Saw RHCP in Raleigh NC on saturday. Phenomenal show, except... it was too damn loud! Me and my friend were in the cheap seats as far back as you could possibly go, but I had to plug my ears at a few points it was so loud. The people who sat up front must've been in agony. I've been to a few arena shows before and they were never as loud as this.
My ears have been ringing slightly since then, definitely got some damage from that night. Worst thing is I had ear plugs, I just left them in the car.
My question is: how is this okay? I can't imagine whoever was responsible for the loudness would think "Yep... sounds good to me!" unless they already had some hearing damage themselves. Why does this happen, and how is there not a lawsuit frenzy over hearing damage due to concerts?
It's among the reasons I have no aspirations to gig. I go way back, so I have 60's memories of bands when I was a kid and before I fell into a classical career. Most people are in disbelief when I tell them Jimi Hendrix was quite listenable live. All the nuances, his delicate fills you'd hear on his recordings were all there. Both times I saw him I could easily carry on a conversation with the person next to me. The first time too was a fairly large venue, Chicago's Auditorium theater. The second was much smaller at the University of Illinois's Chicago circle campus but it was abbreviated due to equipment problems. That was 1967 and 1969 respectively. I'd say top volume was equivalent to a full orchestral tutti, maybe 110 decibels but on average, 100. Of course on both occasions there was no PA. That was not yet part of the live performance paradigm. The musicians on the stage controlled the sound. This pretty much was the same with The Byrds, The Soft Machine, The very early Fleetwood Mac, no women in the band yet and a few others whose names escape my memory.
I blame the Beatles, whose promoters in their infinite greed decided baseball stadia were the best venue for rock & roll. Enter the PA system, then of course enter the sound guy. Exit my butt from the seat.
I did give the modern approach a few chances. About 14 years ago my daughter, then 18 became interested, as I did, in the music of the Eels. I saw them perform Trouble With Dreams on Letterman and thought she'd get a kick out of seeing them live at the tiny Pabst theater in downtown Milwaukee. The Eels, I should add, bear no resemblance in their instrumentation or approach to Motorhead. For example, the aforementioned "Trouble" was scored for electric bass, 2 celli, drums, singer and glockenspiel with electric piano.
When we took our seats, which were well away from the stage, i wondered what the console was for in the orchestra pit. At the time, I knew nothing about electric music performance and its do- dads. From the get go, amplitudes were always on the threshold of pain. Neither of us could identify material, "do you know what this is?" "What?" "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS?" "Maybe Blinking Lights?" Most of the time though it was impossible to communicate through this ugly smear of pulsing noise. A year or so with my wife in Milwaukee again at Turner hall we saw They Might Be Giants and for crying out loud it was just as bad. Unidentifiable material as the 130 db or so they were fooling with flat-lined into a wave of noise. I did manage to see one successful popular music concert when we saw Suzanne Vega at 60's Hendrix volumes which meant her material was completely identifiable.
Unfortunately this has of course trickled into the practice of local bar bands so my wife's colleague at work who generously had this open bar birthday party at an upscale watering hole had to also have a live band . And though it was not their name could just as well gone by, Burst Eardrums. As an addendum, I notice most of the equipment conversations at Talkbass eventually drift to not sound quality but "how loud is it?"
I do apologize for the length of the post.
