13 ms·

Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive

708 points by jrm-veris 6mo ago

tokioyoyo 6mo ago
Late to the party, but if anyone gets a chance, look up 80s/90s nightlife in San Francisco, New York, Montreal, Toronto and so on. We lost a lot.
monooso 6mo ago
A discussion from six days ago (same story, different source): https://apnews.com/article/aadam-jacobs-collection-concerts-internet-archive-chicago-b1c9c4466a2db409a83523ad84b79d62 https://apnews.com/article/aadam-jacobs-collection-concerts-...
- EvanAnderson 6mo ago
  Here's the discussion from 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 I was pleased to find some "They Might Be Giants" in the archive.
GaryBluto 6mo ago
[flagged]
- joecool1029 6mo ago
  They covered it in the apnews source. Takedowns are available but only a few bands requested it, most were supportive of the archive.
  - zoobab 6mo ago
    Mirror the archive before it get taken down.
  - vaylian 6mo ago
    To quote: > Jacobs said the majority of the artists he recorded are pleased to have their work preserved. As for copyright concerns, he’s happy to remove recordings if requested, but added that only one or two musicians so far have asked that their material be taken down. I think the keyword here is "preserved". These are old recordings that cannot realistically be recreated by any other method. AI may reconstruct some parts, but it's still not the real thing. These recordings are time capsules.
  - Scoundreller 6mo ago
    > Takedowns are available but only a few bands requested it 101% chance Metallica did this
    - Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
      101% kiss
    - RajT88 6mo ago
      Who? I feel like there used to be a band by that name. Not sure what became of them.
tclancy 6mo ago
Source article is more enjoyable http://blockclubchicago.org/2026/04/10/from-early-nirvana-to-phish-a-chicago-fans-secret-recordings-of-10000-shows-are-now-online/ http://blockclubchicago.org/2026/04/10/from-early-nirvana-to...
- bahmboo 6mo ago
  This should be the link. Thanks
  - xnx 6mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717957
- adfm 6mo ago
  Here’s an article about The Sacramento Music Archive that’s also worth checking out. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13979518/sacramento-music-archive-shayne-stacy-punk-metal-cassettes-vhs-demos-concerts https://www.kqed.org/arts/13979518/sacramento-music-archive-... Go out and support your local live music scene.
pimlottc 6mo ago
Really interesting to see how far this story has spread, I saw it in my Chicago groups first and now it’s popped up in outlets all over the world. I guess it shows how nostalgic we are for an earlier time, both in music and internet culture.
HelloUsername 6mo ago
Previous discussion: "Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 8-apr-2026 76 comments
alsetmusic 6mo ago
This is one of the best things I've read about in a bit. It wasn't uncommon to buy marked-up (overpriced) bootlegs of live performances on CDs in the 90s. You never knew in advance if it'd be a quality recording or total garbage. We've lost that. I still love when one of my live bootlegs of Faith No More comes on with them doing (sometimes mocking) parodies of popular music (their rendition of Nothing Compares to You by Sinead OConnor has been in my head as I type this). When I got to see them in 2010 (I think) they were true to form and played a bunch of short (reinterpretations) covers and it was one of the best aspects of the show. And I still have a Mr Bungle bootleg with them covering Existential Blues by Tom "T-Bone" Stankus (I always thought it was Doctor Demento's Wizard of Oz until just now when I looked it up). How would you even know about these awesome gems without bootlegs or access to see all their live shows? YouTube is less likely to capture an entire show than a clip, whereas the bootlegs were typically the full show. There are probably areas of the internet where this stuff gets shared and traded, but having it in my local music shop meant everyone had access without requiring special knowledge. I just did two searches, one Google and one Kagi, and neither turned up the FNM Nothing Compares to You. Who knows how many copies of it exist in the world. If my music library gets nuked, who will even know about it? I think I'm gonna start uploading my bootleg recordings of live shows to IA.
- kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 6mo ago
  If you really want to share it, how about torrenting it?
  - CoffeeOnWrite 6mo ago
    IA makes the most sense in the spirit of preservation. Etree (https://www.etree.org/ https://www.etree.org/ ) is the longest running torrent site for tapes. It looks like only about 5% of the hundred thousand torrents have any seeders at all. Not sure how reliable requesting a seed is. I’d expect long tail stuff to get “effectively lost”. Versus IA whose purpose and funding is preservation, in addition to sharing.
    - HappMacDonald 6mo ago
cyanbane 6mo ago
Some stuff I snagged the other day when it was posted: Elf Power Live at Lounge Ax 1998-04-25 https://archive.org/details/ajc01382_elf-power-1998-04-25 https://archive.org/details/ajc01382_elf-power-1998-04-25 Fountains Of Wayne Live at The Vic Theatre 2003-11-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc00691_fountains-of-wayne-2003-11-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc00691_fountains-of-wayne-2003... Fugazi Live at State Theatre on 1991-08-06 https://archive.org/details/ajc02237_fugazi1991-08-06.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc02237_fugazi1991-08-06.ajcpro... Godspeed You! Black Emperor Live at Lounge Ax on 1999-09-16 https://archive.org/details/ajc02676_gybe1999-09-16.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc02676_gybe1999-09-16.ajcproje... Iron & Wine Live at Abbey Pub 2004-07-02 (Late show) https://archive.org/details/ajc01329_iron-wine-2004-07-02.late https://archive.org/details/ajc01329_iron-wine-2004-07-02.la... Josh Rouse Live at Schubas Tavern 2004-04-26 https://archive.org/details/ajc01208_josh-rouse-2004-04-26 https://archive.org/details/ajc01208_josh-rouse-2004-04-26 Midnight Oil Live at Cabaret Metro 1988-04-30 https://archive.org/details/ajc02792_midnightoil1988-04-30 https://archive.org/details/ajc02792_midnightoil1988-04-30 Neutral Milk Hotel Live at Lounge Ax 1997-05-01 https://archive.org/details/ajc00789_neutralmilkhotel1997-05-01 https://archive.org/details/ajc00789_neutralmilkhotel1997-05... OK Go Live at Belmont-Sheffield Music Festival 2003-05-31 https://archive.org/details/ajc01120_ok-go-2003-05-31 https://archive.org/details/ajc01120_ok-go-2003-05-31 Pavement Live at Lounge Ax 1992-06-12 https://archive.org/details/ajc00811_pavement1992-06-12 https://archive.org/details/ajc00811_pavement1992-06-12 Polyphonic Spree Live at Metro on 2003-10-07 https://archive.org/details/ajc01050-PolyphonicSpree2003-10-07.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc01050-PolyphonicSpree2003-10-... Ratatat Live at Abbey Pub 2004-05-14 https://archive.org/details/ajc01220_ratatat-2004-05-14 https://archive.org/details/ajc01220_ratatat-2004-05-14 Rogue Wave Live at Schubas Tavern on 2005-01-30 https://archive.org/details/ajc01227_roguewave2005-01-30.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc01227_roguewave2005-01-30.ajc... Super Furry Animals Live at Abbey Pub 2002-04-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc01144_super-furry-animals-2002-04-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc01144_super-furry-animals-200... The Decemberists Live at Intonation Fest on 2005-07-17 https://archive.org/details/ajc00642_decemberists2005-07-17.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc00642_decemberists2005-07-17.... The Folk Implosion Live at Schubas Tavern 2000-02-29 (Late show) https://archive.org/details/ajc00963_folk_implosion_2000-02-29 https://archive.org/details/ajc00963_folk_implosion_2000-02-... The Shins Live at Schubas Tavern 2001-08-24 https://archive.org/details/ajc01131_the_shins_2001-08-24 https://archive.org/details/ajc01131_the_shins_2001-08-24
LargeWu 6mo ago
For those interested, Relisten is another repository of live concert recordings. It skews heavily towards improvisational music, ie jambands, but there's some indie rock on there as well. https://relisten.net/ https://relisten.net/
- bigfishrunning 6mo ago
  Cool site, thanks! it seems to also be backed by archive.org, i wonder if there's a way to move more stuff into that interface. the nirvana performance in the article isn't there for instance.
