How John Coltrane Introduced the World to His Radical Sound with His Recording of “My Favorite Things” (1961)

in Music | May 12th, 2026

John Coltrane released “more sig­nif­i­cant works” than his 1960 “My Favorite Things,” says Robin Wash­ing­ton in a PRX doc­u­men­tary on the clas­sic rework­ing of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broad­way hit. “A Love Supreme” is often cit­ed as the zenith of the saxophonist’s career. “But if you tried to explain that song to an aver­age lis­ten­er, you would lose them. [“My Favorite Things”] is a defin­i­tive work that every­one knows, and any­one can lis­ten to, and the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of its evo­lu­tion is some­thing every­one can share and enjoy.” The song is acces­si­ble, a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful hit, and it is also an exper­i­men­tal mas­ter­piece.

Indeed, “My Favorite Things” may be the per­fect intro­duc­tion to Coltrane’s exper­i­men­tal­ism. After the dizzy­ing chord changes of 1959’s “Giant Steps,” this 14-minute, two-chord excur­sion pat­terned on the ragas of Ravi Shankar announced Coltrane’s move into the modal forms he refined until his death in 1967, as well as his embrace of the sopra­no sax­o­phone and his new quar­tet. It became “Coltrane’s most request­ed tune,” says Ed Wheel­er in The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane, “and a bridge to a broad pub­lic audi­ence.”

Coltrane’s take is also mes­mer­iz­ing, trance-induc­ing, “often com­pared to a whirling dervish,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above, a ref­er­ence to the Sufi med­i­ta­tion tech­nique of spin­ning in a cir­cle. It’s an unlike­ly song choice for the exer­cise, which makes it all the more fas­ci­nat­ing. The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final Broad­way col­lab­o­ra­tion, was an “instant clas­sic,” and every­one who’d seen it walked away hum­ming the tune to “My Favorite Things.” By 1960, it had become a stan­dard, with sev­er­al cov­er ver­sions released by Leslie Uggams, The Pete King Chorale, the Hi-Lo’s, and the Nor­man Luboff Choir.

Hun­dreds more cov­ers would fol­low. None of them sound­ed like Coltrane’s. The modal form—in which musi­cians impro­vise in dif­fer­ent kinds of scales over sim­pli­fied chord structures—created the “open free­dom” in music explored on Miles Davis’ path­break­ing Kind of Blue, on which Coltrane played tenor sax. (It was Davis who bought Coltrane his first sopra­no sax that year.) Coltrane’s use of modal form in adap­ta­tions of pop­u­lar stan­dards like “My Favorite Things” and George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” from Por­gy and Bess was an explic­it strat­e­gy to court a wider pub­lic, using the famil­iar to ori­ent his lis­ten­ers to the new.

The video essay brings in the exper­tise of musi­cian, com­pos­er, and YouTu­ber Adam Neely, who explains what makes Rogers and Hammerstein’s clas­sic unique among show tunes, and why it appealed to Coltrane as the cen­ter­piece of the 1961 album of the same name. The song’s unusu­al form and struc­ture allow the same melody to be played over both major and minor chords. Coltrane’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the song reduces it to the two ton­ics, E major and E minor, over which he and the band solo, intro­duc­ing a shift­ing tonal­i­ty and mood to the melody with each chord change.

Neely goes into greater depth, but it’s over­all an acces­si­ble expla­na­tion of Coltrane’s very acces­si­ble, yet ver­tig­i­nous­ly deep, “My Favorite Things.” Maybe only one ques­tion remains. Coltrane’s ren­di­tion came out four years before Julie Andrews’ icon­ic per­for­mance in the film adap­ta­tion of The Sound of Music, evok­ing the obvi­ous ques­tion,” says Wash­ing­ton: “Did he influ­ence her?”

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

Dis­cov­er the Church of St. John Coltrane, Found­ed on the Divine Music of A Love Supreme

Behold John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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Nearly 50 Years Later, WKRP in Cincinnati Becomes a Real Radio Station

in Music, Television | May 11th, 2026

It took near­ly 50 years. WKRP in Cincin­nati is no longer just a TV sit­com. It’s now a real radio sta­tion in Cincin­nati.

