2 hours ago
2
You can now browse the recordings made across the 80s, 90s, and 00s for free via the nonprofit online repository Internet Archive. Many of the bootlegs were recorded to tape at gigs in Chicago, Aadam Jacobs' hometown, but he also travelled further afield with his compact Sony cassette recorder and increasingly professional equipment as the years went on.
A previously uncirculated 1990 show by the jam band Phish is included as well as early pre-Nevermind Nirvana performances.
Jacobs, 59, who has the nickname "Chicago's Taping Guy," was profiled by the legendary publication the Chicago Reader back in 2004, when the author called him a cultural institution of the Windy City, and was the subject of a documentary film, Melomaniac, in 2023.
“My passion is really to document something that’s otherwise not being documented,” Jacobs said back in 2004. “It’s more a desire to collect and archive this stuff. I’ll make copies for the band if they ask for it, but a lot of the time I’ll listen to something once and put it away for good.”
English (US) · 