  - ClifReeder 6mo ago
    One of the authors/maintainers of Relisten posted that they are working on adding the Aadam Jacbos collection - https://bsky.app/profile/saewitz.com/post/3mjawvvklls2v https://bsky.app/profile/saewitz.com/post/3mjawvvklls2v
    - switz 6mo ago
      Oh hey, it's me! Happy to answer any questions We landed an update on mobile last week that brought all 4,000 artists with a "collection" onto Relisten. That'll be coming to the web and sonos shortly as well. We've been discussing the Aadam Jacob's collection with the archivists for some time. It comes with its own unique UX[0] and data constraints so we've been iterating on that and waiting for a critical mass of uploads before tackling it. We're getting closer though. I agree with most of the sentiment in these comments. Archive and share non-comercially all the things! [0] it's not "one" artist so it requires some custom UI, it should be unified through a single Aadam Jacob's collection, and it has a unique data path/structure on Archive.org relative to other collections
nour833 6mo ago
Yeah but you know DMCA may intervene to delete it if they are copyrighted (as it happened with many media content before)
lokar 6mo ago
Tangent idea: musicians should record every live show, and then put it on a streaming service, only for people who bought tickets to the show (possibly for an extra small fee on the ticket). Extra revenue for the artist, and a cool benefit for the fan (the liver performance you attended).
- RajT88 6mo ago
  There's a niche market for this. Whoever builds it will make a good living, I feel.
- natios 6mo ago
  why not have it accessible to everyone so collectors can have a field day with it!
  - dewey 6mo ago
    Are you working for free too?
    - xd1936 6mo ago
      Available for everyone to purchase*, not just the local venue ticket holders.
      - lokar 6mo ago
        I think (I could be wrong), that relatively few people would value the recordings from every show on a tour. But, many more people would value somewhat exclusive access to the recording for a show they attended in person.
        maweaver 6mo ago
        As someone else mentioned above, with jam bands each performance is unique, and people definitely value getting access to every show. For bands repeating the same set as identically as possible on a tour, not sure how much it matters which performance you listen to. Although some people might be into it, for the "I was there" novelty factor.
xoxxala 6mo ago
I'm reading this article and Weird Al's Don't Download this Song pops up on random play. Did Microsoft add Copilot to Media Player or something? "Don't download this song (Don't do it, no, no) Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong (You can just ask him)"
- loloquwowndueo 6mo ago
  Windows, right? If so, that’s your problem. Your computer is controlled by someone else. (Just being snarky btw lol)
darknavi 6mo ago
I enjoyed "live albums" a lot growing up. The Mark, Tom, and Travis show was always a blast to listen to with my friends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark,_Tom,_and_Travis_Show_(The_Enema_Strikes_Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark,_Tom,_and_Travis_Show...!)
- dfxm12 6mo ago
  HN thinks the exclamation point is punctuation and not part of the URL. Luckily wikipedia has a redirect already set up that will work: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Mark,_Tom,_and_Travis_Show_(The_Enema_Strikes_Back) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Mark,_Tom,_an...
- nticompass 6mo ago
  This was one of the first - if not the first - CD I bought for myself, using my own (allowance) money! I was probably too young to listen to it, but blink-182 is my favorite band and I listened to this CD so many times that I pretty much memorized all the stupid banter between tracks. I also liked sharing certain tracks with my friends when they came over...
tiahura 6mo ago
There are so many concert recordings of awesome performances that sound like crap because they are audience tapes. Often before a performance recorded music is played and captured in the audience recordings. Would it be possible to train a model on an archive of these concert audience recordings of studio recordings paired with the original studio recordings to develop a system to “clean up” audience recordings?
- tracker1 6mo ago
  Maybe... however, most bands tend to drift a LOT from the studio versions of songs while touring.
  - tiahura 6mo ago
    I'm referring to the pre-concert, when they're just playing a mixtape of whatever through the board. Compare studio recording of whatever and the audience recording.
criddell 6mo ago
> he has to use anachronistic cassette decks to play the tapes, which get converted into digital files Anachronistic? It seems like a complicated way of saying "the tapes were digitized".
- FarmerPotato 6mo ago
  Yeah, anachronism means 'not belonging to the time period'. If you made a 1980s movie and had the protagonist transfer cassettes to a laptop via USB interface, THAT would be an anachronism. I think the author meant "old-fashioned" or "obsolete". Though using a cassette deck to read cassettes, geez, what else are you going to do? Build your own using an Arduino?
reenorap 6mo ago
I remember back in the early 90s I think on the internet when it was only accessible via my university, reading on a newsgroup about how people traded bootlegs from various concerts. People would mail cassette tapes around the country and would use double cassette recorders to make a copy of their bootleg and mail it back to people. It was definitely a different time
- dfxm12 6mo ago
  There was lots of "tape trading" back then. Video too. Foreign TV shows, regional programming, etc. If not technically Internet material, i think this is certainly in the spirit of the Internet Archive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_trading
- conductr 6mo ago
  Late 90s there were some great IRC channels for this. I was pretty active in one that revolved around a genre that I most enjoyed.
- anjel 6mo ago
  They called 'em Tape Trees, way back then, which begat ETree.org
rolph 6mo ago
if you really want to hear a live performance, there seems to be a nudge from amazon lately. if your into providing music, dont default to a live version. some live recordings are good, you can actually hear the music, and the crowd is only noticble between songs. im thinking that an online archive of live concerts will only steepen this trend. im just going back to all my mp3 media more often nowadays [bcz i actually bought it mp3 versions, decades ago when you still could] that way i can hear music, instead of a bunch of people screaming over the music. now heres somthing else, maybe you remember that concert, you were there, you love hearing you and friends at the concert, maybe people who no longer live are still there. jimmy dean, rock on,
tracker1 6mo ago
I have a friend that used to record a lot of concerts... a surprising number of bands would even let him plug into the panel to do so. IIRC, mostly using a digital tape recorder later transferred to computer over firewire in the late 90s and 00s.
- Tor3 6mo ago
  A friend (who has unfortunately passed away) owned, together with his father, just about every opera CD ever made (his father worked in RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) and was also an opera fanatic). So, in order to get more opera he used to go to opera performances and record them. When the season opened he would go regularly to e.g. La Scala in Milan, and record the performances. That wasn't actually allowed, but the people there knew him and they knew why he did it (for personal use only), and let him in. To be at the best recording place he would have to get a seat in a section which required that he wore a suit, so he would often wear a smoking - which he actually hated, but he could put a microphone on each collar and get a stereo recording. In the nineties he used a DAT recorder.
schwartzworld 6mo ago
It's funny to think how much effort was put into preventing bootlegging, when now everything is being recorded all the time. The few bands that didn't care or even encouraged it reaped the benefits. I was a huge Ween fan in the 90s and bootlegged a show of theirs myself. Camera and recording devices were allowed and the result was a tremendous amount of live content available online. For some bands this might not matter, but they rarely played the same set list twice and often played songs differently from show to show. In the early internet days, there was more ween content online than you could ever hope to listen to.
