It’s time to get away from subjective arguments about music in favor of one where people can really back up their opinions with evidence. Here’s my question. What’s the loudest piece of music you can think of?
It might be rock, it might be classical. It may have one particular passage that’s loud, or carry it through the entire work. But I want it loud – window-rattling, speaker-blowing, ear-bleeding loud. Loud so that if you turn it down, it just doesn’t sound right.
Personally, I’m thinking “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who. How about you?
The fourth and final movement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s SCHEHERAZADE as Leo Stokowski did it for the Phase IV Stereo series recordings will, if properly cranked, cause heart palpitations, respiratory irregularities, minor seismic disturbances in your area, compression-wave clear-air turbulence phenomena in the skies overhead, etc.
You’ll know you’ve got the volume right when you can feel the cello section in the pit of your stomach
a couple of others:
Panama - Van Halen
Kashmir - Led Zepplin
Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac
We Will Rock You/Bohemian Rhapsody/anything else by Queen
Proud Mary - CCR (maybe not exactly what you were looking for, but it doesn’t sound right when it’s not really, really loud)
“Scotland the Brave” as played in the closing ceremonies of the Highland Games in Salado, Texas. They form up every pipe and drum band and all the individual pipers from the competitions into one huge band and march down the main road in town playing it. The first year I went there were over 200 pipers. There is no experience like it - you’d expect it to be ear-splitting (even to a pipe lover like me) but with that many pipes, something happens to the sound and the rough edges get smoothed out. The result is incredible.
My ex-roommate used to piss me off whenever he came home drunk at 3:00 in the morning and turn his stereo up. One morning he came home and went straight to bed. I waited, then cranked-up AC/DC on my supermega speakers, which out blasted his speakers about twenty times.
I let him bang on my bedroom door for about five minutes before answering it.
Oddly enough, he never played his music loud again.
Kilt-wearin’ man, this is a long shot, but were you in SambaThistle? A friend was in Sambaxe, and in S-T by extension for a while.
(For everyone else, SambaThistle was (is?) a bagpipe group that joined up with a Brazilian drum group. They sounded great and loved acoustic music festivals–there’s nothing like having a bunch of pipes and drums follow a Dylanesque folk singer. As they said, “No, I don’t think we need any mikes…”
The loudest thing I heard was (believe it or not) Dire Straits doing Money for Nothing in Concert. I looked at the soundman and I saw him smile as he pushed the faders towards the top of the board. My ears were still ringing an hour and a half later when I made it home.
Keith
I saw this show live, and during this song they brought out cannons on either side of the stage. They then shot them off during the song (21 gun salute). I couldnt hear for two days. They actually were banned from our local arena for cracking the foundation. Talk about “shake your foundation”.
Anything by KMFDM.
Oh yeah, the time I saw Pink Floyd, I was arms-length away from the bass speakers when they started “On the Run” (the tick-tock thing before “Time” on Dark Side of the Moon.) My ears were fine, but it was the first time I was shaken by a note. Seriously, the notes were moving me back and forth.
) my SO fixes amps etc. for a living and mentions that joke as well…