Ask any indie-rock band that spent time on the road in the Nineties about its favorite bygone Chicago music venue and Lounge Ax will likely be at the top of the list. Launched in 1987, and co-owned for most of its existence by Julia Adams and Sue Miller, the intimate club on Lincoln Avenue hosted countless memorable shows before closing its doors for good on Jan. 15, 2000. The week leading up to its shuttering included performances by local legends and Lounge Ax regulars such as Wilco, Eleventh Dream Day, and Shellac.
Though it’s been gone for a quarter century, Lounge Ax has never been forgotten. And soon, many of the shows that took place there will be available for anyone to listen to for free, thanks to local taper Aadam Jacobs and the Internet Archive. “I felt very much at home there,” says Jacobs, who recorded around 2,200 sets at Lounge Ax starting in the late Eighties. “Lounge Ax was often the place I chose to go to.”
His first show at Lounge Ax was Duncan Imperials on July 5, 1989; a decade-plus later, he recorded the venue’s last ever concert, by the Coctails. Jacobs’ full archive also includes tons of shows at other Chicago venues by acts like Pixies (Aug. 10, 1989, at the Metro), Nirvana (July 8, 1989, at Dreamerz), Hüsker Dü (June 16, 1984, at West End), and the Smiths (June 7, 1985, at Aragon Ballroom). It adds up to about 10,000 sets in total, forming a priceless document of an era in rock. “It’s amazing how well he recorded these shows so long ago,” says Brian Emerick, who undertook the massive task of digitizing the entire collection, as well as Jacobs’ meticulous diaries about the shows he attended. “He really learned as he went and figured out where to put the mics for the best sound.”
Jacobs says he usually asked bands and/or venues for permission to make his recordings, and he often gave them copies as well. He did record a few concerts in more of a “stealth” mode, he says. “But most of what I did, the vast majority of what I did, wasn’t. You saw microphones. You knew what I was doing. I had permission.” (Neither Internet Archive nor Jacobs profit from the recordings in the Aadam Jacobs Collection.)
His first recording, when he was 17 years old in 1984, was of the British free-improvisation group AMM. “By the time things really got into gear, I was going out almost every night,” Jacobs says. “I think most of the Nineties, I was doing 200 to 250 shows a year.”
There are countless seminal recordings in Jacobs’ collection. The Smiths tape captures the first show on their first-ever U.S. tour. He saw Nirvana two years before Nevermind, when they opened for a local band called Precious Wax Drippings. He also documented early performances by artists like Liz Phair, who began her career playing in Chicagoland bars. “I was at her first concerts with nobody,” Jacobs says.
Emerick, who ran the numbers, says the band Jacobs recorded the most was Eleventh Dream Day, at 166. (If you count solo artists, Robbie Fulks comes in first with 282 sets.) Other high totals belong to Dag Juhlin of the band Poi Dog Pondering, and the Mekons. Given how many concerts he’s recorded, it’s hard for Jacobs to pick favorites, but he’s particularly fond of his multiple recordings of the Dutch band the Ex. Another memorable band for him is the Wedding Present. “They did a concert at Lounge Ax that was super special,” he says (it happened on March 9, 1991).
Jacobs recorded concerts multiple times a week from 1984 through early 2020, when Covid shuttered venues around the world. “The pandemic really put the nail in the coffin,” Jacobs says. “I used the pandemic to get my collection in some really nice alphabetical order, well organized. But the drive to make the recordings had just dissipated.” He also suffered some health issues, and while he did some sporadic one-offs once concerts resumed, it’s been about three years since his last recording.
“The goal was to not miss anything really great when they first come through town,” he says of his lifelong passion. “I have come to the place where I want to enjoy what I know already.”
Though most of the digital transfers of Jacobs’ collection are complete, it will be a bit before the entire collection is available through the Internet Archive. “We’ve been [uploading] about 200 a month,” says Emerick, who has been working on this project since late 2024 with a team of about 15 volunteers. “We figure we have about 8,000 sets still to upload. So if we’re doing 2,400 a year, we’ve still got three years left.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jacobs also has a huge archive of videos he recorded of concerts on television. “Look, it was an obsession,” he says. “I mean, why wouldn’t I record all the cool bands that were on television that I could never see twice unless I recorded it?” Emerick has started a YouTube channel for those as well. “I am Brian’s hobby now,” Jacobs jokes.
Jacobs recently started a label called Laughing Bee Music, which he’s co-branding with Dead Bird, the name of a label he operated in the Nineties. He’ll use that label to release vinyl and digital archival live performances from his collection. The first two planned are Naked Raygun’s This Place Used to Be a Strip Joint (Live), which was recorded on Nov. 2, 1985, and Eleventh Dream Day’s By the Time They Got to Lounge Ax (Live). The latter project, curated by Eleventh Dream Day vocalist-guitarist Rick Rizzo, spans two LPs drawn from four Lounge Ax performances recorded between 1991 and 1994. Both live albums arrive digitally on Sept. 18, with vinyl releases to follow on Oct. 16.
Jacobs is excited to bring his new venture to music fans after so many years of making local venues his homes away from home. “I don’t know what has become the new Lounge Ax … But they’ve got to be out there. The scene has to be out there,” he says. “There’s a scene in Chicago. I am not on top of it, but it’s there, and it has to be because that’s where growth is, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
This story is part of our Reasons to Love Rock series, with all the sounds, trends, scenes, and artists that have us excited about rock music in 2026.
