Chicago’s Hidden Indie Rock Archive

Rae DeRose met her husband, Rob, in 2003 at a party in a Lincoln Park bar. 

“As we sat and talked, we realized we liked a lot of the same bands,” she says, “and had even been to a lot of the same shows.” 

Most of these shows were at North Side clubs like Metro, Schubas, The Empty Bottle and the erstwhile Lounge Ax and Double Door, where they recalled consistently seeing this one guy with long, wavy hair, chunky headphones and big tape recorder.

“There was this ‘taping guy’ who was at all of the shows we went to,” Rae recalls. “And we  thought it was pretty cool that he was recording this special moment in Chicago music history.” 

Rae and Rob eventually got married and went to many more shows together before Rob passed away two years ago. But unbeknownst to his wife, Rob had sent in a question to Curious City asking:

Whatever happened to the “Taping Guy” who used to hang out and record at clubs like the Double Door, Metro and Lounge Ax in the ’90s?   

We decided to take on this story because, it turns out, the “Taping Guy” is a familiar figure to pretty much everyone we talked to from Chicago’s indie music scene at the time.

His name is Aadam Jacobs. And we learned that, over more than three decades, he has recorded, stored and catalogued about 10,000 live Chicago concerts on cassettes, CDs, and memory cards. His collection includes the early work of Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins, Jeff Tweedy, New Order, Stereolab, Flaming Lips, Yo La Tengo and much more. 

“What Aadam has is really, really priceless,” says Susan Miller Tweedy, a veteran of the Chicago music scene who used to co-own Lounge Ax. “He’s a living archive.” 

We met up with Jacobs at his home on the Northwest Side and got a peek into this archive. He talked about the period in local music history he captured, but also the obsession that drove him to amass his collection — and the toll it took on different parts of his life.  

Becoming part of the furniture

So how exactly did Jacobs bring in all that equipment to shows where artists ostensibly wanted to sell their own recordings?

He says, at the time, “no one really cared what you walked in with, and I didn’t make a whole lot of effort to hide things, either.”

Plus, Sound Opinions co-host Jim DeRogatis says most musicians on the scene back then just appreciated the interest. 

“Who’s gonna say no,” says Derogatis, a long-time Chicago music critic and drummer.

Jacobs said he often brought a second tape deck to concerts so he could give a copy of the recording to a band right after the show. He’d also occasionally let bands crash at his place if they didn’t have a place to stay. 

But Jacobs befriended more than just musicians. He also charmed club owners, miraculously convincing them to let him into most any show for free, even as a teen. Former Lounge Ax co-owner Miller Tweedy says she first met Jacobs when she was booking shows at the West End in Lincoln Park in the mid-'80s.

“I let him in the club to tape the bands because he really wanted to,” she recalls. “He was very, very enthusiastic and very into it. And yeah, I let him in ⁠— underage.” 

That access continued when Miller Tweedy moved on to book at Wrigleyville’s Cubby Bear. Jacobs remembers being there one night in 1987 when a band named Uncle Tupelo came up from Southern Illinois to make its Chicago debut. 

“That was Sue’s birthday and the same night she met Jeff [Tweedy, her future husband and Wilco frontman],” he says. “I still have that tape somewhere.” 

Later, Miller Tweedy moved to Lounge Ax in Lincoln Park, which she would co-own with Julia Adams. And it’s there that most people, including our question asker, remember Jacobs as almost a part of the furniture. 

“It was mind-boggling to me that he taped shows at any other clubs because he was there every night,” Miller Tweedy says. 

But Jacobs did go to other clubs quite regularly. 

“Sometimes I would challenge myself and see if I could record a show at Lounge Ax and then Empty Bottle [in Ukrainian Village] in the same night, riding [my bike] with my equipment on my back,” Jacobs says. “Nobody was giving me the challenge. I would just give it to myself.” 

In the late ’80s, Jacobs also became a regular at Metro in Wrigleyville, where he says he essentially learned the art of sound recording at the club’s mixing board. He would often plug in his recorder, and staff would show him the ropes. Much of this access came from Metro owner Joe Shanahan, a fellow audio collector and friend. 

“I also was a fan,” Shanahan says. “I received any tape he made at Metro. I thought he was a great kid and I loved the fact that he was documenting the scene, and he was this archivist.”

Taping takes a personal toll   

Despite getting occasional paying gigs, Jacobs says he’s always recorded out of a desire to turn something ephemeral into something permanent. He says he hasn’t been motivated by financial gain.

“I was never in this for the money, although a lot of people thought I was,” he says.  “I think a lot of people thought I had ulterior motives, but I think time has shown that I have none … I did this because I had to do it. It was just what I had to do.”

Over the years, Jacobs has paid a high personal price for his obsession, one that extends beyond his own recordings to include an enormous collection of books, movies and music. He says the collection had gotten seriously out of control until a very recent move to his current home. 

“In my last apartment, I couldn’t have people over,” he says. “It looked like a hoarder lived there. My living conditions were not conducive of a sane person and I am a sane person.” 

It also took a toll on his relationships.  

“I didn’t really have a social life, but [recording music] kind of was my social life,”  Jacobs recalls. “And I did have a relationship break up because of my obsession with music. She said ‘I never see you,’ because I’d been running around recording Pavement.”

But he says he doesn’t regret his choices. “I would rather have these recordings of Pavement’s first tour of the Midwest than have had the relationship which I really don’t remember well at all.” 

Today Jacobs has slowed down. He still goes to several shows a month ⁠— some rock, but also  jazz and classical. And he says often he finds no need to tape. It’s just not as special in this era where every Tom, Dick and Harry is videotaping the show on their cell phone and posting it on YouTube before most people get home from the concert.

Plus, these days he says he’s rearranging personal priorities. 

“I have a partner who does not appreciate clutter ⁠— at all,” he says, looking around at walls lined with shelves of neatly filed LPs, CDs and books, but also boxes that need to be unpacked and organized. “And the relationship is more important to me than amassing more things that I may never have a chance to enjoy anyway.”  

So what’s going to happen with his rooms full of Chicago music history?  

“I’m going to die someday and I don’t know what is going to happen to it,” he says. “I really don’t know its future. I hope there is one and I hope it finds a home somewhere [and that] people can really appreciate it and take care of it.”

At this point, Jacobs says he’s had trouble finding the right institution that can digitize, catalog and preserve the recordings ⁠— some of which are on old, disintegrating cassette tapes. Even though he rarely listens to any of the tapes nowadays, Jacobs seems conflicted about letting go of his decades of work. He wants it to be the right place and he wants it nearby so he can maintain a certain level of access and control.

Chicago music watchers we talked to are also eager to see Jacobs' archive find a stable home.  

“He has something that nobody else has,” Miller Tweedy says. “I think about it and wonder what’s going to happen to it. And, yeah, it … could be disintegrating, so I hope he finds a way to get it all further archived so that it stays forever. It’s really priceless.”