60s live rock on the web!

[ktinkel]

On Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon interviewed a guy who has acquired Bill Graham’s archives, thousands of audio tapes of concerts at the Fillmore and elsewhere from the 1960s up to the 1990s. Included are Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Grateful Dead, The Doors, Cream, Rolling Stones, Country Joe & the Fish, and many, many more.

He has set up a web radio site called Vault Radio where you can listen to unedited FM-quality (128K digital) performances from this archive. By next fall he hopes to allow download and purchase of some of these. He also sells posters, t-shirts, photos, and memorabilia from the collection.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is the web site, which is a mess. It is either over-burdened or badly designed (or both). I was able to hear only snatches of the James Taylor cut that was playing this morning, interrupted by long silences. The home page of the site redraws repeatedly (which may be adding to the load there!)

Because of that, I was considering not including a link to the site. But I am also curious to know what experiences others have, so have provided a link. It appears to be on Windows servers (lots of asp? stuff); and I suppose it could have been designed for MSIE6 only. Who knows what the problem is, but if anyone figures out how to make it work reliably, please let me know.

The content must be spectacular!