The Ramones, Raleigh, NC, early eighties. Had a great time up front in the mosh pit, but my ears rang for three days.
Not a rock group, but I was photographing Marvin Seese (big soul blues artist), at a festival, and right up next to the stage and huge bank of speakers. The horn section kicked in with a really high frequency, and it was a head rush, not in a good sense. My whole body vibrated, and could feel my eardrum blasting out a bit, yet, there was a rather odd transcendent sense as well, shearly from the frequency level. It did damage my hearing in the right ear.
After that, learned the lesson, and wore earplugs for photographing after that.
Mine started with Skid Row, not too loud, but a bit uncomfortable. Ted Nugent followed them and shredded my ear drums. KISS closed the show and took whatever hearing I had that night and trashed it.
My ears rang for three days, so badly that I found it difficult to sleep at night.
I remember making fun of the “old guys” in front of us putting in their earplugs at the beginning of the show… :smack:
Heh. 1979, Same band, same tour, roughly same position, but at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, and the volume was mind-altering. No wonder Townsend eventually had to quit because of ear pain. Like JXJohns I think mine were ringing for three days as well.
Sorry to ramble a bit, but that was one hell of an eventful night. The Pittsburgh date took place the night before the infamous Cincinnatti concert. My then-girlfriend and I were directly in front of the stage, and the crush was so bad that several times we thought we were going to get smashed up against the apron or trampled underfoot. Then, almost at the end of the 60-mile drive home, my rented car was rear-ended hard by some drunken kid in a huge old Chrysler, in which he then drove off before I got his name or plate number (I eventually tracked him down anyway, us both living in a small town and all). Fortunately, all we ended up with were sore necks, on top of the Who-induced tinnitus.
Gotta say, on John’s note, that my grandfather was a sax and clarinet player in Hollywood Big Bands, and played with Stan Kenton, Bing Crosby, etc. My grandmother told me, when I was a little music hound, Walkman pressed to ear, “You know, a lot of the guys in the band with your grandfather went deaf, and that wasn’t even with this big amplification.”
There was an awful warmup band before a Neil Young concert we went to several years ago. The generic 90s “alternative rock” band of the month. One so-so selling album and that’s it type. Can’t even remember who it was. Outdoor venue too. Most of Neil’s fans just hung around outside the seating area waiting for them to finish. Bad music played louder doesn’t work.
As for a non-rock concert, there was this Valentine’s Day Sam Kinison concert (you read that right). He had two warmup acts that apparently were just 3rd rate wannabe-comic friends. One guy had the volume cranked way up and just hurt everybody’s ears. We weren’t expecting that. Tissue in ears and everything. Sam yelling wasn’t as loud as this guy talking.
Congratulations; that’s about 17,980 kHz higher than most people can hear. It’s also several orders of magnitude higher than what can be perceived by sonar animals such as bats and whales.
Mine was My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult at Caine’s Ballroom in Tulsa, OK. It was July 1997, I believe. This place was roughly the same size as the Metro in Chicago if I remember correctly and we were about 20 feet back from the stage a little to the right. It was so loud that my friend tried to tell me something during the show and even though he was screaming at the top of his lungs approximately one inch from my ear, I could hear nothing he was saying. I’ve been to a lot of shows and have experienced a lot of next-day hearing loss, but this one had me worried. I was muffled for FOUR DAYS after the show.
It was also the hottest concert I ever saw. When I saw the show, I was visiting my mom and when I got back home three days later, I pulled the shirt I was wearing out of my suitcase and it was still wet!
I went to the “Out of the Cellar” tour (the album before). Bon Jovi opened for them for their 7800 Fahrenheit tour.
When Bon Jovi played, the sound was great - loud, but very pleasant. Then Ratt came on. It was as if the board had been set for the headliner before - the soundman screwed up - and just said “aw hell, push em all to ten”.
It was the only concert I left early - I had a splitting headache.
Judas Priest seemed the loudest to me subjectively, but that was one of my first arena concerts and I wasn’t really prepared for it. I’ve seen metallica a couple of times and they’re pretty loud but I’ve got some mild hearing damage so it didn’t seem that painful to me.
The loudest club band I’ve ever heard was one of my own. We had WAY more PA equipment than we needed but since we often played on bills with several other bands and it was hard to get attention and be memorable, we decided that even if we weren’t always the best band on the stage we could at least make sure we were the loudest. That’s part of the reason I have tinitus now.
I saw them once, about fourth on the bill at a Monsters of Rock show in Germany, 1987. Despite the fact that every other band at the show had loud, but perfectly listenable sound, Ratt’s sound was an unlistenable wall of pointless noise. I chalk it up to the band sucking major ass.
Loudest ever? Possibly the Black Sabbath show in 1986 where I was standing about 6 feet in front of the p.a., which was inexplicably mounted on ground level. But I have to give first prize to Iron Maiden in 1985. Holy crap, that was loud. In a good way.
Now the best sound I’ve heard for a major rock act was Rush. Seem 'em twice, in '91 ('92?) and '03, and both times they were simultaneously very loud and very clear. Don’t know who they have running their p.a., but whoever it is has to be some kind of sonic genius.
Probably the band I used to mix, at the Bondi Lifesaver. It was a very docile audience and I just kept winding it up until they got moving. You could feel the bottom end churning in your guts and when the manager came over to tell me to turn it down he had to scream in my ear.
What, only one other person so far said Motorhead? We saw them at Bumbershoot in Seattle a few years back and even with cotton batting stuffed securely into both ears, I had ringing in my ears for several hours afterward. I saw people there with no ear protection and I honestly don’t know how they did it. The band started playing a few seconds before I got the cotton stuffed in my ears, and for those few seconds, I was in actual physical pain.
By far it was the P-Funk All-Stars (about 1/3rd of Parliament Funkadelic feat Bernie Worrell) at The Wetlands. The Wetlands was a tiny, tiny bar with a tiny, tiny stage and 8 foot speakers in NYC.
I was deaf for a week. Seriously deaf. Had to go to the doctor deaf. But it was good.