- internet101010 6mo ago
  Effort is still being put into it. Just this weekend YouTube put the 4K Coachella streams behind SABR. I could still get 1080p easily but 4K required some fanangling.
- acomjean 6mo ago
  As a student in the 90s I worked security for the student concert group on campus. We had to frisk people for Jello Briafa (Dead Kennedys) spoken word performance. I found a couple of tape decks, but those were allowed. They still put a lot of effort sometimes. I saw Dave Chapelle in NYC and they made us put our phones in these pouches which were unsealed on exiting the show.
  - wileydragonfly 6mo ago
    “I don’t have a phone”
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago
      Sadly, they likely also had you walk through a metal detector
rigonkulous 6mo ago
I am an active and enthusiastic recordist and have decades of stuff I've accumulated over the years. One of the concerts I captured in the 90's, lives on as a bootleg which I often see around the scene of this one particularly great live electronic dance band, whose punters have created true value out of the hour and a half of live concert input I managed to record, standing right there front stage and center, with the band looking right at me. It was a hilarious experience - I expected to get booted out pretty fast, so I held my ground as still as I could, DAT-tape rolling by, shotgun mike held in front of me like it was just normal, as if I belonged there. The lead singer caught my eye and gave me a wide grin. I survived the concert, it was awesome, but boy was I relieved to have made it home with that DAT - which I of course, proceeded to digitize with my brand new spdf/io .. The next year the band (who are big and famous, btw) were in the same city and I happened to be around, I got invited backstage to meet the band, participate in a bit of nerdery regarding their live setup and gear and so on, and talk about that recording I'd made. I'd put it out as a pure bootleg, no questions asked. Turns out they'd heard it and enjoyed it and came to appreciate the nature of their bootleggers, as avid fans who gave the band themselves something extra to think about in what was then, a burgeoning digital/online universe about to explode. So, seeing it around, almost 30 years now .. here and there, again and again .. is quite hilarious. Youtube often recommends it to me in my playlist, its just there. And at a certain spot in the recording, I tell my mate to stop standing so close to me (he was blocking the shottie), and prepare for my ass getting bounced - which never happened, thankfully. So yeah, I just wanna say, if you personally have the desire to be a recordist, and have a pure purpose in it, I'd say just freakin' go for it. Record All The Things. Its good for the Artists, yo. And also their fans. (Its how we get rid of the managers, cough cough..)
- erickhill 6mo ago
  I loved reading this with the still built-in caginess around all the identifying details. Just in case!
- whompyjaw 6mo ago
  What is a "punter"?
bilekas 6mo ago
I have my worries about Internet Archive more and more recently. I'm wondering though is there any decentralized IPFS or P2P Archive of the entire archive that can be helped with for preservation ? https://www.wired.com/story/the-internets-most-powerful-archiving-tool-is-in-mortal-peril/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-internets-most-powerful-arch...
- sdellis 6mo ago
  According to the Wikipedia page, it seems that copies of the archive are stored around the world. LOCKSS is a decentralized strategy for preservation which includes archival copies at remote sites. It has been in use for a very long time. I feel like preservation via IPFS would introduce quite a bit of risk to the goal.
  - bityard 6mo ago
    Yeah, there is some popular misunderstanding about what IPFS is... a lot of people seem to think its essentially free or subsidized distributed cloud storage. But the more you dig into it, the more you realize it's just a fairly inefficient caching system. LOCKSS looks interesting but it seems like it's exclusively for libraries.
  - badlibrarian 6mo ago
    I can find no current public document from the Internet Archive explaining what is backed up, where, or at what redundancy level. From a 2016 blog post: "Do you do backups too, for example to guard against corrupt data getting mirrored across both copies, or accidental deletion?" John Gonzalez, the author and IA infrastructure lead, replied: "We have done experiments to confirm that we can back up large portions of our corpus... but this is not a regular practice for us at this time." https://blog.archive.org/2016/10/25/20000-hard-drives-on-a-mission/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/10/25/20000-hard-drives-on-a-m...
- boomboomsubban 6mo ago
  IA makes torrents for basically everything on it's site.
WalterBright 6mo ago
Many software companies in the 80s were quiet about their software being bootlegged because it turned out to be great for building a critical mass of users of their software.
strickinato 6mo ago
I can't more highly recommend this book for getting into the headspace of the era a lot of these recordings. 11 chapters about DIY / Punk / Hardcore bands of the 1980s underground scene. (The audiobook in particular is fun as it's read by musicians influenced by the artists in their respective chapters) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life
- pjmorris 6mo ago
  Seconded. This was a great read, and led me to a lot of great listening. And some wondering about how far Minutemen would've went if D. Boon hadn't passed so early. I also think there's a lot to learn from the book about DIY for any startup or community organizer. Lastly, if you read and you want to learn more about 'The Replacements', 'Trouble Boys', Bob Mehr, is a terrific read.
  - ilamont 6mo ago
    > I also think there's a lot to learn from the book about DIY for any startup or community organizer. The parallels with being in a band and a startup are real. Azerrad says many times in the book that what these bands were doing was entrepreneurial.
deleted 6mo ago
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charcircuit 6mo ago
>listen now These are dangerous words to use for an archive site for material still protected under copyright.
darkstarsys 6mo ago
But what about copyright? Asking for a friend.
- sph 6mo ago
  My friend Sam Altman said not to worry.
  - incompatible 6mo ago
    Is a takedown demand the worse thing that can happen?
bguberfain 6mo ago
Not to demerit the recording, but I felt more nostalgic for the last sentence of the article "Sometimes, the internet is good" than for the musics itself.
ilamont 6mo ago
On the afternoon of October 6 1989 I attended a Fugazi concert in Cambridge Mass, probably one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Last year I casually searched YouTube for some shows I had attended in my youth and this one popped up, recorded by a high school classmate who happened to be there, filming from the side from a balcony or rope rack used by stagehands. I then went to the Fugazi Live Series archive to see if there was better quality audio (the band recorded most of their shows from the 1980s through the early 2000s, and posted almost all of them in the archive). That October 1989 concert was in the database (https://dischord.com/fugazi_live_series/cambridge-ma-usa-100689 https://dischord.com/fugazi_live_series/cambridge-ma-usa-100...), and there were some comments by others who attended, but there was no supporting media other than a single photograph. So I emailed the address on the website: Hi, regarding this show someone created a video recording from which the audio can probably be extracted. It's on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/0XS3QD2cddo?si=1TM9PglNv-Rlr98w https://youtu.be/0XS3QD2cddo?si=1TM9PglNv-Rlr98w I was at the show but not near the stage. It was a memorable show for me and many others according to the description on the official Fugazi archive. The uploader of the video (my high school classmate, who I believe was a member of the FUs at some point) says: "In 1989, I went to the First Congregational Church, In Harvard Sq. Cambridge Massachusetts, in hopes of getting into this Fugazi show. Unfortunately, the promoter pre-sold the tickets to people he knew. Thus there was a large crowd of people trying to get in without tickets. Fortunately for me, I had been friends with him before, and he let my girlfriend and I in. Once