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?
That's why I these days only hear ROCK concerts at outdoors venues. You can creep back off the grounds until the volume is reasonable. You hear more BASS too the further away you stand. Albeit to the drawback that you don't see much. As I am 5"7 I just have to stand a bit back. Saves my hearing too.
At a smaller club, when there's any "new" or young act playing I always bring earplugs and have done so since the beginning of the 90s.
Why?
It is just possible for the audience to turn it down. By using earplugs. Fingers in their ears. Mind you that, as opposed to the EYES you can't "blink" with your ears, they're always open. Like you could do that when asleep, shrinkle your ears inwards like a dog, and make your own ear filters, just as you can close your eyelids. You can't, that's nature, biology and human design.
People at concerts, they can't turn it up if they want to. They can ONLY damp it with earplugs (or fingers). However, if the actual sound is bad (bad FOH sound man) it can be low and totally torture anyway. I remember seeing Motorhead and Manowar at the same gig. Had to leave for a beer in the stalls outside, went back in when DIO performed. Reasonable levels came back at me. Lemmy said to his soundman between numbers "turn it up Dave, they're using earplugs anyway...". Manowar used to have record breaking for loudest band on earth. I think all in all it has to do with what Ozzy Osborne and someone else said in an interview in the 60s. "We had to play loud, so peoples talking wouldn't get heard over it". Loud levels makes people in the back silent because they can't talk over it, so they shut up by default.
I am not sure, but I think these days it has been mitigated quite a lot with the actual loudness at concerts. Since most of them have gone into these flying clusters of speakers with high frequency contect, up high in the air, pointed at calculated angles, there's no midrange or treble in a direct 90 degree angle towards you even if you stand left or right of the stage. Also, it makes room for visibility in the gap of the stage that is made, to the rigth and left. The bass woofers are usually placed beneath the stage, or at the ground (outdoors) even below your ears distance above the ground. There's no direct line anymore, but I do think that I heard louder levels and worse sound on top of that ages ago. It was a long time ago I suffered from noise hangover, that last one must've been - believe it or not - Electric Light Orchestra in 1977 (!). With string section and not especially "heavy metal" by any means, they produced sound that distorted in the speakers. That was my wakeup call, and used at least one earplug in left ear, so I could hear some music as intended and keep conversations to people to the right of me.
The actual venue (inside, not outdoors free field) can contribute to both "bad" and "loud" sound depending on how it's designed. Most hockey rinks sucks real bad in acoustics, and can get resonances at ear shattering levels, but while you stand at front of the desk everything sounds A Ok. But up at nose bleed section it's awfully loud.
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EDIT: I know of people standing at the front of the stage in order to avoid the blasts from the side PA speakers. Then you'll hear more of the stage sound. However I don't, the vocal seems to disappear, and the bass frequencies are just rumbling about. However there's very little decibel at the front edge of the stage. Otherwise it would feed back.
