My Morning Jacket & Archive.org in Velocity Weekly

[cmccubbin@work]

http://www.velocityweekly.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070214/VELOCITY02/702140457/1066

Velocity Weekly
Local Music
Rock This Town

Archive.org makes downloading -- and following My Morning Jacket -- easy


By Joshua Hammann

If My Morning Jacket's tremendous Thanksgiving gig at Louisville Gardens proved anything, it was that the band has transcended its status as an outfit championed by hippies, coolies, punks and all the ships at sea.

That show was populated by many happy young kids who had never heard of MMJ or opener Wax Fang. At more than $30 a ticket, it was an expensive show just to see what the hubbub was all about, but then again a live MMJ show has never been a ripoff, no matter the price.

But for those who couldn't afford the festivities -- or for newcomers who wish they caught that old show at the Rud -- more than 100 of the bands other, legendary gigs are available for free, legal download at Archive.org. It's a website run by the Internet Archive, "a non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format."

The site's collection of MMJ recordings dates all the way back to a 1999 show at Bunbury Theatre, that May 2000 show at the Rud, and WFPK's "Live Lunch" that fall. Miss that Jason Mraz or Matisyahu show at Headliners? The Decemberists at Southgate House? They're all on Archive.org as well.

"We started archiving the web in 1996 with snapshots every two months of all publicly accessible web pages," said Internet Archive director Brewster Kahle in a recent interview with CNET. "The 'Wayback Machine' is now about 85 billion pages and 1.5 petabytes. Then we moved on to books, music and video. We work with great lawyers, the U.S. Copyright Office, the Library of Congress and the American Library Association. We have 30,000 movies, 100,000 audio recordings and now we're digitizing books."

Ryan Adams, ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Jack Johnson, Robyn Hitchcock, Black Heart Procession and tons of others are well represented on the site, although it often feels weighted in favor of jam bands like moe, which encourage taping.

As for My Morning Jacket, Archive.org makes it possible to track the band's ascent. You can hear the band's shows at Headliners, the Palace and then the Gardens. You can listen to them in small clubs like the 40 Watt in Athens, Ga., hear MMJ open for Pearl Jam in giant arenas and catch performances at festivals like Bonnaroo.

There are old TV appearances, radio sessions (including the Christmas set on WFPK) and even the legendary 2004 Lebowski Fest gig at the Brown-Forman Amphitheater.

"Fireworks from a local minor league baseball team can be heard slightly," one of the notes on the site reads. "They sound like small pops."

Entire concerts can be downloaded track by track, making it easy to weed out weak performances. You can also listen to each song in its entirety with no obligation to download later.

[Kory]

Nice read!

[cmccubbin@work]

yeah...i dont know where i'd be w/out Archive!  my MMJ live collection would be severly lacking!

[watchtower41]

One thing I've always been confused about with archive, and trust me, I'd love to learn how to use it someday.... but dumb question, is there bit torrent downloads at archive?? I've never figured out how to download a full show on there without downloading the tracks one by one mp3 style.  I've still been holding out to find a torrent of the NYE show.  

[aMD]

One thing I've always been confused about with archive, and trust me, I'd love to learn how to use it someday.... but dumb question, is there bit torrent downloads at archive?? I've never figured out how to download a full show on there without downloading the tracks one by one mp3 style.  I've still been holding out to find a torrent of the NYE show.  

no bittorrents on archive.  At the top of the page of the show you are trying to download there is a section that says Whole item.  I usually download the vbr mp3 zip file.  you'll get the whole show in a zip file that you can extract out.  If you want it lossless you'll have to download each track individually as far as I know.

[CTdeadhead]

All you need is a download manager.  Im using an older one I got free called Download Accelerator.  You can leech the site and grab all the links or you simply click and drag each link into a window, it does all the rest.  I've been using it forever for http downloads.  

FYI, The speeds on the archive.org site are incredible compared to a torrent.  I avoid torrents all together nowadays, dont have the patience.   Its rare for me to pull a torrent at much more than 100-150 k but I can easily get 800K on usenet and at least that with archive using DA.  Usenet is the grand daddy of the internet.  I buy 50 Gb a month for $13.99 but you can get unlimited for a little more.  Its the best money I spend each and every month.  You probably get some with your broadband too, check into it.  No uploading is also a plus w/usenet.

[sweatboard]

Thank you Magnix, Dylan, Kory, John, etc. etc.  ;)