inside, I asked Guy if I could videotape the show, he told me to go ahead... as long as I sent a copy of the video to Dischord Records... I never did... I just wasn't responsible enough in those days to bother... anyway, here it is, the full show, in all it's faded and low resolution glory... so go ahead, enjoy, and share." To my surprise, Ian MacKaye responded! While he could extract the audio from YouTube, he wanted to know if I could get in touch with my high school classmate who might still have the original tapes which would have better quality. I did, and my classmate actually got the tapes (from his old girlfriend, who had them in a box in her basement) and shipped them off to Ian. At some point they will be properly digitized and put on the Fugazi archive. I had a long interview with Ian about archiving which I hope to post on my blog later this summer. To make a long story short, he's amassed a huge collection of materials from Fugazi and his previous bands (most notably Minor Threat) which includes concert audio, studio audio, video, photos, concert flyers, and every piece of fan mail they received at Dischord House from the 1980s to the present day. He's very systematic about organizing the archives, thanks to interactions with trained archivists including several working for the federal government (he's based in Washington DC).
mmmlinux 6mo ago
So how long till your just greeted with a page telling you the archive has it, but you can't download it because of DMCA.
deleted 6mo ago
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SoleilAbsolu 6mo ago
Wow, this is very cool, I have been looking for the Phish show at Lounge Ax from November 1990 (opening for Alex Chilton of Big Star) for ages. It was first time I saw them live, and next time they came around they graduated from a 300 person club to a 3000 person ballroom!
everyone 6mo ago
I used to record concerts I went to with a minidisc player and a small battery powered mic.. I have Beck, Radiohead, Dj Shadow, Kid koala, Q-bert. Defo fun to listen back to, especially the bullshit my friends and I were saying. Also there was a shop in Temple Bar Dublin that seemed to specialise in selling bootlegs. They were really expensive, but really good, clearly taken from the sound desk.
lastdong 6mo ago
This brings back some memories. I often recorded live gigs from the radio. It was the best way to discover new bands and share them with friends at parties. The Internet Archive keeps on giving, what a great project.
standardly 6mo ago
Some great commentary in here. I agree all games have loops, so the authors stance against them comes off as a bit confusing. I think what the author is getting at is when loops are obviosuly "felt" and feel canned. Strategy games typically have obvious, tight loops. Turn-based games are loop-driven by definition. And so on. This is fine. But single player games, single player RPGs, etc, can suffer if the loop is really tight and obvious. Early on, you feel "oh, i get it. it's going to be 40 more hours of THIS". Novelty wears off if the loop doesn't really change or evolve. Whereas in turn-based games or strategy-based games, the loop itself IS the game because it progresses as the game state evolves. Nobody complains about the game-loop of chess because that's the game - if you don't like the loop, you don't like the game and the convo ends there, is what is is. But a single-player adventure game, for example, has to do a lot of other stuff right to keep a player incentivized to keep playing the "loop". Best example would be BG3, where theres clearly a loop - but its massive. Theres a LOT of variation and events between leaving camp and returning later that night. So each "loop" rarely feels samey. I think the issue is when gameplay loops become transparent and predictable rather than maintaining novelty. A LOT of games suffer for this - the type of game you agree is good, you enjoy it, but put it down after 12 hours for some reason. It's bc of this. The human brain seeks novelty.
- pimlottc 6mo ago
  You probably meant to reply to a different post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764164
  - standardly 6mo ago
    No clue how that happened. Epic fail. Not even pasting my comment there, just going to let it die.
cold_tom 6mo ago
This is one of those cases where preservation clashes with ownership. Without this, a lot of those recordings would just disappear.But at the same time, they’re not really his to share. Hard to draw a clean line here.
LightBug1 6mo ago
Breathlessly cannot wait to share some of this stuff with my people ... This is what the internet is for. THANK YOU.
soneil 6mo ago
2100 entries over 40 years is pretty much a show a week. Talk about artefacts of a life well lived.
jerukmangga 6mo ago
[dead]
__fst__ 6mo ago
Just browsed through the available Audio collections on the Internet Archive. There's probably more music available than I can listen in my lifetime. No need for audio subscriptions for me. Its fun to browse and explore and I like the sequential listening experience of the LPs.
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sailfast 6mo ago
How did they make these tapes sound so incredible? I'm getting more fidelity out of these tapes than just about any cassette I've ever listened to - even new in the shrink wrap. Amazing. This is like all of the great shows I couldn't go to in my childhood. Incredible.
so-cal-schemer 6mo ago
Play from: 'Webamp' is mandatory.
crashbunny 6mo ago
Kind of loosely related to the article. Many years ago someone uploaded to youtube an old video of Neil Young going into a record store and finding a bootleg vinyl of one of his concerts for sale. I think this is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdOITpaQvZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdOITpaQvZI "This is a part from autobiographical film Neil made in 1972." I found the video fascinating and thinking about how and who made these bootlegs is a fascinating mystery to me. It would have to someone in the industry with lots of contacts to get it made and distributed.
pcblues 6mo ago
I bought bootleg CDs of nirvana when I was at uni in the 1990s. Always disappointed. At their most wasted.
Lorin 6mo ago
I desperately miss PureDJ online radio, pretty much exclusively streamed EDM DJ sets. Would do anything to see the archive restored in some fashion.
samewl 6mo ago
[dead]
washadjeffmad 6mo ago
I'm heartened that so much tape is still around. The lot of digital is often binary - it exists or it doesn't, but even a shred of flaking analog media can retain complete information. I was a member of a few tape sharing communities at the turn of the millennium and spent those years digitizing scores of board and bootleg live recordings (APE or FLAC... the great debate). We'd trade our strategies for getting gear into shows, who was working door and board and was cool with what, stories of getting caught. When recorders got small enough, we started sneaking MiniDisc players into venues with microphones down our sleeves for stereo. I've still got a few stacks of those. Leading up to that, at the dawn of LAME, I was doing the same over on IRC. Everyone with an fserve had a few tracks or albums of their favorite bands, tons local with no other distribution, and you could always message them for more info. There was a lot of love, and I found a lot of great people across the world that way. When the RIAA crackdowns started, I archived as much as I could but lost everything in the mid-2000s when a Windows upgrade overwrote my external storage. The irony that hundreds of gigs (of both kids) would have survived if I'd put them on tape hasn't eluded me.
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saysjonathan 6mo ago
The National put out a official 'bootleg' recording of two nights of concerts using the Mike "the Mike" Millard method, called Juicy Sonic Magic[0]. Only physically released on triple cassette though I think you can stream it. Sort of tangential to this conversation but it really captures the energy of a live show in a completely different way. Highly recommend checking out if you're a fan of the band, old bootleg recording techniques, or live recordings in general. 0: https://www.discogs.com/master/1664187-The-National-Juicy-Sonic-Magic https://www.discogs.com/master/1664187-The-National-Juicy-So...
dhruv3006 6mo ago
This is a beauty!
m463 6mo ago
I remember reading that maybe steve jobs learned a lot from a video of the beatles practicing together (or was it in person?) I've always wondered if that was available somewhere.