A Cin­cy-area FM sta­tion, known as “The Oasis,” has adopt­ed the WKRP call let­ters after acquir­ing them from a non­prof­it radio sta­tion in North Car­oli­na. The Raleigh-based sta­tion put the call let­ters up for auc­tion as part of a fundrais­ing effort. And then The Oasis snapped them up.

To mark the offi­cial launch last week, the sta­tion played the TV show’s theme song for six straight hours. Mov­ing for­ward, the sta­tion will con­tin­ue play­ing clas­sic rock from the ’60s through the ’80s — much like the music fea­tured on the 1978–82 sit­com. As a bonus, Gary Sandy, who played pro­gram direc­tor Andy Travis, has record­ed pro­mos for the revived WKRP. If the orig­i­nal show was before your time, you can watch some episodes on YouTube. Enjoy…

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

All of the Songs Played on “WKRP in Cincin­nati” in One Playlist: Stream 202 Clas­sic Tracks

MTV Rewind Lets You Revis­it 40,000 Music Videos & Com­mer­cials from the Gold­en Age of MTV

 

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Confidence: The Cartoon That Helped America Get Through the Great Depression (1933)

in Animation, History, Music | May 6th, 2026

No more bum­min’, let’s all get to work…

Actu­al­ly, hold up a sec. We’ll all be hap­pi­er and more pro­duc­tive if we take a moment to start our work day with Con­fi­dence, a pep­py musi­cal ani­ma­tion from 1933, star­ring new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and Mick­ey Mouse pre­cur­sor, Oswald the Lucky Rab­bit. 

Few Americans—today we’d refer to them as the 1%—could escape the pri­va­tions of the Great Depres­sion. The movies were one indus­try that con­tin­ued to thrive through this dark peri­od, pre­cise­ly because they offered a few hours of respite. No one went to the pic­tures to see a reflec­tion of their own lives. Gor­geous gowns, glam­orous Man­hat­tan apart­ments and roman­tic trou­ble cer­tain to be resolved in hap­py endings…remember Mia Far­row’s belea­guered wait­ress bask­ing in the Pur­ple Rose of Cairo’s reas­sur­ing glow?

Giv­en the pub­lic’s pref­er­ence for escapist fare, direc­tor Bill Nolan, the Father of Rub­ber Hose Ani­ma­tion, could have played it safe by gloss­ing over the back­sto­ry that leads Oswald to seek out advice from the Com­man­der in Chief. Instead, Nolan deliv­ered his joy­ful car­toon ani­mals into night­mare ter­ri­to­ry, the Depres­sion per­son­i­fied as a cowled Death fig­ure lay­ing waste to the land. It’s weird­ly upset­ting to see those hyper-cheer­ful vin­tage barn­yard ani­mals (and a rogue mon­key) under­go this graph­ic ener­va­tion.

Oh, for some oral history—I’d love to know how mati­nee crowds react­ed as Oswald raced scream­ing before a spin­ning ver­ti­go back­ground, seek­ing a rem­e­dy for a host of non-car­toon prob­lems. Irony is a lux­u­ry they did­n’t have.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the can-do spir­it so cen­tral to FDR’s New Deal quick­ly turned Oswald’s frown upside down. As pres­i­den­tial cam­paign promis­es go, this one’s unique­ly tai­lored to the demands of musi­cal com­e­dy. Wit­ness Annie, in which the 32nd pres­i­dent was again called upon to Rex Har­ri­son his way into audi­ence hearts, this time from the wheel­chair the cre­ators of Con­fi­dence did­n’t dare show, some forty years ear­li­er.

The divi­sion between enter­tain­ment and nation-lead­ing is pret­ty per­me­able these days, too.

