The Nirvana gig mentioned is https://archive.org/details/ajc00795_nirvana-1989-07-08 The quality is surprisingly good for a bootleg and the band are super-tight!
Donate to the IA here: https://archive.org/donate
With pro analog tape recordings (e.g. 2-inch 24 track, half-inch 2-track), you record alignment tones onto the tapes to capture the state of the recording device, and then later calibrate the playback device to the particular tape so that playback alignment matches recording alignment. But this is essentially never done with cassettes, so you have to earball it.
Cassette players for mastering studios actually have alignment options (e.g. adjustable azimuth) that aren't present on consumer devices. But without the tones, you have to guess.
The problem with starting from a digitized source is that it may have been digitized from non-aligned playback. Ideally you want to go back to the analog originals - but old cassettes are rarely in perfect condition.
In loose terms: It does this with a special read head that splits one of the recorded tracks into 2 distinct signals (for a total of 3 signals from 1 stereo recording). The split tracks' signals are compared, and it adjusts the azimuth (by minutely rotating the head) until the signals from the split track match most-perfectly.
A better overview is found in this sales flyer: https://www.richardhess.com/manuals/Nakamichi/dragon_folder....
(Take note of the pictures of the machine. If anyone finds one sitting around at a flea market or in a forgotten pile of old junk, please rescue it. Nothing like this will ever be manufactured again. Even if the condition is "it looks like someone went after it with a big hammer as part of their anger management process," the bits that remain still have significant value and are easy to sell.)
Grateful Dead has analog reel-to-reel recordings going back to the 60's but most of those have been digitized already or are in the Deads vault.
There are also large collections of recordings on Betamax cassettes made with Sony PCM-F1 digital front-ends which were used before DAT become available. These are digitized versions of old analog recordings and original digital recordings from the 80's. They need transferring and sample rate conversion (they are 44.056kHz) and in some cases pre-emphasis removal.
There is also a lot of digital material on DAT cassettes including analog transfers and digital recordings from the 90s. There are also some CD-Rs where original sources can't be found.
A lot of the cleanup is just figuring out what comes from what show and substituting sources where there are gaps to make complete versions for listening. The archival nature of the endeavor usually limits the amount of "clean up" that is done.
59-year-old Aadam [sic] Jacobs made his first recording 42 years ago in 1984 when he was 17.
He would have had to average 238 recordings/concerts per year — nearly 5/week — over those 42 years to accumulate 10,000 of them.
He began to attend and record 15 concerts each month, and has said "It went pretty quickly from just being an occasional thing to something I did far too often."
So his average is every other day. Also, most concerts / shows have more than one act. I went to an MF DOOM show back in the day at a small club with FIVE opening acts, and then DOOM had THREE more openers in his set time. That's 9 total acts on one night. Even the sprawling wu-tang tour last year had run the jewels as an opener.
An arrogant anesthesiologist is boring cliche by the way. It’s this likely site has many, many people considerably smarter than you.
Turn down the arrogance no one gives a shit what you used to be able to do.
2. "likely"? Rather, certain.
3. "Turn down the arrogance no one gives a shit what you used to be able to do." I will take this to heart and try to do better. I do appreciate your taking the time to address my issue.
Carry on.
Remember to donate and help keep the Internet Archive alive.
“...I heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody.
Every great song by the Beach Boys.
All the underground hits.
All the Modern Lovers tracks.
I heard you have a vinyl of every Niagra record on German import. I heard that you have a white label of every seminal Detroit techno hit - 1985, '86, '87.
I heard that you have a CD compilation of every good '60s cut and another box set from the '70s…”
…excerpt of lyrics from LCD Soundsystem's Losing My Edge”
* Midnight Oil: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
This one has a fairly decent quality recording of "Beds are Burning" too. Australian Classic Rock. :)
---
* Tracy Chapman: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
Audio quality is decent here too. Listening to "Fast Car" now, and the quality is solid. :)
---
* Ben Folds Five: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* R.E.M: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Björk: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Born to Run: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Captain of Industry: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Depeche Mode: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Lemonheads: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: https://archive.org/details/aadamjacobs?and[]=creator%3A%22n...
* Nirvana: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Sonic Youth: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* Suzanne Vega: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* The Bangles: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
* The Cure: https://archive.org/details/@aadam_jacobs_collection?and[]=c...
