I had an interesting experience the other evening - I went to my first mid-sized venue rock concert in many, many years. We saw Robin Trower. (My friend had some comp tickets. I'm not a big fan of that style of rock, but the price was right and the man can sling some guitar notes.)

I have to say the whole volume thing left me mystified. This is a fairly new venue (The Pageant in St. Louis, opened about 8 or 9 years ago), holds a maximum of 2000 and ostensibly has a "state of the art" concert sound system.

I think that translates only as "loud." Fortunately I had ear plugs with me. The live events I've attended for the past 10 years or more have primarily been either classical or small club jazz, blues or rock. At none of these have my ears suffered an outright assault of this magnitude.

In my book there is something intrinsically wrong when you must wear ear protection for a single evening's musical performance.

I did a lot of sound engineering concert work in the early 1970s (everyone from Stan Kenton to Marty Robbins) and while we were loud, it was within the range of tolerance.

I just don't understand the need for the volume I heard the other night. Pain doesn't seem to add much to the musical experience. It's like thinking if you enjoyed a nice hot day when it was 95 outside, that you'd like it even better if it was 120.

Oh well, guess I'm just dating myself. We'll move to the "/rant off" mode now. ;-)