Feast Days

October 1, 2013 10:03 PM

It's an open secret that many bands and solo artists allow fans to audio record their live performances for non-commercial trading. The Internet Archive's Live Music Section is maintained by volunteers from etree.org, and currently offers over 120,000 live performances from nearly 6000 bands, for in-browser streaming as well as download in a variety of formats.

Browsing Options
* Browse by Creator
* Browse by Year
* Browse by 'Most Downloaded'

Of Note
* Blues Traveler and John Popper. Also see: Spinning Travelers, for joint Spin Doctors / Blues Traveler concerts.
* Cowboy Junkies
* Death Cab for Cutie
* The Decemberists
* Disco Biscuits
* Edie Brickell and New Bohemians
* Gavin DeGraw
* Godspeed You Black Emperor!
* Grateful Dead (Previously highlighted in a wonderful post about the band's legendary May 8th, 1977 Barton Hall, Cornell University performance from koeselitz.)
* Hank Williams III
* Howie Day
* Jason Mraz
* Jefferson Starship
* John Mayer
* Matisyahu
* Maroon5
* Meat Puppets
* moe
* Moxy Fruvous
* Of A Revolution (O.A.R.)
* Ryan Adams
* Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Corgan
* Spin Doctors. Also see: Spinning Travelers, for their joint concerts with Blues Traveler.
* The String Cheese Incident
* Throwing Muses
* Toad The Wet Sprocket
* Warren Zevon
* The Weepies

More
* SugarMegs also archives live music performances. They currently have 68,866 shows from 13,765 bands.
* etree itself has a torrent tracker of recordings by trade-friendly artists

posted by zarq (13 comments total)

The Live Music archive came in handy on a recent road trip, when I'd exhausted all unlistened podcasts and music on my phone. It was a pain, but I eventually figured out a way to download FLACs and play them back on an iPhone and I thoroughly enjoyed some old bootleg tapes of Tenacious D's earliest concerts at the Largo pub in LA where they started.
posted by mathowie at 10:40 PM on October 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Maroon 5 but no Antibals Afrobeat Orchestra in the of note list? Tut, tut.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:04 AM on October 2, 2013 [4 favorites]

Also many, many Robyn Hitchcock shows (unfortunately not including the glorious Schuba's 2004-11-06, for reasons) and a very few from the Soft Boys reunion.

The “No Lossy Distribution” claptrap is absurd on a resource like archive.org, but what can ya do?
posted by scruss at 4:11 AM on October 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

Also of note: if you think of bootlegs as low-quality recordings with a lot of audience noise, this isn't the case for dedicated tapers. Some folks even go with friends who will provide a shield of quiet around them, while some bands like the Grateful Dead set up tapers sections (see the inset pic with a ton of microphones sticking above the crowd). But because it's hard to search for "really clean audio," you can also search for soundboard recordings, which are taken directly from mixing boards, so you'll get none of the audience interference. But for a really great "concert" experience, you might benefit from finding great audience recordings, or dig through "matrix" recordings, which are sourced from multiple recordings and blended to make a better archive of the event.
posted by filthy light thief at 5:41 AM on October 2, 2013 [3 favorites]

mathowie: "It was a pain, but I eventually figured out a way to download FLACs and play them back on an iPhone and I thoroughly enjoyed some old bootleg tapes of Tenacious D's earliest concerts at the Largo pub in LA where they started."

Ooooh. Neat. I didn't realize Tenacious D was in there!

Also... I just want to mention that the Archive has a "browse by bands with mp3's of their recordings" page. So they have a total of 43 recordings from Tenacious D, and 20 of those are offered in mp3 format.

MartinWisse: "Maroon 5 but no Antibals Afrobeat Orchestra in the of note list? Tut, tut."

Heh. Didn't know who they were. :)
posted by zarq at 7:25 AM on October 2, 2013

We have some shows by the (late, lamented) Asylum Street Spankers from the archive. Good stuff, and thanks for the reminder to check it out again.
posted by immlass at 8:38 AM on October 2, 2013

Hell yes HUM!
posted by popaopee at 8:55 AM on October 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, I had planned to get some work done today, but alas... thanks for posting this, I've found a ton of stuff that I'm going to download and listen to.
posted by ralan at 10:12 AM on October 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

The “No Lossy Distribution” claptrap is absurd

I get so annoyed by this. I mean just how often do they want me to clean the wax out of my ears?
posted by srboisvert at 3:21 PM on October 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

I should point out that works of Sacramento's own, the mighty KAI KLN can be found there as well and will reward attentive listening. Well and truly did they RAWK.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 4:58 PM on October 2, 2013

Woo, Matisyahu is my favorite! Thanks for the reminder.
posted by jessamyn at 10:45 AM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

For cross-referencing and future note, zarq wrote in the MeTa 85: Silk Road 2.0:

jessamyn and mathowie, the "Feast Days" title of my Internet Archive post is a reference to something James Taylor once said in an interview: "A concert is always like a feast day to me."

The full quote is "Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It’s not as if I sit down and play ‘Fire and Rain’ by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up… the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions. A concert is always like a feast day to me."

And now you know.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:45 PM on October 10, 2013

The “No Lossy Distribution” claptrap is absurd on a resource like archive.org, but what can ya do?

Hah! Clearly you've never hung out with tapers. Some of those dudes are RIDICULOUS. I once had someone berate me for burning MP3s to CD because -- oh noes! -- someone could rip that CD to MP3 and then upload it somewhere, and they would be passing around a degraded copy! So many absurd dorm room debates.

Anyway, thank you for reminding me of Edie Brickell. I love her weird, tripped-out improv thing. Also, Disco Biscuits, LOL! I still have like 10 GB of Bisco in my collection because I refuse to delete anything, ever. At this point, my Bisco collection is like an ugly statue from an ancient civilization : it's worth something because of its historical signifigance, but damn if it ain't ugly.
posted by evil otto at 8:13 PM on October 10, 2013