No Pixies, but The Amps have one appearance: https://archive.org/details/ajc02207_amps1995-10-31 The performance is ... "uneven"
And four stunning Guided by Voices sets, of which the best is https://archive.org/details/ajc00711_gbv-1999-12-10/GBV1999-...
> Audio quality is decent here too. Listening to "Fast Car" now, and the quality is solid. :)
Fast Car was terrific, thanks for sharing! It is especially amazing considering this recording was made in 1988, just one month and one day (how poetic!) after Fast Car was released as a single.
"Talkin' Bout A Revolution" is in there as well, and some stuff marked as "unreleased".
The entire Tracy Chapman recording there is actually really well put together. The volunteers who did the work to transfer it from cassette and clean it up, did an outstanding job on this one.
> Recorded by: Aadam Jacobs
> Transferred by: Brian E
> Mastered by: Dennis Orr
Billy Bragg:
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02362_bbragg1986-12-04.ajcpro...
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02359_bbragg1988-05-06.ajcpro...
Not the cleanest vocals on either of the recordings, but the former is overall higher quality from what I could tell.
Boogie Down Productions:
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02338_bdp1988-05-18
Excellent recording and great live act, just a pity that it is rather short.
Mojo Nixon:
* https://archive.org/details/ajc02226_mojonixon-skidroper1987...
Another great live act and recording. I am sure Mojo would very much approve of this being shared as well.
I have heard of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and My Bloody Valentine (although I may be thinking of Bullet For My Valentine), though I don't own any of their albums and I can't recall where I know them from. I think both of them were mentioned in some absolute Z-tier fanfic I read once.
later
Never mind, there they are. I was at one of those 2018 shows!
Thanks, I completely missed that.
It's too late for me to edit my above post, so for anyone else who wants to take a look: https://archive.org/details/aadamjacobs?and[]=creator%3A%22t...
> “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,” deMause said.
I think in some ways we’ve come full circle such that it doesn’t matter.. because people are listening to various compressed streaming music sources, with loudness-wars mixing, output to airpods, phone speakers, laptop speakers, and all sorts of suboptimal listening devices.
It's one person's curated collection.
It's it being made available for the sake of it.
It's novel, unexpected. a gift.
There's a 2004 article about the taper [0] posted elsewhere in the thread, he definitely did get into a bit of trouble at the time.
> When he got back from England, Shanahan–who’d known Jacobs’s family for years–lectured him, warning him always to get clearance from bands before recording them and to be careful when trading tapes. Soon after this, though, Jacobs snuck his gear into a Bob Mould solo gig at Metro–he’d been unable to get permission, Shanahan says–and was caught by venue staff. Shanahan didn’t let him on the premises again for six years, relenting only after Jacobs got Flaming Lips manager Scott Booker to plead his case.
But the ones playing the music are all very old people now, and many of them have likely sold their publishing to the our blob overlords for a pittance. If massive multinational media corporations can make it difficult to figure out what they might have a claim to, it will end up easier to take the whole thing down. They attacked IA last time based on wax cylinders.
The reason orgs like the RIAA exist is to take PR hits for the industry; they will eventually demand they be taken down and probably make claims based on the length of time they were hosted. Get what you want while you can, although if you're a Millennial/Gen Z hipster you won't know any of it because it wasn't marketed to you (or anyone, it was just music, we enjoyed it.)
-----
edit: Looking through the list, I remembered how awful Chicago shows at the big clubs were, how Metro banned punk rock, and how I only ever went to those places to see touring bands that managed to get an opening spot for some A&R industry plant. Most of these are not good, and tons of them have all of their publishing owned by multinationals. It's the kind of selection you'd expect from somebody who thought that Bleach-era Nirvana was just alright and stalked Pavement.
Was happy to see a bunch of Fireside Bowl shows, but it looks like he dodged the good ones. This is almost pure "indy." I bet anybody could still find 100 that they'd like though so I don't want to seem too negative. This is mostly Gen X mainstream suburban hipster music.
".. preferences for popular music peak during early adolescence or mid-to-late teens, and that newer or older tracks do not command this same level of affection."
Most people generally don't like new music because it doesn't evoke the same emotions as what we heard at that heightened period of our lives.
Musicians haven't stopped wanting to make music and doing whatever it takes to make it, and commercial interests want to profit from that just like they did back then. There's so much good music being put out all the time, in new and old-fashioned ways.