God Smiles On Me

You're probably familiar with the Internet Archive. A group based in San Francisco, the Internet Archive exists to maintain an archive of the Internet. Makes sense, huh? Its collections include archived copies of web pages, movies, audio recordings, books, software, and so on. I knew about the archived web pages, which are snapshots of web pages taken at various points in time. What I didn't know is that the database also includes live concerts and films. For instance, you can download George Romero's 1968 horror classic, Night of the Living Dead. (It's perfectly free and legal. The film exists in the public domain, as Romero failed to properly secure his film's copyright.) Even better, there is a tremendous archive of live concerts. Enough to fill your hard drive. We're talking hundreds and hundreds of shows by amazing bands: Spoon, Scott Miller and the Commonwealth, Zwan, Ryan Adams, Jack Johnson, Vigilantes of Love, String Cheese Incident, Eddie From Ohio, Hank Williams III, Toad the Wet Sprocket, John Vanderslice, Soul Coughing, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Jump Little Children, Magnolia Electric Co., Man or Astroman?, My Morning Jacket, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and Acoustic Syndicate. And that doesn't even scratch the surface. Whew. Zalm's wife my never forgive me.