Hmm…I will be seeing Motorhead tonight, and am now considering earplugs. Have I really gotten old? Holy crap…
Hm. I’m guessing Metallica, playing in Anchorage in the early 90s. I was young enough to go to the concert with my younger brother, and old enough to slip a pair of earplugs into my jeans pocket. It was loud, even with the earplugs in.
There were other various arena concerts that were loud–for some reason, I went to a Ted Nugent concert at the PNE in the late 70s. I don’t know why I went; I’m not a Nugent fan now nor was I really then. (That was a strange experience–in the midst of the pot-smoking Nugent fans, there was a little old lady. A little old lady. Wearing a coat. Using a cane. Making her way very slowly to her seat. Going to the concert.)
I love music too much to risk ultra-loud concerts again. Next time I go to an arena concert, the earplugs are coming with me once more.
Take 'em. You can hear the music just fine through them–better, in fact–and you won’t regret having them.
I’d say that was my loudest show too, followed closely by every other time I’ve seen Bob with a full band. I saw the Last Dog & Pony Show at First Ave in Mpls, which normally has great sound. Bob was so loud though, it just sounded like mush.
Seconded. With ear protection, the music sounded normal. Well, very loud normal, but still, it was listenable, for lack of a better term. Without the earplugs, all I could really hear was a loud buzzing sound. And it has nothing to do with age, because when I saw them, I was but a young lass of 22.
Yeah, that was my loudest too–several shows in the 80s, including one in London–until I saw the Geraldine Fibbers at Lounge Ax in Chicago. I literally hallucinated from the sound pressure. A close second was Diamanda Galas. She knows the frequency of human bone and can make your skull buzz like a crystal goblet.
Van Halen in the late 1970’s.
When I was a student, I got a job with a production company as a spotlight operator for our biggest city venue. I got to run spotlights for a bunch of bands of that era, including Van Halen and Heart. The thing is, we had to hear the lighting director, and we had open style headphones that didn’t block ambient noise. So they’d turn up the volume high enough that we could hear the lighting director over live Van Halen. It was horrible.
I remember coming out of that concert and all I could hear was a loud ringing in my ears. A friend was talking to me, and I could barely make out what he was saying.
Today I have Tinnitus, and my last hearing test showed that my highs start to roll off at 8900 hz. Thanks for the cheap headphones, production company.
For me, it has to be The Who, in about October 1982, at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. We were about 50 feet from the stage, no earplugs, and my ears rang for days.
I’ve heard (and been in) a lot of loud bands in my time, but probably the loudest show I’ve ever been to was Juicifer in a medium-to-large sized club. They had amps stacked to the ceiling. It sucked. Bascially, you couldn’t even hear the drums any more. The band just had this big roar-making machine that they could turn on or off. The sound guys had no chance to help. They were going for a My Bloody Valentine-type wall of sound in a trash-rock, Royal Trux kind of context, but it turned out to have all of the musicality of a high-performance jet engine. In short, I’m not too old, it was too loud.
I didn’t realize my goof until long after I posted. That’s supposed to be 18,000 Hz, of course. :smack:
There was one Chrome show I attended a while back that was so loud that the musicians were screaming at the sound guys to turn it the hell down.
Led Zepplin, sometime in the early 70’s (“Stairway to Heaven” had just been released as a single). Big auditorium venue, I was sitting up in the cheaper seats on one side of the band and it was uncomfortably loud from there. Before the concert was over, the people I was with (and I) moved down to the floor and shoved to about 100 feet from the stage to see better. At that point I had to put my fingers in my ears because the sound level hurt. I think I may have got minor hearing damage from it, but nothing debilitating. The people who saw the concert with me saw the Who later and told me they were louder than Zepplin.
I saw Queensryche at the Paradise in Boston, and have had Tinnitus(sp?) ever since. Ithink a band called Shout opened for them. Sometime in the 80’s (very hazy).
HEY TRAGICALLY DIP, HOW WAS THE CONCERT LAST NIGHT?
Sly and the Family Stone, at some big sports arena in LA that’s torn down now. Around '70 or so. The sound was so loud* that the white noise from reverberation pretty much blocked any actual hearing of the music.
As far as the earplugs thing goes, even tissue paper will help. Wet it for more blockage. We (the band back then) were at a show–BOC, REO, Starship–and forgot earplugs. My bass player was in the men’s room, stuffing damp toilet paper in his ears, and someone asked what he was doing. “New drug delivery system. Soak the paper with the drugs, it seeps into the bloodstream thru your ear canal.” Dunno if the guy bought it, but we thought it was funny.
It’s unusual to experience permanent hearing loss from one evening at a concert. What’ll kill you is constant exposure. I’ve been playing for [muffle, muffle] years, and I always stand stage right, so my left ear faces the drummer. That one is pretty shot. Right ear is damaged, but still in the “normal” range.
You can tell kids they’ll lose their hearing, but they’ll never listen to you. 
*The old Acoustic 275w. 6-12" cabinets. They built a wall of them across the back of the stage, then stacked more across the top of the wall. It was stupidly loud.
This thread can be moved to GQ. There is a factual answer.
That answer is Motorhead. Wow.
BTW, Buckcherry rules, Jackyl is still Jackyl, Crossfade sucks, Fed. of Horsepower tries too hard, and LowKuss loses points for the name alone.
There. Everyone who was going to attend Freakers Ball owes me $37.50.
Another vote for The Who. 1969. I was in the 6th row.
The drive home with my date sounded like a comedy routine.
“WASN’T THAT GREAT!”
“NO, IT DOESN’T FEEL LATE.”
By proxy. My college housemate, D, lived for a year at University of Leeds. He told me the tale of attending a concert by The Clash. No chairs. Long rectangular room. Doors. Stage. Amps up to there and back. That’s all.
They came onstage, struck the first note and the whole crowd jumped. He said that was it. He could not hear. He stayed, figuring what the fuck, I’m already deaf. The vibrations and dancing alone were apparently mighty enjoyable.
He said for a few days, he had distant ringing in his ears. Eventually he got most of his hearing back but told me that he had lost some high end for good.
Not worth it, I say.
Cartooniverse
Judas Preist , circa 1982.
Catherine Wheel at the 9:30 Club, in D.C. I’ve seen a few other far more hardcore bands there, but C.W. truly cranked the amps to 11. I didn’t realize how bad it was at the time, and was a little too drunk to notice once I got home, but the next morning I could not hear. I could snap my fingers right next to my head, and all I’d get was a dull tapping sound as if through a wall. I couldn’t understand what people said to me unless they raised their voice to a yell, and even then I had to rely partly on lip reading. I thought of calling a doctor, and realised I wouldn’t be able to hear whoever was on the other end of the line. It freaked me the hell out, and it took me two days to really recover.