Shayne Stacy, founder of the Sacramento Music Archive, works among his collection of analog recordings of concert videos and cassettes in Orangevale, Calif. on July 24, 2025. Stacy has spent years digitizing underground music from Sacramento, the Bay Area and across Northern California, making rare recordings freely accessible online. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

In a suburban backyard outside of Sacramento , I open the door to a giant shed, step inside and get smacked in the face by floor-to-ceiling shelves of music history.

VHS tapes. Cassette tapes. Reel-to-reels. DATs. Other formats I don’t recognize, and can’t pronounce. Nearly 20,000 of them, all filled with live shows, demo recordings and concert footage.

Down a narrow path through this obsolete physical media, I turn a corner to find

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