708 points by jrm-veris 6mo ago

Late to the party, but if anyone gets a chance, look up 80s/90s nightlife in San Francisco, New York, Montreal, Toronto and so on. We lost a lot.

monooso 6mo ago

A discussion from six days ago (same story, different source): https://apnews.com/article/aadam-jacobs-collection-concerts-internet-archive-chicago-b1c9c4466a2db409a83523ad84b79d62 https://apnews.com/article/aadam-jacobs-collection-concerts-...

EvanAnderson 6mo ago
Here's the discussion from 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 I was pleased to find some "They Might Be Giants" in the archive.

GaryBluto 6mo ago

[flagged]

joecool1029 6mo ago
They covered it in the apnews source. Takedowns are available but only a few bands requested it, most were supportive of the archive.
- zoobab 6mo ago
  Mirror the archive before it get taken down.
- vaylian 6mo ago
  To quote: > Jacobs said the majority of the artists he recorded are pleased to have their work preserved. As for copyright concerns, he’s happy to remove recordings if requested, but added that only one or two musicians so far have asked that their material be taken down. I think the keyword here is "preserved". These are old recordings that cannot realistically be recreated by any other method. AI may reconstruct some parts, but it's still not the real thing. These recordings are time capsules.
- Scoundreller 6mo ago
  > Takedowns are available but only a few bands requested it 101% chance Metallica did this
  - Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
    101% kiss
  - RajT88 6mo ago
    Who? I feel like there used to be a band by that name. Not sure what became of them.

tclancy 6mo ago

Source article is more enjoyable http://blockclubchicago.org/2026/04/10/from-early-nirvana-to-phish-a-chicago-fans-secret-recordings-of-10000-shows-are-now-online/ http://blockclubchicago.org/2026/04/10/from-early-nirvana-to...

bahmboo 6mo ago
This should be the link. Thanks
- xnx 6mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47717957
adfm 6mo ago
Here’s an article about The Sacramento Music Archive that’s also worth checking out. https://www.kqed.org/arts/13979518/sacramento-music-archive-shayne-stacy-punk-metal-cassettes-vhs-demos-concerts https://www.kqed.org/arts/13979518/sacramento-music-archive-... Go out and support your local live music scene.

pimlottc 6mo ago

Really interesting to see how far this story has spread, I saw it in my Chicago groups first and now it’s popped up in outlets all over the world. I guess it shows how nostalgic we are for an earlier time, both in music and internet culture.

HelloUsername 6mo ago

Previous discussion: "Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 8-apr-2026 76 comments

alsetmusic 6mo ago

This is one of the best things I've read about in a bit. It wasn't uncommon to buy marked-up (overpriced) bootlegs of live performances on CDs in the 90s. You never knew in advance if it'd be a quality recording or total garbage. We've lost that. I still love when one of my live bootlegs of Faith No More comes on with them doing (sometimes mocking) parodies of popular music (their rendition of Nothing Compares to You by Sinead OConnor has been in my head as I type this). When I got to see them in 2010 (I think) they were true to form and played a bunch of short (reinterpretations) covers and it was one of the best aspects of the show. And I still have a Mr Bungle bootleg with them covering Existential Blues by Tom "T-Bone" Stankus (I always thought it was Doctor Demento's Wizard of Oz until just now when I looked it up). How would you even know about these awesome gems without bootlegs or access to see all their live shows? YouTube is less likely to capture an entire show than a clip, whereas the bootlegs were typically the full show. There are probably areas of the internet where this stuff gets shared and traded, but having it in my local music shop meant everyone had access without requiring special knowledge. I just did two searches, one Google and one Kagi, and neither turned up the FNM Nothing Compares to You. Who knows how many copies of it exist in the world. If my music library gets nuked, who will even know about it? I think I'm gonna start uploading my bootleg recordings of live shows to IA.

kkkqkqkqkqlqlql 6mo ago
If you really want to share it, how about torrenting it?
- CoffeeOnWrite 6mo ago
  IA makes the most sense in the spirit of preservation. Etree (https://www.etree.org/ https://www.etree.org/ ) is the longest running torrent site for tapes. It looks like only about 5% of the hundred thousand torrents have any seeders at all. Not sure how reliable requesting a seed is. I’d expect long tail stuff to get “effectively lost”. Versus IA whose purpose and funding is preservation, in addition to sharing.
  - HappMacDonald 6mo ago

cyanbane 6mo ago

Some stuff I snagged the other day when it was posted: Elf Power Live at Lounge Ax 1998-04-25 https://archive.org/details/ajc01382_elf-power-1998-04-25 https://archive.org/details/ajc01382_elf-power-1998-04-25 Fountains Of Wayne Live at The Vic Theatre 2003-11-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc00691_fountains-of-wayne-2003-11-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc00691_fountains-of-wayne-2003... Fugazi Live at State Theatre on 1991-08-06 https://archive.org/details/ajc02237_fugazi1991-08-06.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc02237_fugazi1991-08-06.ajcpro... Godspeed You! Black Emperor Live at Lounge Ax on 1999-09-16 https://archive.org/details/ajc02676_gybe1999-09-16.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc02676_gybe1999-09-16.ajcproje... Iron & Wine Live at Abbey Pub 2004-07-02 (Late show) https://archive.org/details/ajc01329_iron-wine-2004-07-02.late https://archive.org/details/ajc01329_iron-wine-2004-07-02.la... Josh Rouse Live at Schubas Tavern 2004-04-26 https://archive.org/details/ajc01208_josh-rouse-2004-04-26 https://archive.org/details/ajc01208_josh-rouse-2004-04-26 Midnight Oil Live at Cabaret Metro 1988-04-30 https://archive.org/details/ajc02792_midnightoil1988-04-30 https://archive.org/details/ajc02792_midnightoil1988-04-30 Neutral Milk Hotel Live at Lounge Ax 1997-05-01 https://archive.org/details/ajc00789_neutralmilkhotel1997-05-01 https://archive.org/details/ajc00789_neutralmilkhotel1997-05... OK Go Live at Belmont-Sheffield Music Festival 2003-05-31 https://archive.org/details/ajc01120_ok-go-2003-05-31 https://archive.org/details/ajc01120_ok-go-2003-05-31 Pavement Live at Lounge Ax 1992-06-12 https://archive.org/details/ajc00811_pavement1992-06-12 https://archive.org/details/ajc00811_pavement1992-06-12 Polyphonic Spree Live at Metro on 2003-10-07 https://archive.org/details/ajc01050-PolyphonicSpree2003-10-07.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc01050-PolyphonicSpree2003-10-... Ratatat Live at Abbey Pub 2004-05-14 https://archive.org/details/ajc01220_ratatat-2004-05-14 https://archive.org/details/ajc01220_ratatat-2004-05-14 Rogue Wave Live at Schubas Tavern on 2005-01-30 https://archive.org/details/ajc01227_roguewave2005-01-30.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc01227_roguewave2005-01-30.ajc... Super Furry Animals Live at Abbey Pub 2002-04-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc01144_super-furry-animals-2002-04-19 https://archive.org/details/ajc01144_super-furry-animals-200... The Decemberists Live at Intonation Fest on 2005-07-17 https://archive.org/details/ajc00642_decemberists2005-07-17.ajcproject https://archive.org/details/ajc00642_decemberists2005-07-17.... The Folk Implosion Live at Schubas Tavern 2000-02-29 (Late show) https://archive.org/details/ajc00963_folk_implosion_2000-02-29 https://archive.org/details/ajc00963_folk_implosion_2000-02-... The Shins Live at Schubas Tavern 2001-08-24 https://archive.org/details/ajc01131_the_shins_2001-08-24 https://archive.org/details/ajc01131_the_shins_2001-08-24