Accord­ing­ly, what real­ly sets this car­toon apart for me is the use of a Pres­i­den­tial­ly-sanc­tioned giant syringe as a tool to get Depres­sion-era Amer­i­ca back on its feet. A fig­u­ra­tive injec­tion of con­fi­dence is all well and good, but noth­ing gets the barn­yard back on its singing, danc­ing feet like a lib­er­al dose, deliv­ered in the most lit­er­al way.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sim­ple, Down-to-Earth Christ­mas Card from the Great Depres­sion (1933)

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Great Depres­sion Cook­ing: Get Bud­get-Mind­ed Meals from the Online Cook­ing Show Cre­at­ed by 93-Year-Old Clara Can­nuc­cia­ri

When Al Capone Opened a Soup Kitchen Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion: Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Mobster’s Oper­a­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can’t get enough of that rub­ber style. 

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You Can Have Your Ashes Turned Into a Playable Vinyl Record, When Your Day Comes

in Life, Music | May 4th, 2026

Even in death we are only lim­it­ed by our imag­i­na­tion in how we want to go out. There are now ways to turn our corpse into a tree, or have our ash­es shot into space, or press our ash­es into dia­monds–I believe Super­man is involved in that last one. And now for the music lover, a com­pa­ny called And Viny­ly will press your ash­es into a playable vinyl record.

You like that pun­ny com­pa­ny name? There’s more: the busi­ness lets the dear depart­ed “Live on from beyond the groove.” Hear that groan? That’s the deceased lit­er­al­ly spin­ning in their grave…on a turntable.

The UK-based com­pa­ny has been around since 2009, when Jason Leach launched it “just for fun” at first. But a lot of peo­ple liked the idea and have kept him in busi­ness.

It will cost, how­ev­er. The basic ser­vice gen­er­al­ly costs between £1000 and £3000 GBP, and it part­ly depends on how many vinyl records you pro­duce. From what we can tell, you can­not use copy­right-pro­tect­ed music to fill up the 18–22 min­utes per side. So no “Free Bird” or “We Are the Cham­pi­ons,” unfor­tu­nate­ly. But you can put any­thing else: a voice record­ing, or the sounds of nature, or com­plete silence. Get more infor­ma­tion over at the com­pa­ny’s FAQ.

No doubt, the ser­vice can pro­vide com­fort and a mem­o­ry trig­ger for those left behind. The above video, “Hear­ing Madge,” is a short doc about a son who took record­ings of his moth­er and used And Viny­ly to make a record out of them. It’s sweet.

“I’m sure a lot of peo­ple think that it’s creepy, a lot of peo­ple think it’s sac­ri­le­gious,” the man says. “But I know my moth­er wouldn’t have. She would’ve thought it was a hoot.”

Jason Leach, a musi­cian and vinyl col­lec­tor him­self, talks of the imme­di­a­cy of sound and what it means to many.

“Sound is vibrat­ing you, the room, and it’s actu­al­ly mov­ing the air around you,” he says. “And that’s what’s so pow­er­ful about hear­ing someone’s voice on a record. They’re actu­al­ly mov­ing the air and for me that’s pow­er­ful.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’

Bronze Age Britons Turned Bones of Dead Rel­a­tives into Musi­cal Instru­ments & Orna­ments

Watch Carl Sagan’s “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn” Become the First Vinyl Record Played in Space, Cour­tesy of Jack White

Death: A Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale Helps You Grap­ple with the Inescapable

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

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An Ancient Philosophical Song Reconstructed and Played for the First Time in 1,000 Years

in History, Music | April 24th, 2026

Above and below, you can watch musi­cians per­form “Songs of Con­so­la­tion,” a 1,000-year-old song set “to the poet­ic por­tions of Roman philoso­pher Boethius’ mag­num opus The Con­so­la­tion of Phi­los­o­phy,” an influ­en­tial medieval text writ­ten dur­ing the 6th cen­tu­ry. Accord­ing to Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the per­for­mance of the piece, which had been lost in time until recent­ly, did­n’t come eas­i­ly:

[T]he task of per­form­ing such ancient works today is not as sim­ple as read­ing and play­ing the music in front of you. 1,000 years ago, music was writ­ten in a way that record­ed melod­ic out­lines, but not ‘notes’ as today’s musi­cians would recog­nise them; rely­ing on aur­al tra­di­tions and the mem­o­ry of musi­cians to keep them alive. Because these aur­al tra­di­tions died out in the 12th cen­tu­ry, it has often been thought impos­si­ble to recon­struct ‘lost’ music from this era – pre­cise­ly because the pitch­es are unknown.

