Soon, just like Florida or Sturgis, you’ll have nothing but wrinkly, pruny-boobed Gen X, intellectually-inferior gray hairs coming into your club hoping to get a taste of geriatric Z-Cavaricci ass as they reminisce about the 80’s and get nostalgic about “Iron Maiden” and “The Scorpions.” Which will be fine.
Because most will be deaf by that age anyway.
I’ve been to my share of noisy concerts.
In July 1978, I attended the Beach Boys concert at the old Stampede Corral in Calgary. My ears were ringing for the next 2 or 3 days.
A week later, I went to see and hear the Eagles perform at McMahon Stadium. That time, I took along earplugs and I was glad I did.
The band brought several trailers full of sound equipment which, when it was stacked in place, was at least 4 stories high. I was on the field during the concert. When they played, I could feel each note as if I was being hit in the chest.
The entire proceedings were so loud that I could have saved myself the price of a ticket by simply being outside the stadium and listening to the music.
We weren’t the only ones hearing the concert, though. The entire section of Calgary near the stadium did as well. The next morning, it was an item on the CBC radio news and the city council said that it would enact bylaws that would prevent that sort of thing from happening again.
Still, a good time was had by everyone in attendance.
?
do bars still exist?
I haven’t been in one since, ummmm . . . jeeze has it been that long?
I was wandering around youtube once and stumbled on some doodads opinion on the ‘greatest’ (it’s always the greatest) female rock guitarists.
just a bunch of random scales or sumptin. no. fcukin’. melody. just up and down, up and down real fast and real loud. oooookay there dudette. when does the song start?
p.s. is hip hop rap whatever they call it, all coming out of the same black box? because it all. sounds. exactly. the. same. monotone. rapid. fire. unintelligible. lyrics. I once saw a boom box on wheels stopped at the traffic lights.
boomp…….. bomp……boomp bomp.
boomp………bomp……boomp bomp.
boomp………bomp……boomp bomp.
that was it. that was the ‘hip hop’ number one tune.
I think this is all proof of the dumbing down of western society. who the fcuk knows how to cook a decent dinner anymore? is that why those screaming chef in-yer-face competitions are so popular? some sort of warped nostalgia for Graham Kerr or Julia Child?
just some random thoughts. most celebrities are a-holes.
Your comments reminds me of a blind date I had with a young lady back in the late 1980s.
We met at a local watering hole and, while we were chatting, the staff started up the establishment’s wall-of-sound stereo system. I swear they cranked it up so loud that the fillings in my teeth started rattling. I wasn’t impressed.
It wasn’t a particularly memorable evening for either of us and I never saw her again. The bar itself closed 2 or 3 years later.
Unfortunately rock drummers don’t come with a volume control. A while back I saw a simple fix of putting the kit in a Plexiglas box, allowing everyone else to turn down.
Yep, were getting old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFxivmjW34o
The article nicely points out the bizarre spectacle of blaring music at a reunion for example.
A couple of light years ago the main reason to turn the music to ear bleed levels was ‘to take it to the man’; it pissed off any adults in the vicinity.
Those reasons ended a long time ago.
Never understood why anyone considers
a night club
a bar
a discotech
or
a “hot spot”
A place to find a long term relationship. Thus less talking the better.
Anyway…….
On concerts, many years since the last, I went to a Peal Jam concert Dec 2014 in Calgary and took some ear-plugs. Great concert regardless, glad I wore them, with nothing missed – aside from the wonderful lack of diversity in the audience! Woo hoo…..
When I was about 20 the local “beer parlour” introduced a juke box and my dad was outraged with the GD noise. He often said he wished there was a selection for just 3 minutes of no music and he was sure he wouldn’t be the only one who would pay for silence. I thought he was an old fossil. By the time I reached my forties, I got it. Nowadays I prefer quiet restaurants, and I’m not shy about asking to be moved if they seat me directly under the speaker, or asking that the music be turned down. And I see the scornful/pitying looks directed at this old fossil.
I remember hating bands with brutal volume back in the 1970s. I liked to go to bars to talk rather than get pissed although I usually managed that too. Despite my preference for rock, me and my compatriots went to a lot of country bars. Ooga ooga mooshka!
I spent a lifetime in bars and now I cant stand ’em.
These days I look for a piano bar where some grey hair is playing from the great American song book. Hennessy neat.
Did somebody say ‘piano bar’?
