A mad undertaking: An undefinitive guide to the Aadam Jacobs collection

At some point—usually in their early to mid‑twenties—people stop caring about music. The importance and obsession stalls. They hold onto the songs or albums of their youth and rarely, if ever, embrace anything new. Music becomes background noise while they work or do the dishes. But for a very, very small percentage of people, the obsession never stalls; it grows with every new discovery and becomes a lifelong pursuit. Aadam Jacobs is one of those people.

If you’re reading this, odds are you’re a big music fan. Maybe, at some point, you’ve been called “obsessive” or “encyclopedic” about certain bands. Maybe the act of you explaining the nuances of an album has been described as “pedantic”—or maybe I’m projecting. But what I expect we do share is a common understanding of how we evolved from someone who casually has music on in the background to someone willing to explain to the gas‑station attendant how many vocal mics were used while Bowie was recording “Heroes” because it happens to be playing from someone’s car outside.

For the younger crowd raised in the internet age, sourcing music outside the mainstream is a bit easier. It still requires the desire to look, but the mechanisms are always in your hands. There are countless excellent websites, blogs, and online radio stations catering to every imaginable genre. You can join a forum or Discord server and talk with fans from all over the world. For those of us who are a bit older, the sources were, quite literally, more analog: an older brother, a clerk at the local record store, the cool uncle, or—as was the case for Aadam and me—local college radio.

Sometime in early high school, I discovered Frank Zappa. My parents didn’t listen to him, so there were no records at home to dig into. Zappa has, roughly, 14,879,356 official releases (and CDs were pricey), so buying my way through the catalog was impossible. Then, while listening to WUSB, the Stony Brook University radio station, I heard they were doing a Zappathon—twelve straight hours of Zappa music! I loaded up on blank tapes and recorded as much as I could. If I could find all this Zappa in one day, what other secrets could this station unlock? Maybe I should listen to everything. A year or so later, I found out that a janitor at my school had a show on the station. From one of his programs, I discovered Ween. It’s impossible to overstate the impact WUSB had on me.

As grateful as I am for the convenience of modern music access, there was something undeniably exciting about hearing something for the first time—being instantly fascinated by it, but having no idea what it was. It was intoxicating knowing that somewhere out in the world was incredible music you or your friends didn’t even know existed. For Aadam, the experience was similar. As a proud son of Chicago, he was obsessed with Antidote Radio, WZRD, and WNUR.

These DJs weren’t older brothers, record‑store clerks, or cool uncles, but they were mentors. Every day, Aadam could tune in, learn about new sounds, and find new things to be inspired and excited by. One day in early 1984, he heard a band named AMM and was told by his mentors that it was a band to be taken seriously. And wouldn’t you know it—they were playing Chicago on May 27th.

For those unfamiliar: AMM is a British group formed in 1965 that spent nearly fifty years pursuing free improvisation and occasionally brushing up against jazz. Nothing was planned; everything was spontaneous. For a brief period in the late ’60s and early ’70s, British experimental composer Cornelius Cardew was part of the ensemble. It was excerpts from Cardew’s graphic musical score Treatise that the band would be performing that night in Chicago.

Upon arriving at the show, Aadam—who had managed to convince his mom to come along—sat with two of his DJ mentors, Marko (Pezzati) and Leslie, on a couch near the stage. After the performance, Aadam purchased a copy of Cardew’s Treatise, which he still has today.

During this era of discovery, Aadam became aware of the idea of stealth‑recording concerts. Like many of us in this community, he decided that if he was going to attend a show, he might as well document it. So he brought a mini‑cassette recorder to the gig and placed it at the foot of the couch. Unknowingly, he ran the recorder at too high a speed, resulting in an incomplete capture—but even shortened, it remains a remarkable document. That seemingly innocent act of borrowing the recorder his grandmother used for voice dictation became the first in a series of recordings that would span decades and preserve some incredibly important moments that might otherwise have been lost to time.

That original cassette was transferred by Scott Plumer and eventually sent to me for mastering. Despite being over forty years old, it’s surprisingly listenable and required very little post‑production. I added a touch of compression to even out some dynamics and some normalization. Otherwise, this is exactly how Aadam captured it—and I can promise you, it sounds better than my first tape.

So this is where it started: the Aadam Jacobs Origin Story, if you will. The beginning of a lifetime spent listening to, loving, discovering, and archiving music. These recordings represent moments in history. In some cases—like this one—important moments in history. And those of us working on this project are happy to help keep them alive. Were you there the first time Nirvana played Chicago? Or for Pavement’s first Midwest shows? Because Aadam was—and he can help you relive it.