LargeWu 6mo ago

For those interested, Relisten is another repository of live concert recordings. It skews heavily towards improvisational music, ie jambands, but there's some indie rock on there as well. https://relisten.net/ https://relisten.net/

bigfishrunning 6mo ago
Cool site, thanks! it seems to also be backed by archive.org, i wonder if there's a way to move more stuff into that interface. the nirvana performance in the article isn't there for instance.
- ClifReeder 6mo ago
  One of the authors/maintainers of Relisten posted that they are working on adding the Aadam Jacbos collection - https://bsky.app/profile/saewitz.com/post/3mjawvvklls2v https://bsky.app/profile/saewitz.com/post/3mjawvvklls2v
  - switz 6mo ago
    Oh hey, it's me! Happy to answer any questions We landed an update on mobile last week that brought all 4,000 artists with a "collection" onto Relisten. That'll be coming to the web and sonos shortly as well. We've been discussing the Aadam Jacob's collection with the archivists for some time. It comes with its own unique UX[0] and data constraints so we've been iterating on that and waiting for a critical mass of uploads before tackling it. We're getting closer though. I agree with most of the sentiment in these comments. Archive and share non-comercially all the things! [0] it's not "one" artist so it requires some custom UI, it should be unified through a single Aadam Jacob's collection, and it has a unique data path/structure on Archive.org relative to other collections

nour833 6mo ago

Yeah but you know DMCA may intervene to delete it if they are copyrighted (as it happened with many media content before)

lokar 6mo ago

Tangent idea: musicians should record every live show, and then put it on a streaming service, only for people who bought tickets to the show (possibly for an extra small fee on the ticket). Extra revenue for the artist, and a cool benefit for the fan (the liver performance you attended).

RajT88 6mo ago
There's a niche market for this. Whoever builds it will make a good living, I feel.
natios 6mo ago
why not have it accessible to everyone so collectors can have a field day with it!
- dewey 6mo ago
  Are you working for free too?
  - xd1936 6mo ago
    Available for everyone to purchase*, not just the local venue ticket holders.
    - lokar 6mo ago
      I think (I could be wrong), that relatively few people would value the recordings from every show on a tour. But, many more people would value somewhat exclusive access to the recording for a show they attended in person.
      - maweaver 6mo ago
        As someone else mentioned above, with jam bands each performance is unique, and people definitely value getting access to every show. For bands repeating the same set as identically as possible on a tour, not sure how much it matters which performance you listen to. Although some people might be into it, for the "I was there" novelty factor.

xoxxala 6mo ago

I'm reading this article and Weird Al's Don't Download this Song pops up on random play. Did Microsoft add Copilot to Media Player or something? "Don't download this song (Don't do it, no, no) Even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong (You can just ask him)"

loloquwowndueo 6mo ago
Windows, right? If so, that’s your problem. Your computer is controlled by someone else. (Just being snarky btw lol)

darknavi 6mo ago

I enjoyed "live albums" a lot growing up. The Mark, Tom, and Travis show was always a blast to listen to with my friends. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark,_Tom,_and_Travis_Show_(The_Enema_Strikes_Back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mark,_Tom,_and_Travis_Show...!)

dfxm12 6mo ago
HN thinks the exclamation point is punctuation and not part of the URL. Luckily wikipedia has a redirect already set up that will work: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Mark,_Tom,_and_Travis_Show_(The_Enema_Strikes_Back) https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Mark,_Tom,_an...
nticompass 6mo ago
This was one of the first - if not the first - CD I bought for myself, using my own (allowance) money! I was probably too young to listen to it, but blink-182 is my favorite band and I listened to this CD so many times that I pretty much memorized all the stupid banter between tracks. I also liked sharing certain tracks with my friends when they came over...

tiahura 6mo ago

There are so many concert recordings of awesome performances that sound like crap because they are audience tapes. Often before a performance recorded music is played and captured in the audience recordings. Would it be possible to train a model on an archive of these concert audience recordings of studio recordings paired with the original studio recordings to develop a system to “clean up” audience recordings?

tracker1 6mo ago
Maybe... however, most bands tend to drift a LOT from the studio versions of songs while touring.
- tiahura 6mo ago
  I'm referring to the pre-concert, when they're just playing a mixtape of whatever through the board. Compare studio recording of whatever and the audience recording.

criddell 6mo ago

> he has to use anachronistic cassette decks to play the tapes, which get converted into digital files Anachronistic? It seems like a complicated way of saying "the tapes were digitized".

FarmerPotato 6mo ago
Yeah, anachronism means 'not belonging to the time period'. If you made a 1980s movie and had the protagonist transfer cassettes to a laptop via USB interface, THAT would be an anachronism. I think the author meant "old-fashioned" or "obsolete". Though using a cassette deck to read cassettes, geez, what else are you going to do? Build your own using an Arduino?

reenorap 6mo ago

I remember back in the early 90s I think on the internet when it was only accessible via my university, reading on a newsgroup about how people traded bootlegs from various concerts. People would mail cassette tapes around the country and would use double cassette recorders to make a copy of their bootleg and mail it back to people. It was definitely a different time

dfxm12 6mo ago
There was lots of "tape trading" back then. Video too. Foreign TV shows, regional programming, etc. If not technically Internet material, i think this is certainly in the spirit of the Internet Archive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_trading
conductr 6mo ago
Late 90s there were some great IRC channels for this. I was pretty active in one that revolved around a genre that I most enjoyed.
anjel 6mo ago
They called 'em Tape Trees, way back then, which begat ETree.org

rolph 6mo ago

if you really want to hear a live performance, there seems to be a nudge from amazon lately. if your into providing music, dont default to a live version. some live recordings are good, you can actually hear the music, and the crowd is only noticble between songs. im thinking that an online archive of live concerts will only steepen this trend. im just going back to all my mp3 media more often nowadays [bcz i actually bought it mp3 versions, decades ago when you still could] that way i can hear music, instead of a bunch of people screaming over the music. now heres somthing else, maybe you remember that concert, you were there, you love hearing you and friends at the concert, maybe people who no longer live are still there. jimmy dean, rock on,

tracker1 6mo ago

I have a friend that used to record a lot of concerts... a surprising number of bands would even let him plug into the panel to do so. IIRC, mostly using a digital tape recorder later transferred to computer over firewire in the late 90s and 00s.