How about a Casio bar? One that celebrates and embraces today’s edgy gay hipsters?
The Casio Man – Billyburg Joel (sung to the tune of The Piano Man)
It’s 9am on a Wednesday
Emaciated Ethan sleeps in
There’s a tattooed Megan laying next to him
Her job is riding around on a Schwinn
He has arms that resemble celery
And sounds like he talks through his nose
His new art loft is sweet
I read that from his Tweet
He fits into young women’s clothes.
Yah yah yah di di yahhhhh
Yah yah di di yah yahhhhhh
Sing us a song, you’re the Casio man
On the Bedford Ave platform tonight
You claim we hate you out of jealousy
Your beard I’d love to ignite.
Now Josh at the bar is a friend of his
He gets him his craft ale for free
He claims to be broke but always has coke
Thank god for that liberal arts degree
He says, “Ethan, I believe this is itching me.”
As he scratched the filthy beard on his face
“One day I’ll be a famous artist,
But for now my dad pays for my place”
Oh, Yah yah yah di di yahhhhh
Yah yah di di yah yahhhhhh
Zoey is a waitress practicing smugness
Part time Vegans chew on chicken bones
Yes, they’re sharing with us their pretentiousness.
But it’s better than flying back home.
Sing us a song, you’re the Casio man
On the Bedford Ave platform tonight
You claim we hate you out of jealousy
Your beard I’d love to ignite.
Now Zach is a real ch*tty novelist
Got held up for his iPhone with a knife
He’s extremely lazy
Got fired from Old Navy
He’ll be in credit card debt for life
It’s a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
McCarren’s full of Chloes and Kyles
They’ve done sh*t all week; this park really reeks
And probably will for a while
And the Casio, it sounds like a 5 year old’s
And Ethans body is shaped like a spear
And they sit at the bar – drink from mason jars
And say, “Yah, PBR is the best beer”
Oh, Yah yah yah di di yahhhhh
Yah yah di di yah yahhhhhh
Sing us a song, you’re the Casio man
On the Bedford Ave platform tonight
You claim we hate you out of jealousy
Your beard I’d love to ignite.
Courtesy of our friends at Diehipster.com!
abtrapper >
“I spent a lifetime in bars and now I cant stand ’em.”
Not being critical, as it seems like most of the western world does it, I simply never understood the need to sit in a bar, or make it a substitute for my own living room or deck.
The last “Bar” with head pounding music I was ever in was in 1986, outside of that maybe a 1/2 dozen lounges/ Pubs on overseas vacations to see what the fuss was about.
Still don’t “get it”, outside of looking for easy non-committal sexx it seems pointless to spend 3 – 4 times the price for a drink to be around a bunch of ignorant usually loud and drunk strangers who care less about you than you do them. That’s just me.
“p.s. is hip hop rap whatever they call it, all coming out of the same black box? because it all. sounds. exactly. the. same. monotone. rapid. fire. unintelligible. lyrics. I once saw a boom box on wheels stopped at the traffic lights.”
Listening to music is just like eating candy: The first thing you do is remove the rapper.
Knight – I agree with most of what you say.
For the most part the bar scene is about hook ups and getting over refreshed with strangers. Hemingway and his Paris friends turned drinking into an art form. They remained intelligent while drunk.
abtrapper >
“……….and getting over refreshed with strangers”
That’s the part I never get, but that’s why people are different I suppose.
Your comments remind me of what it was like in the late 1970s when disco was at its peak. It seemed that every watering hole was turned into a dance club, particularly after the movie “Saturday Night Fever” was released. (The music in that flick was OK, the plot dreadful, and John Travolta showed once again that he couldn’t act.)
I remember going to one such place in Calgary in early 1978 with a bunch of people I knew from my freshman year. During that evening, one of my mates and I just sat at a table and I’m sure we both had the same thought in our minds: what on earth are we doing here?
For one thing, the music consisted of the same songs that one heard on just about every radio station at the time, except much–and dangerously–louder. Second, I danced as if I had *3* left feet, so there wasn’t much point in trying that. As for the other clientele there, the less said the better.
Fortunately, disco was one social fad that disappeared almost as quickly as it came on the scene. And, no, I don’t look back at any of it with any nostalgia.
My husband has never heard well since we went to one of those end of school year variety shows and some visiting older Haitian young adults in the seats behind us kept screaming encouragement at younger friends in the show doing hip hop music. I covered my ears which saved them.