{"id":117,"date":"2018-11-23T08:40:20","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T07:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philipjetheridge.com\/?p=117"},"modified":"2022-05-20T10:29:40","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T08:29:40","slug":"16-songs-for-the-deaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/23\/16-songs-for-the-deaf\/","title":{"rendered":"16. Songs for the deaf"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When I was nineteen I saw Hawkwind at the Rainbow Theatre in London. Lemmy was in the band on bass and vocals at the time and they\u2019d just had a big hit with Silver Machine, which was the main reason I was there. But what I remember most about the concert was the volume \u2013 and the topless dancer \u2013 but mostly the volume. It was so loud that at one point I hid behind the seats, on my knees, crouched on the floor with my fingers in my ears. An unforgettable experience. I\u2019ve had a ringing tone in my ears ever since that evening and for years after that I couldn\u2019t stand to be anywhere which was too quiet. I couldn\u2019t imagine myself ever living anywhere except a big, noisy city which would block out that ringing, but it seems you can get used to anything. Incidentally Lemmy\u2019s Motorhead are number 6 on the list of loudest bands ever and Hawkwind are not on the list at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Famously, The Beatles\nplayed massive arenas in the USA in the mid-60s, with specially-built 100 watt Vox\namplifiers (wow!). At Shea Stadium in New York, the 55,600 fans there could\nhear nothing apart from each other screaming and some buzzing and squeaking in\nthe background which would have been the Beatles. They had no listening system onstage\nand couldn\u2019t hear each other playing, which must have been a nightmare. Simply\nput, the sound was terrible and they were nowhere near loud enough. But when bigger\nand better sound rigs were developed in the late 60s, many bands squeezed every\ndecibel out of them that they could. It was a badge of honour to be loud and the\nlouder you were, the bigger you were. Some of the old megabands were famous for\nbeing terrifyingly loud and even bragged about it. Bands like The Who (Pete\nTownsend has had problems with tinnitus for many years), Kiss, Led Zeppelin,\nMotorhead, and AC\/DC, to name a few, broke records for loudness. I used to\nthink that outrageous volume was a thing of the past, but that\u2019s not the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Morning Jacket at\nMunchenbryggeriet in Stockholm in 2011 were painfully loud. I\u2019d bought earplugs\nfrom a seller outside the venue, just in case, but I forgot them in my evening jacket\nin the cloakroom. I felt like an idiot standing there with my fingers in my\nears and no seat to hide behind. It\u2019s a pity though, because they were actually\nvery good. \n\nEven locally there\u2019s been some of that. Hogan\u2019s Heroes (who?\nwhat?) in H\u00f6gbo Bruk, with one of my old guitarist heroes Albert Lee, were also\ndeafening.  I was near the front when the\nshow started, drifted towards the back after a couple of songs, but after about\n20 minutes I gave it up, slipped out to the carpark and drove home. I just\ncouldn\u2019t listen to it, which also made me pretty pissed off. I had paid to see\nthe band, but couldn\u2019t stand being in the same room as them. So is that my\nfault or the band\u2019s? Or H\u00f6gbo Bruk\u2019s? Or is it just the deaf guy behind the\nmixing desk that\u2019s at fault? Morrisey wrote a song in which he sang critically about\nDJs many years ago (Panic), for which he also got a lot of criticism. Maybe he\nshould have written one about a mixing engineer instead? Whatever, I should\nhave been given a refund. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was nineteen I saw Hawkwind at the Rainbow Theatre in London. Lemmy was in the band on bass and vocals at the time and they\u2019d just had a big hit with Silver Machine, which was the main reason I was there. But what I remember most about the concert was the volume \u2013 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “16. Songs for the deaf”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-related"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philipjetheridge.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}