Tor3 6mo ago
A friend (who has unfortunately passed away) owned, together with his father, just about every opera CD ever made (his father worked in RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) and was also an opera fanatic). So, in order to get more opera he used to go to opera performances and record them. When the season opened he would go regularly to e.g. La Scala in Milan, and record the performances. That wasn't actually allowed, but the people there knew him and they knew why he did it (for personal use only), and let him in. To be at the best recording place he would have to get a seat in a section which required that he wore a suit, so he would often wear a smoking - which he actually hated, but he could put a microphone on each collar and get a stereo recording. In the nineties he used a DAT recorder.

schwartzworld 6mo ago

It's funny to think how much effort was put into preventing bootlegging, when now everything is being recorded all the time. The few bands that didn't care or even encouraged it reaped the benefits. I was a huge Ween fan in the 90s and bootlegged a show of theirs myself. Camera and recording devices were allowed and the result was a tremendous amount of live content available online. For some bands this might not matter, but they rarely played the same set list twice and often played songs differently from show to show. In the early internet days, there was more ween content online than you could ever hope to listen to.

internet101010 6mo ago
Effort is still being put into it. Just this weekend YouTube put the 4K Coachella streams behind SABR. I could still get 1080p easily but 4K required some fanangling.
acomjean 6mo ago
As a student in the 90s I worked security for the student concert group on campus. We had to frisk people for Jello Briafa (Dead Kennedys) spoken word performance. I found a couple of tape decks, but those were allowed. They still put a lot of effort sometimes. I saw Dave Chapelle in NYC and they made us put our phones in these pouches which were unsealed on exiting the show.
- wileydragonfly 6mo ago
  “I don’t have a phone”
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago
    Sadly, they likely also had you walk through a metal detector

rigonkulous 6mo ago

I am an active and enthusiastic recordist and have decades of stuff I've accumulated over the years. One of the concerts I captured in the 90's, lives on as a bootleg which I often see around the scene of this one particularly great live electronic dance band, whose punters have created true value out of the hour and a half of live concert input I managed to record, standing right there front stage and center, with the band looking right at me. It was a hilarious experience - I expected to get booted out pretty fast, so I held my ground as still as I could, DAT-tape rolling by, shotgun mike held in front of me like it was just normal, as if I belonged there. The lead singer caught my eye and gave me a wide grin. I survived the concert, it was awesome, but boy was I relieved to have made it home with that DAT - which I of course, proceeded to digitize with my brand new spdf/io .. The next year the band (who are big and famous, btw) were in the same city and I happened to be around, I got invited backstage to meet the band, participate in a bit of nerdery regarding their live setup and gear and so on, and talk about that recording I'd made. I'd put it out as a pure bootleg, no questions asked. Turns out they'd heard it and enjoyed it and came to appreciate the nature of their bootleggers, as avid fans who gave the band themselves something extra to think about in what was then, a burgeoning digital/online universe about to explode. So, seeing it around, almost 30 years now .. here and there, again and again .. is quite hilarious. Youtube often recommends it to me in my playlist, its just there. And at a certain spot in the recording, I tell my mate to stop standing so close to me (he was blocking the shottie), and prepare for my ass getting bounced - which never happened, thankfully. So yeah, I just wanna say, if you personally have the desire to be a recordist, and have a pure purpose in it, I'd say just freakin' go for it. Record All The Things. Its good for the Artists, yo. And also their fans. (Its how we get rid of the managers, cough cough..)

erickhill 6mo ago
I loved reading this with the still built-in caginess around all the identifying details. Just in case!
whompyjaw 6mo ago
What is a "punter"?

bilekas 6mo ago

I have my worries about Internet Archive more and more recently. I'm wondering though is there any decentralized IPFS or P2P Archive of the entire archive that can be helped with for preservation ? https://www.wired.com/story/the-internets-most-powerful-archiving-tool-is-in-mortal-peril/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-internets-most-powerful-arch...

sdellis 6mo ago
According to the Wikipedia page, it seems that copies of the archive are stored around the world. LOCKSS is a decentralized strategy for preservation which includes archival copies at remote sites. It has been in use for a very long time. I feel like preservation via IPFS would introduce quite a bit of risk to the goal.
- bityard 6mo ago
  Yeah, there is some popular misunderstanding about what IPFS is... a lot of people seem to think its essentially free or subsidized distributed cloud storage. But the more you dig into it, the more you realize it's just a fairly inefficient caching system. LOCKSS looks interesting but it seems like it's exclusively for libraries.
- badlibrarian 6mo ago
  I can find no current public document from the Internet Archive explaining what is backed up, where, or at what redundancy level. From a 2016 blog post: "Do you do backups too, for example to guard against corrupt data getting mirrored across both copies, or accidental deletion?" John Gonzalez, the author and IA infrastructure lead, replied: "We have done experiments to confirm that we can back up large portions of our corpus... but this is not a regular practice for us at this time." https://blog.archive.org/2016/10/25/20000-hard-drives-on-a-mission/ https://blog.archive.org/2016/10/25/20000-hard-drives-on-a-m...
boomboomsubban 6mo ago
IA makes torrents for basically everything on it's site.

WalterBright 6mo ago

Many software companies in the 80s were quiet about their software being bootlegged because it turned out to be great for building a critical mass of users of their software.

strickinato 6mo ago

I can't more highly recommend this book for getting into the headspace of the era a lot of these recordings. 11 chapters about DIY / Punk / Hardcore bands of the 1980s underground scene. (The audiobook in particular is fun as it's read by musicians influenced by the artists in their respective chapters) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Band_Could_Be_Your_Life

pjmorris 6mo ago
Seconded. This was a great read, and led me to a lot of great listening. And some wondering about how far Minutemen would've went if D. Boon hadn't passed so early. I also think there's a lot to learn from the book about DIY for any startup or community organizer. Lastly, if you read and you want to learn more about 'The Replacements', 'Trouble Boys', Bob Mehr, is a terrific read.
- ilamont 6mo ago
  > I also think there's a lot to learn from the book about DIY for any startup or community organizer. The parallels with being in a band and a startup are real. Azerrad says many times in the book that what these bands were doing was entrepreneurial.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

charcircuit 6mo ago

>listen now These are dangerous words to use for an archive site for material still protected under copyright.

darkstarsys 6mo ago

But what about copyright? Asking for a friend.

sph 6mo ago
My friend Sam Altman said not to worry.
- incompatible 6mo ago
  Is a takedown demand the worse thing that can happen?

bguberfain 6mo ago

Not to demerit the recording, but I felt more nostalgic for the last sentence of the article "Sometimes, the internet is good" than for the musics itself.

ilamont 6mo ago

On the afternoon of October 6 1989 I attended a Fugazi concert in Cambridge Mass, probably one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Last year I casually searched YouTube for some shows I had attended in my youth and this one popped up, recorded by a high school classmate who happened to be there, filming from the side from a balcony or rope rack used by stagehands. I then went to the Fugazi Live Series archive to see if there was better quality audio (the band recorded most of their shows from the 1980s through the early 2000s, and posted almost all of them in the archive). That October 1989 concert was in the database (https://dischord.com/fugazi_live_series/cambridge-ma-usa-100689 https://dischord.com/fugazi_live_series/cambridge-ma-usa-100...), and there were some comments by others who attended, but there was no supporting media other than a single photograph. So I emailed the address on the website: Hi, regarding this show someone created a video recording from which the audio can probably be extracted. It's on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/0XS3QD2cddo?si=1TM9PglNv-Rlr98w https://youtu.be/0XS3QD2cddo?si=1TM9PglNv-Rlr98w I was at the show but not near the stage. It was a memorable show for me and many others according to the description on the official Fugazi archive. The uploader of the video (my high school classmate, who I believe was a member of the FUs at some point) says: "In 1989, I went to the First Congregational Church, In Harvard Sq. Cambridge Massachusetts, in hopes of getting into this Fugazi show. Unfortunately, the promoter pre-sold the tickets to people he knew. Thus there was a large crowd of people trying to get in without tickets. Fortunately for me, I had been friends with him before, and he let my girlfriend and I in. Once inside, I asked Guy if I could videotape the show, he told me to go ahead... as long as I sent a copy of the video to Dischord Records... I never did... I just wasn't responsible enough in those days to bother... anyway, here it is, the full show, in all it's faded and low resolution glory... so go ahead, enjoy, and share." To my surprise, Ian MacKaye responded! While he could extract the audio from YouTube, he wanted to know if I could get in touch with my high school classmate who might still have the original tapes which would have better quality. I did, and my classmate actually got the tapes (from his old girlfriend, who had them in a box in her basement) and shipped them off to Ian. At some point they will be properly digitized and put on the Fugazi archive. I had a long interview with Ian about archiving which I hope to post on my blog later this summer. To make a long story short, he's amassed a huge collection of materials from Fugazi and his previous bands (most notably Minor Threat) which includes concert audio, studio audio, video, photos, concert flyers, and every piece of fan mail they received at Dischord House from the 1980s to the present day. He's very systematic about organizing the archives, thanks to interactions with trained archivists including several working for the federal government (he's based in Washington DC).