Now, after more than two decades of painstak­ing work on iden­ti­fy­ing the tech­niques used to set par­tic­u­lar verse forms, research under­tak­en by Cam­bridge University’s Dr Sam Bar­rett has enabled him to recon­struct melodies from the redis­cov­ered leaf of the 11th cen­tu­ry ‘Cam­bridge Songs’.

The song is per­formed here by Ben­jamin Bag­by, Han­na Mar­ti and Nor­bert Rodenkirchen, three mem­bers of the medieval music ensem­ble known as Sequen­tia.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Lis­ten to a Recon­struc­tion That’s “100% Accu­rate”

Hear the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

See The Guidon­ian Hand, the Medieval Sys­tem for Read­ing Music, Get Brought Back to Life

Hear the Song Writ­ten on a Sinner’s But­tock in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

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Hear Classical Music Composed by Friedrich Nietzsche

in Music, Philosophy | April 23rd, 2026

A philoso­pher per­haps more wide­ly known for his prodi­gious mus­tache than for the vari­eties of his thought, Friedrich Niet­zsche often seems to be mis­read more than read. Even some­one like Michel Fou­cault could gloss over a cru­cial fact about Nietzsche’s body of work: Fou­cault remarked in an unpub­lished inter­view that Nietzsche’s “won­der­ful ideas” were “used by the Nazi Par­ty.” But that use, he neglect­ed to men­tion, came about through a scheme hatched by Nietzsche’s sis­ter, after his men­tal col­lapse and death, to edit, change, and oth­er­wise manip­u­late the thinker’s work in a way The Tele­graph deemed “crim­i­nal.” Fou­cault may not have known the full con­text, but Niet­zsche had about as much sym­pa­thy for fas­cism as he did for Christianity—both rea­sons for his break with com­pos­er Richard Wag­n­er.

What Niet­zsche loved most was music. Even in the wake of this scan­dal, with Niet­zsche ful­ly reha­bil­i­tat­ed at the schol­ar­ly lev­el at least, the philoso­pher is gen­er­al­ly read piece­meal, used to prop up some ide­ol­o­gy or crit­i­cal the­o­ry or anoth­er, a ten­den­cy his anti-sys­tem­at­ic, apho­ris­tic work inspires.

A more holis­tic approach yields two impor­tant gen­er­al obser­va­tions: Niet­zsche found the mun­dane work of pol­i­tics and nation­al­ist con­quest, with its trib­al­ism and moral pre­ten­sions, thor­ough­ly dis­taste­ful. Instead, he con­sid­ered the cre­ative work of artists, writ­ers, and musi­cians, as well as sci­en­tists, of para­mount impor­tance.

Niet­zsche almost entered med­i­cine and was him­self an artist: “before he engaged him­self ful­ly as a philoso­pher, he had already cre­at­ed a sub­stan­tial out­put as poet and com­pos­er,” writes Albany Records. In an 1887 let­ter writ­ten three years before his death, Niet­zsche claimed, “There has nev­er been a philoso­pher who has been in essence a musi­cian to such an extent as I am,” though he also admit­ted he “might be a thor­ough­ly unsuc­cess­ful musi­cian.” In any case, he hoped that at least some of his com­po­si­tions would become known and heard as com­ple­men­tary to his philo­soph­i­cal project.

