told the crowd, “Hello, we’re Nirvana. We’re from Seattle.” Jacobs’ cassette documentation captured the band in its early stage, more than two years before Nirvana’s global breakthrough with the album “Nevermind.”
Jacobs’ recording routine began earlier than that Nirvana show. The AP reported that he had taped concerts off the radio before he started bringing recording devices into live venues, and he later described his method for getting a recorder into shows as something he learned from a fellow fan: “You can just take a tape recorder into a show with you, just sneak it in, record the show.” He said he used equipment that initially he could not afford to replace, borrowing a tiny Dictaphone-type device before moving to a Sony Walkman-style recorder and, at other times, using a home cassette machine with help from a soundman.
In the digitization phase, Brian Emerick, who visits Jacobs’ home in the city once a month to pick up boxes of tapes, works on converting analog recordings in real time to digital files that other volunteers can use. Emerick said he often encounters damaged or broken machines and spends time getting cassette and DAT decks working again; the AP described a room of decks he uses simultaneously. He estimated that he had digitized at least 5,500 tapes since late 2024, and said the project would take several more years to complete.
The next step after transfer involves audio cleanup and metadata work, tasks handled by a volunteer group including engineers in the U.S., U.K. and Germany. The AP said volunteers mix and master the shows and spend time determining song titles, sometimes consulting each other and searching for missing information. In some cases, they also reach out beyond the archive, including to artists, to document setlists accurately. Neil deMause, based in Brooklyn, told the AP he has been impressed by the original tape fidelity despite Jacobs’ early use of “weird RadioShack mics” and other basic equipment, including recordings from the early 1990s that sound “incredible,” Emerick said the group has uncovered.
Copyright and removal requests also figure into the process. The AP reported that Jacobs said he is willing to remove recordings if requested, and that only one or two musicians had so far asked for material to be taken down. David Nimmer, described by the AP as a longtime copyright attorney who teaches at UCLA, said artists technically own the original compositions and live recordings under anti-bootlegging laws, and the AP reported that because neither Jacobs nor the archive is profiting, lawsuits appear unlikely.
The AP also reported that Jacobs’ effort has drawn attention beyond Chicago. Bob Mehr, who wrote about Jacobs in 2004 for the Chicago Reader, called him “one of the city’s cultural institutions,” saying Jacobs’ intentions were “really pure.” And after filmmaker Katlin Schneider made a documentary about Jacobs in 2023, the AP said an Internet Archive volunteer reached out with a proposal to preserve the tapes; Jacobs said he agreed after “all the tapes started not working because of time, just disintegrating.”
Even beyond the most famous names, the archive includes early-in-their-career performances by groups spanning alternative, punk and experimental music, along with smaller-artist sets the AP said would likely be hard for many listeners to find elsewhere. Jacobs stopped recording a few years ago due to worsening health problems, but he continues to listen to live performances online, the AP reported, noting that modern phones have made recording more common for concert-goers.