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Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive

Rare concert recordings are landing on the Internet Archive

jrm-veris

Comments (63)

  • tclancy
  • rigonkulous
    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..)
  • strickinato
    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
  • reenorap
    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
  • HelloUsername
    Previous discussion: "Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687443 8-apr-2026 76 comments
  • schwartzworld
    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.
  • darknavi
    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...!)
  • alsetmusic
    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.
  • WalterBright
    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.
  • lokar
    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).
  • bilekas
    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-arch...
  • momocowcow
    Couldn't find info on his recording gear over the years. Any available?
  • monooso
    A discussion from six days ago (same story, different source):https://apnews.com/article/aadam-jacobs-collection-concerts-...
  • tracker1
    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.
  • rolph
    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,
  • pimlottc
    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.
  • xoxxala
    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)"
  • cyanbane
    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-1998-04-25Fountains Of Wayne Live at The Vic Theatre 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.ajcpro...Godspeed You! Black Emperor Live at Lounge Ax on 1999-09-16 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.la...Josh Rouse Live at Schubas Tavern 2004-04-26 https://archive.org/details/ajc01208_josh-rouse-2004-04-26Midnight Oil Live at Cabaret Metro 1988-04-30 https://archive.org/details/ajc02792_midnightoil1988-04-30Neutral Milk Hotel Live at Lounge Ax 1997-05-01 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-2003-05-31Pavement Live at Lounge Ax 1992-06-12 https://archive.org/details/ajc00811_pavement1992-06-12Polyphonic Spree Live at Metro on 2003-10-07 https://archive.org/details/ajc01050-PolyphonicSpree2003-10-...Ratatat Live at Abbey Pub 2004-05-14 https://archive.org/details/ajc01220_ratatat-2004-05-14Rogue Wave Live at Schubas Tavern on 2005-01-30 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-200...The Decemberists Live at Intonation Fest on 2005-07-17 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-...The Shins Live at Schubas Tavern 2001-08-24 https://archive.org/details/ajc01131_the_shins_2001-08-24
  • LargeWu
    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/
  • criddell
    > he has to use anachronistic cassette decks to play the tapes, which get converted into digital filesAnachronistic?It seems like a complicated way of saying "the tapes were digitized".
  • nour833
    Yeah but you know DMCA may intervene to delete it if they are copyrighted (as it happened with many media content before)
  • tiahura
    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?
  • GaryBluto
    Good, but I doubt they'll last long on there before a DMCA takedown or lawsuit.