the Black Angels at the Social in Orlando (around ~100 people capacity.) I was really there to see an opening band of theirs, the Warlocks (all 3 of the bands are sort of modern noise/psychedelia). but thought I’d stay around for the main band.
They were so loud that my hearing was distorted, I could tell it was physically loud but my ears just wouldn’t register any more volume. Not only were the speakers maxed out and therefore sort of flattened and crunchy but i think that effect was in my ears as well!
I left after they completed their first song, but prolly woulda stayed if they hadn’t been so loud.
Daltry in full leather-lunged voice, Townsend rending riffs that could bend metal, Moon crashing and thundering like, well, the madman he was, and Entwhistle rumbling like a pissed off Thor.
A fourth vote for My Bloody Valentine–last year they ended a show with “You Made Me Realise”, and went into an extended noise section that was just so loud and overwhelming that I somehow felt like I lost my sense of time; I couldn’t tell if I had been standing there for 5 minutes or an hour. Earplugs are a necessity and I’ve heard of people vomiting at MBV shows because it was so loud.
Ratt. Don’t laugh, somehow we got free tickets, my sister won them on a radio station or something. I thought we were going to go deaf! Even though we were only in our 20s, I guess we were already too old, because it was WAY too loud, we ended up leaving early.
For those not familiar with the errrrr…skilled musical talents of Ratt, they are one of a myriad of hair metal bands popular back in the 80s.
I’ve been to a least 70-80 concerts in everything from arenas to small clubs, and nothing compares to Manowar. At first, I use to go to concerts without earplugs and my ears would often ring for a few days, so I started wearing earplugs. But with Manowar, my ears hurt during the concert even with ear plugs in and I had ringing for about a week afterward. The worst part is, I wasn’t even there to see them, I was there to see Rhapsody who was the last opener for them at a club in Baltimore in, I think, 2005. My advice, if you DO end up seeing them, bring some serious ear protection, more serious than the normal earplugs you may bring to a concert.
The Rolling Stones several times, easily the loudest. All outdoors, thankfully. I would not have wanted that in any dome, even fabric. The times I heard them in Oakland, I swear it was loud enough that they could hear it in San Francisco.
Meatjack, early 1990s, in a small club in Indianapolis. Their amps formed a large wall across the stage, and like others have mentioned for other shows, the sound was a tactile sensation as much as it was an aural one. It was similar to standing or walking in high-speed wind, where your breath is taken away and you feel like you’re being shoved non-stop. Feedback and other noises would cause body parts to vibrate, and a couple of (sober!) friends ended up throwing up from the sensations. And, of course, the ear ringing for days after, despite earplugs. The show itself was a treat, and the wall o’ noise was complemented by a wall o’ video, as three projectors simultaneously showed a wall o’ absurd/surreal/horrific scenes on the movie screen suspended above the wall o’ amps. The over-powering sound was definitely part of the fun.
More than a few times, bands who stop at small clubs have too-powerful sound systems that are better used at medium/large clubs. I saw Jucifer at a tiny club a few years ago, and despite thinking the lead singer looked foxy in her mod mini-dress, I ended up with half of the audience on the sidewalk outside the club, with the doors closed, where we could actually hear and enjoy the music instead of indistinct noise.
Worse was a stop on the Ministry tour supporting the Filth Pig album, in a cavernous hall with horrible acoustics, where I ended up stuck right in front of a bank of speakers as I tried to find a place where I could actually hear/understand the music. Ringing set in within seconds, but I couldn’t get through the crowd to escape.
Edgar Winter Group, Illinois State University, spring 1974. My buddy wanted his GF to sit with him, so my seat got traded with hers - second row, directly in front of Rick Derringer’s wall-o-speakers.
Everybody around me had ear plugs. Yeah, I have a pretty serious case of tinnitus.
Runner up - Cheap Trick, Assembly Hall, University of Illinois, a year or two later. Mercifully, I was farther away from the stage, but, holy crap, that was loud. And incredibly smoke-filled, if you know what I mean, and I think that you do. It was mostly a high-school-aged crowd. :eek:
They did that in the early 90s as well. It was a great way to sort out the MBV fans in the audience from the merely curious.
One of the times I saw them back then was in this awful dive called Hammerjack’s in Baltimore - more famous for its wet t-shirt contests. I’m still not sure how they ended up playing there. But a few of the Hammerjack’s regulars turned up (it was easy enough to spot them even before the music started). They spent most of the gig just staring slackjawed but during that 19-minute noise session at the end … I mean … you’ve never seen such looks of death on people’s faces. It was really quite hilarious.
Pantera. I don’t even like them. My ex-boss used to have a pair of seats in a luxury box at the San Jose Arena, so when the Pantera/Slayer tour rolled through town a few years back, my little brother begged me to ask for my boss’s tickets and take him to the show.
Slayer played first, and I had no problem during their set. But by about the fourth song of Pantera’s set I had a throbbing headache. After another two songs I couldn’t take it anymore, and left.
I’ve seen plenty of loud bands - Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Dream Theater, to name a few - but that Pantera show was the only time I couldn’t handle the volume. Maybe I was just having an adverse reaction to a sucky band - I recall feeling queasy, too.
Hendrix at the Electric Factory. When he hit the wawa it blew out the high end in my left ear. Too close to the stage.
Twenty five years later, I met my wife, who lived a few blocks away from the gig. She said it was horribly loud-for two days!
The worst was a Dierks Bentley concert in Ocean City, Maryland. I went with a friend about four years ago.
The concert was under a tent just off the Boardwalk as part of Springfest, and took place, in her description, during a Storm of Biblical Proportion.
Holy crap, I got about twenty seconds into the thing and couldn’t take it. Way too loud. HUGE drumbeats that like to put a hole in my chest. Flashing lights. Screaming girls.
My friend is a huge country music fan, especially Dierks. I agreed to go with her even though I am not really into Dierks. She’s a travel writer and was doing a piece on Springfest and wanted some company.
I had just finished telling her how much I hated really loud concerts with way distorted sound. Then the show started.
I literally jumped out of my seat and over the lap of the sizeable dame in front of me and bolted for the tent flap yelling, “Let me out! I have to get out of here!” It was bad because I had to shove my way through a big line of latecomers.
Then I ran through the rain across the parking lot, down the street and all the way back to our hotel. Then I cleaned the room, made the bed and drank a bottle of low-carb white wine to calm down. I felt so bad for abandoning her.
She was cool about it. In fact she actually thought it was funny and appreciated the impromptu clean-up.
I have not gone to a concert like that since. I’m stickin’ to the old lady Sunday afternoon Pops stuff at the Meyerhoff. Better for my heart.
For me it would be Joe Satriani in some small club in Portland, OR, in maybe '93 or’94. My ears rang for a week after that show, but damn that guy can play!
I was gonna brag about Van Halen in the 80s in too small a venue for their equipment, but from some of the replies so far, I guess loudness has been taken up notch since my concert days.
Same band, same tour, different venue. The Who, November 1971, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Memorial Colliseum. It was the “Who’s Next” tour - my ears didn’t stop ringing for two days!