Now seri­ous read­ers of Niet­zsche, or those sim­ply curi­ous about his musi­cian­ship, can hear some of his com­po­si­tions online. The music ranges from spright­ly to pen­sive, roman­tic to mourn­ful, and some of it seems to come right out of the Protes­tant hym­nals he grew up with as the son of a Luther­an min­is­ter. Niet­zsche com­posed music through­out his life—a com­plete chronol­o­gy spans the years 1854, when he was only ten, to 1887. See The Niet­zsche Chan­nel for a thor­ough list of pub­lished Niet­zsche record­ings and sheet music.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ancient Philo­soph­i­cal Song Recon­struct­ed and Played for the First Time in 1,000 Years

Lis­ten to Music Playlists to Help You Study Like Niet­zsche, Socrates, Kant & Oth­er Great Thinkers

Hear Friedrich Nietzsche’s Clas­si­cal Piano Com­po­si­tions: They’re Apho­ris­tic Like His Phi­los­o­phy

Nietzsche’s 10 Rules for Writ­ing with Style

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life & Thought

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

 

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A Newly Discovered Recording Lets You Hear Delta Blues Legend Robert Johnson in Stunning Clarity

in History, Music | April 17th, 2026

Great swathes of rock music since the nine­teen-six­ties would nev­er have exist­ed, we’re some­times told, were it not for the record­ings of Robert John­son. Cer­tain­ly the likes of Kei­th Richards, Eric Clap­ton, Robert Plant, and Bob Dylan have nev­er hes­i­tat­ed to acknowl­edge his influ­ence. “From the first note the vibra­tions from the loud­speak­er made my hair stand up,” Dylan writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy of his first encounter with John­son’s music. “The stab­bing sounds from the gui­tar could almost break a win­dow. When John­son start­ed singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor. I imme­di­ate­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed between him and any­one else I had ever heard.” Not bad for a record­ing old­er than Dylan him­self.

In the ear­ly nine­teen-six­ties, the blues as John­son played it seems to have sound­ed elec­tri­fy­ing­ly rev­e­la­to­ry to the gen­er­a­tion of then-young musi­cians who man­aged to hear it, regard­less of their own ori­gins. All such record­ings date from 1936 or 1937, the fruits of just two ses­sions in makeshift Texas stu­dios over­seen by pro­duc­er Don Law.

Though the “king of the Delta blues singers” left behind only this small body of work after his still-unex­plained death at the age of 27, it’s been end­less­ly scru­ti­nized by the gen­re’s enthu­si­asts. All of them will sure­ly regard as a god­send the new­ly dis­cov­ered shel­lac mas­ter test press­ing above of “Cross Road Blues,” a song that plays an out­sized part in the leg­end of Robert John­son, who some say sold his soul to the dev­il at just such a loca­tion in exchange for his for­mi­da­ble gui­tar skills.

Though it con­tains no ref­er­ence to any such unholy pact, nor to any denizen of the under­world, “Cross Road Blues” does have a haunt­ing sound that goes with the shad­owy ambi­ence of the man’s short life sto­ry. Some of that had to do with the less-than-ide­al qual­i­ty of the record­ings that have long cir­cu­lat­ed, but this test press­ing of John­son’s sec­ond take sounds dif­fer­ent. Uploaded by sound restor­er Nick Del­low, it was orig­i­nal­ly made in 1940 straight from the met­al mas­ter by Colum­bia Records pro­duc­er George Avakian, who would go on to work with every­one from Miles Davis to Edith Piaf to John Cage. The son­ic mud­di­ness of most Robert John­son releas­es thus far has done its part to pre­vent mod­ern-day lis­ten­ers from get­ting quite what the big deal was about him. But per­haps the unprece­dent­ed clar­i­ty of this record­ing will get the hair of young musi­cians and mature con­nois­seurs alike stand­ing on end.

via Ted Gioia

Relat­ed con­tent:

Kei­th Richards Shows Us How to Play the Blues, Inspired by Robert John­son, on the Acoustic Gui­tar

Cov­er­ing Robert Johnson’s Blues Became a Rite of Rock ‘n’ Roll Pas­sage: Hear Cov­ers by The Rolling Stones, Eric Clap­ton, Howl­in’ Wolf, Lucin­da Williams & More

