“Some of these recordings, on crappy little cassette tapes from the early '90s, sound incredible”: Meet the fan who has recorded over 10,000 gigs and is now letting everyone download the audio

A music fan from Chicago who has collected live recordings of over 10,000 gigs is to put them all online for free.

The fellow in question is Aadam Jacobs, who started his hobby way back in 1989 when he smuggled a pocket sized dictaphone into a Nirvana gig. Back then taping shows was very much frowned upon by promoters – indeed, in the pre-internet era, recording and then selling C90s to fans was a nice little sideline for many a budding entrepreneur. But Jacobs had no interest in turning a profit and after a while he gained a reputation as a much-loved fixture of the Chicago live scene – the ‘taper guy’.

Over three and a half decades Jacobs has built up an archive of over 10,000 tapes and now a collection of volunteers is helping to digitise, mix and master them so they can uploaded to the Aadam Jacobs Collection at the Live Music Archive.

You can peruse what has already been saved on the Internet Archive. As you can see, it’s largely indie rock, with a scattering of other genres including folk and hip-hop. Among the bands Jacobs taped back in the day are classic-era Pixies, REM, The Cure and My Bloody Valentine.

But what sort of state is Jacobs' collection in? Surprisingly, given their age and what they were recorded on, not too bad, according to Neil deMause, who is one of the volunteer engineers on the project.

“Especially after the first couple years, he's got it so dialled-in that some of these recordings, on, like, crappy little cassette tapes from the early '90s, sound incredible.”

At present, the volunteers are about halfway through Jacobs’ mountain of cassettes – and before you ask, yes, it is all legal and above board, as Jacobs is not profiting from the exercise. He’s happy to remove recordings if musicians involved really don’t want them online, but only a couple of artists have asked so far.