Fan’s recordings of 10,000 shows – including Nirvana’s debut gig in Chicago in 1989 – are being uploaded online for free

In 1984, Aadam Jacobs attended a local gig armed with a small dictaphone. After recording one gig, he recorded another. Then another. Then another. And that collection, which contains recordings of over 10,000 local gigs across four decades, is now being uploaded online for free.

Following Katlin Schneider’s 2003 documentary exploring Jacobs’ archival journey, Brian Emerick, a volunteer from the Internet Archive, reached out to Jacobs. Curious about his collection, Emerick was keen to archive Jacob’s staggering amount of vital music history, which included early recordings of Nirvana, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Björk, and more.

While Jacobs’ was initially dubious, he eventually gave in. That’s why a mass of volunteers are currently involved in the No Tape Left Behind: The Preservation of the Aadam Jacobs Collection project, regularly uploading every gig Jacobs has ever recorded to the Internet Archive.

It’s a tedious process, with volunteers working their way through boxes of tapes, transforming analogue recordings into digital files one by one, but it’s a vital project to preserve music history. “Before all the tapes started not working because of time, just disintegrating, I finally said yes,” he tells Block Club Chicago.

In his hometown of Chicago, Jacobs has earned himself the title of the ‘Chicago Tape Guy’. That’s because, as his collection slowly grew, his ongoing recording project became somewhat of an ‘open secret’ within the local scene. According to Block Club Chicago, Jacobs went from smuggling his compact Sony cassette recorder into gigs in a backpack, to openly recording each gig.

In fact, members of the sound team would allow Jacobs hook up his console cassette machine to the sound boards, while other venues began letting Jacobs in for free to record the show.

Across Jacob’s 10,000 strong collection, plenty of artists feature. From indie to rock to hip-hop, Jacob has caught acts both big and small on his amateur set up – with one stand-out being Nirvana’s debut Chicago in 1989. The recording captures a then-22-year-old Kurt Cobain performing to a small crowd in local club Dreamerz, two years before Nirvana skyrocketted to global fame with Nevermind.

So far, the No Tape Left Behind… effort has digitised over 5,500 tapes since beginning their work in 2024. It is estimated that it will take a good few years before they finish rooting through Jacob’s boxes of tapes.

While there are plenty of anti-bootlegging laws in place, many artists have enjoyed taking a peek back in time through Jacobs’ recordings. One or two acts have requested for recordings to be taken down, but that’s about it. Jacobs isn’t making a profit either, due to the Internet Archive collection being entirely free, the chances of a lawsuit are pretty low.

Hunt through the archives now at the No Tape Left Behind: The Preservation of the Aadam Jacobs Collection.