Robert John­son Final­ly Gets an Obit­u­ary in The New York Times 81 Years After His Death

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

The Leg­end of How Blues­man Robert John­son Sold His Soul to the Dev­il at the Cross­roads

A Brief His­to­ry of Mak­ing Deals with the Dev­il: Nic­colò Pagani­ni, Robert John­son, Jim­my Page & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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10,000 Chicago Concert Recordings Are Being Uploaded to the Internet Archive: Nirvana, Phish, Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants & More

in Archives, Internet Archive, Music | April 15th, 2026

Per­haps you’ve had the expe­ri­ence of mov­ing to a new city and imme­di­ate­ly being told that you’ve missed its gold­en age of live music. To an extent, this has hap­pened in more or less every peri­od of the past fifty or six­ty years. But what if the per­son regal­ing you with those sto­ries had an archive of more than 10,000 con­cert record­ings to back them up? Chicago’s Aadam Jacobs has made just such an archive, and a few years ago he and it became the sub­ject of Katlin Schnei­der’s doc­u­men­tary Melo­ma­ni­ac. Apart from their sto­ries of Jacobs’ exploits with his increas­ing­ly bulky record­ing rig, the var­i­ous rock musi­cians and club own­ers inter­viewed there­in express one con­cern above all: what will become of all his tapes in the future?

As so often, the Inter­net Archive has come to save the day. At its new­ly opened Aadam Jacobs Archive, you can now lis­ten to near­ly 2,500 of the con­cert record­ings that vol­un­teers have dig­i­tized and uploaded so far. In that more than a ter­abyte of files, you’ll find con­certs by Nir­vana, Phish, Tra­cy Chap­man, Depeche Mode, Flam­ing Lips, Stere­o­lab, Liz Phair, Son­ic Youth, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Björk, They Might Be Giants (record­ed four times in 1988 alone), and the Mekons, among many oth­ers.

If you have a cer­tain taste in rock — and espe­cial­ly if you belong to a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion — you may well, in the full­ness of time, find a Jacobs-record­ed show by your favorite band. But you’re just as like­ly to dis­cov­er a per­for­mance by the best act you’ve nev­er heard of before.

Pur­su­ing his avo­ca­tion of con­cert-record­ing with the indus­tri­ous­ness of a pro­fes­sion­al, and indeed an obses­sive one, Jacobs cap­tured mul­ti­ple shows each night at the height of his activ­i­ty. He has his par­tic­u­lar tastes, as empha­sized in Melo­ma­ni­ac, but also demon­strates remark­ably lit­tle dis­crim­i­na­tion about which bands are “cool” and which aren’t, to say noth­ing of their lev­el of com­mer­cial suc­cess. When Chica­go musi­cians first saw Jacobs’ famil­iar long-haired, heavy-back­packed fig­ure turn up at their own shows, they knew they had a chance of “mak­ing it.” Even so, as Jacobs acknowl­edges, there’s scant cor­re­la­tion between which bands blew up, which bands he likes as peo­ple, and which bands have cre­at­ed his favorite records. His tapes con­sti­tute a valu­able record of the sound of Chica­go between the eight­ies and the twen­ty-tens, and it will only grow more so, the more acces­si­ble it becomes. But as we enjoy it, we should also bear in mind the efforts of the man who cre­at­ed it, and the love of music he per­son­i­fies. Enter the archive here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jam­Base Launch­es a New Video Archive of 100,000 Stream­ing Con­certs: Phish, Wilco, the Avett Broth­ers, Grate­ful Dead & Much More

The Live Music Archive Lets You Stream/Download More Than 250,000 Con­cert Recordings–for Free

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

Rock Scene: Browse a Com­plete Online Archive of the Irrev­er­ent Mag­a­zine That Chron­i­cled the 1970s Rock & Punk Scene

Free Archive of Audio Inter­views with Rock, Jazz & Folk Leg­ends Now on iTunes

Nir­vana Before They Were Nir­vana: Watch Their 1988 Per­for­mance Record­ed in a Radio Shack

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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