The Internet Archive’s Deep Well of Concert Tapes

From ‘Dark Magus’ and The Dead to Water Damage and Musique Concrete, the archive hosts an astounding mass of live recordings.

This year has been brutal for the Internet Archive, the digital library that’s been quietly preserving the world’s collective memory for decades. A pair of debilitating legal battles over copyright, a massive data breach and relentless cyberattacks — if the site is slow right now, that could be why — have all piled on, threatening the nonprofit’s ability to fulfill its mission. And as the web grows more complex and ephemeral, the Archive faces mounting pressure to keep pace — while continuing to serve as the internet’s most vital repository.

To understand what’s at stake, you need to dig into the Archive. Are you curious, for example, about what the Grateful Dead were up to in 1989? All of the tapes from those shows are ready for you to absorb. Same for every year and set. Want to learn more about brilliant mid-20th century tape manipulator Pierre Schaeffer’s work? This 1949 piece, Cinq Etudes de Bruits, might give you a better understanding of the foundations of electronic music. Seriously, you should check this out.

We go through obsessive phases with the Archive, and the most recent one began a few weeks ago when we happened upon NYCTaper’s massive trove of concert recordings. The diehard documentarian was at Tubby’s in June to capture the drone rock band Water Damage’s half-hour set. Here it is. It’s a single song. Enjoy it with your coffee.

Or have your coffee with this beast of a set by Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall in 1974. Captured during the recording of Davis’ wondrous album Dark Magus — which didn’t get a US release until the late 1990s — this board tape documents a wild set. As noted on the blog The Heat Wraps, “Much of the night’s theatrics were courtesy of Miles himself, who, after arriving over an hour late despite living just blocks from the venue, informed his septet that they’d be joined by a pair of guests during the second set — 22-year-old saxophonist Azar Lawrence, and French-Bahaian guitarist Dominique Gaumont.”

Dark Magus is an essential live record. What was left off is just as great.

Archive.org is an incredible resource for digging into rare recordings like these, but it’s worth mentioning the tricky side of things. The sheer amount of copyrighted material on the platform is a lot to navigate and is pretty egregious in cases, and while we love how it keeps music and internet history alive, we also believe in respecting artists’ rights and making sure their work gets the care it deserves. That said, subtract the blatant infringement in the repository and it would still remain a crucial service. That said, in the case of the Dead, Water Damage and Pierre Schaeffer, those are legit and either approved by the artist or, in the case of Schaeffer, in the public domain. (Right?) In the case of Davis, well, historically speaking, the Carnegie Hall concert is a crucial document.