mmmlinux 6mo ago

So how long till your just greeted with a page telling you the archive has it, but you can't download it because of DMCA.

deleted 6mo ago

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SoleilAbsolu 6mo ago

Wow, this is very cool, I have been looking for the Phish show at Lounge Ax from November 1990 (opening for Alex Chilton of Big Star) for ages. It was first time I saw them live, and next time they came around they graduated from a 300 person club to a 3000 person ballroom!

everyone 6mo ago

I used to record concerts I went to with a minidisc player and a small battery powered mic.. I have Beck, Radiohead, Dj Shadow, Kid koala, Q-bert. Defo fun to listen back to, especially the bullshit my friends and I were saying. Also there was a shop in Temple Bar Dublin that seemed to specialise in selling bootlegs. They were really expensive, but really good, clearly taken from the sound desk.

lastdong 6mo ago

This brings back some memories. I often recorded live gigs from the radio. It was the best way to discover new bands and share them with friends at parties. The Internet Archive keeps on giving, what a great project.

standardly 6mo ago

Some great commentary in here. I agree all games have loops, so the authors stance against them comes off as a bit confusing. I think what the author is getting at is when loops are obviosuly "felt" and feel canned. Strategy games typically have obvious, tight loops. Turn-based games are loop-driven by definition. And so on. This is fine. But single player games, single player RPGs, etc, can suffer if the loop is really tight and obvious. Early on, you feel "oh, i get it. it's going to be 40 more hours of THIS". Novelty wears off if the loop doesn't really change or evolve. Whereas in turn-based games or strategy-based games, the loop itself IS the game because it progresses as the game state evolves. Nobody complains about the game-loop of chess because that's the game - if you don't like the loop, you don't like the game and the convo ends there, is what is is. But a single-player adventure game, for example, has to do a lot of other stuff right to keep a player incentivized to keep playing the "loop". Best example would be BG3, where theres clearly a loop - but its massive. Theres a LOT of variation and events between leaving camp and returning later that night. So each "loop" rarely feels samey. I think the issue is when gameplay loops become transparent and predictable rather than maintaining novelty. A LOT of games suffer for this - the type of game you agree is good, you enjoy it, but put it down after 12 hours for some reason. It's bc of this. The human brain seeks novelty.

pimlottc 6mo ago
You probably meant to reply to a different post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764164 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764164
- standardly 6mo ago
  No clue how that happened. Epic fail. Not even pasting my comment there, just going to let it die.

cold_tom 6mo ago

This is one of those cases where preservation clashes with ownership. Without this, a lot of those recordings would just disappear.But at the same time, they’re not really his to share. Hard to draw a clean line here.

LightBug1 6mo ago

Breathlessly cannot wait to share some of this stuff with my people ... This is what the internet is for. THANK YOU.

soneil 6mo ago

2100 entries over 40 years is pretty much a show a week. Talk about artefacts of a life well lived.

jerukmangga 6mo ago

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__fst__ 6mo ago

Just browsed through the available Audio collections on the Internet Archive. There's probably more music available than I can listen in my lifetime. No need for audio subscriptions for me. Its fun to browse and explore and I like the sequential listening experience of the LPs.

deleted 6mo ago

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sailfast 6mo ago

How did they make these tapes sound so incredible? I'm getting more fidelity out of these tapes than just about any cassette I've ever listened to - even new in the shrink wrap. Amazing. This is like all of the great shows I couldn't go to in my childhood. Incredible.

so-cal-schemer 6mo ago

Play from: 'Webamp' is mandatory.

crashbunny 6mo ago

Kind of loosely related to the article. Many years ago someone uploaded to youtube an old video of Neil Young going into a record store and finding a bootleg vinyl of one of his concerts for sale. I think this is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdOITpaQvZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdOITpaQvZI "This is a part from autobiographical film Neil made in 1972." I found the video fascinating and thinking about how and who made these bootlegs is a fascinating mystery to me. It would have to someone in the industry with lots of contacts to get it made and distributed.

pcblues 6mo ago

I bought bootleg CDs of nirvana when I was at uni in the 1990s. Always disappointed. At their most wasted.

Lorin 6mo ago

I desperately miss PureDJ online radio, pretty much exclusively streamed EDM DJ sets. Would do anything to see the archive restored in some fashion.

samewl 6mo ago

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washadjeffmad 6mo ago

I'm heartened that so much tape is still around. The lot of digital is often binary - it exists or it doesn't, but even a shred of flaking analog media can retain complete information. I was a member of a few tape sharing communities at the turn of the millennium and spent those years digitizing scores of board and bootleg live recordings (APE or FLAC... the great debate). We'd trade our strategies for getting gear into shows, who was working door and board and was cool with what, stories of getting caught. When recorders got small enough, we started sneaking MiniDisc players into venues with microphones down our sleeves for stereo. I've still got a few stacks of those. Leading up to that, at the dawn of LAME, I was doing the same over on IRC. Everyone with an fserve had a few tracks or albums of their favorite bands, tons local with no other distribution, and you could always message them for more info. There was a lot of love, and I found a lot of great people across the world that way. When the RIAA crackdowns started, I archived as much as I could but lost everything in the mid-2000s when a Windows upgrade overwrote my external storage. The irony that hundreds of gigs (of both kids) would have survived if I'd put them on tape hasn't eluded me.

deleted 6mo ago

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saysjonathan 6mo ago

The National put out a official 'bootleg' recording of two nights of concerts using the Mike "the Mike" Millard method, called Juicy Sonic Magic[0]. Only physically released on triple cassette though I think you can stream it. Sort of tangential to this conversation but it really captures the energy of a live show in a completely different way. Highly recommend checking out if you're a fan of the band, old bootleg recording techniques, or live recordings in general. 0: https://www.discogs.com/master/1664187-The-National-Juicy-Sonic-Magic https://www.discogs.com/master/1664187-The-National-Juicy-So...

dhruv3006 6mo ago

This is a beauty!

m463 6mo ago

I remember reading that maybe steve jobs learned a lot from a video of the beatles practicing together (or was it in person?) I've always wondered if that was available somewhere.