Those of you who are regulars to the Stereophile forum have by now come across one one of my posts mentioning how great the archive.org web site is and I'm quite sure you're tired of reading about it.
Well I decided to put money my where my mouth is, so to speak. I made a list of about 60 out of the over 1,000 bands with live shows currently archived on the live music section of the site just to prove that it not filled with all unknowns and total garbage (although Garbage is not one of the bands available on the site, which is too bad because I have a live bootleg of theirs and they are a pretty good live band).
I'm in no way implying that this list is in any way comprehensive. It's just the bands that I recognized as somewhat of merit and doesn't mean that I necessarily like them. I also did not include the number of shows that the site has available of each band, hey, you have to do some things for yourselves. And lastly, I've added some comments where I felt appropriate. Thanks for looking.
A Partial Listing of the Bands Available on Archive.org (as selected by Jazzfan)
311
Almost Acoustic Band
American Music Club
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones
Billy Bragg
Calexico - Listed in the "Best of 2005" Thread
Camper Van Beethoven
Charlie Hunter
Common Rotation - Buddha please take note
Country Joe McDonald
Cowboy Junkies
Cracker
David Gray
Death Cab for Cutie (recent recordings)
Del McCoury Band
Derek Trucks Band
Dirty Dozen Brass Band (recent recordings)
DJ Logic
DJ Spooky
Donna the Buffalo - well worth checking out.
Drive-By Truckers
Dub is a Weapon (who I haven't heard but am told is quite good)
Fareed Haque Group
G. Love and Special Sauce
Garage A Trois (a Charlie Hunter group)
Garaj Mahal
Gavin DeGraw
Gin Blossoms
Grateful Dead (streaming only but that is a recent policy change before that you could download flac or mp3 versions of their shows just like any of the other bands on the site)
Guster
Henry Kaiser
Jack Johnson - Listed in the "Best of 2005" Thread
Jason Mraz
Jazz Mandolin Project
Jefferson Starship - mostly the new band.
John Butler Trio - well worth checking out.
John Vanderslice - Listed in the "Best of 2005" Thread
Little Feat - both older and newer versions of the band.
Los Lonely Boys
Martin Sexton
Matisyahu
Mekons
Michael Franti and Spearhead - well worth checking out.
moe.
My Morning Jacket - Listed in the "Best of 2005" Thread
Over the Rhine
Radiators - well worth checking out.
Robyn Hitchcock
Rusted Root
Ryan Adams - Listed in the "Best of 2005" Thread
Soulive
Southern Culture On The Skids
Spin Doctors
Spoon - Listed in the "Best of 2005" Thread
String Cheese Incident
The Decemberists - Listed in the "Best of 2005" Thread
The Soundtrack of Our Lives
Warren Zevon
Ween
Yo Miles!
Please refer to some of my other post for comments about the sound quality of the recordings, 24 bit/96 kHz availability, etc.
I almost forgot to add that most of the groups have links to their web sites and all of the groups have given permission for their recordings to be made available on archive.org so anything you download from the site is completely FREE and LEGAL.