The Ringing in Your Ears
Yeah, thats right. I have tinnitus and it is non-stop. However, I wear that annoying badge proudly since it wasn’t from working at the airport with no headgear. It happened on a beautiful night at the Prudential Center as my friend, Tommy McHugh and I sat in the 9th row, in front of a stack of 2,000 lb Marshall Amps watching AC/DC.
I came home that night and heard nothing, but dreamt ripping into Who Made Who. Still one of the best shows I have seen but that’s not what this article is about. It’s about my IPhone and how it betrayed me. Yes, Tim Cook, your product has betrayed me and that betrayal is going to be a hard one to forgive.
What happened was, while snow blowing the 15 inches of beautiful powder that fell last week, I put on my Beats Headphones and listened to several different playlist I have for the snow and since my snowblower has a 30 hp Briggs and Stratten Turbo engine on it (You know the one, it can toss snow 50 feet and if your not careful, suck up a rabbit or tea cup poodle as well), I had to crank the music up.
Everything was going fine until my IPhone (Bless it’s heart) warned me that I was operating at a dangerous sound level. 85 decibels! Are they kidding? 85 decibels is a bad muffler three blocks away. What are those tech guys on the West Coast, a bunch of Pansies. It kept warning me and sent me to some page I never knew even existed on this phone, showing me the decibel level and how long I had it at that level. This is a free country, If I want to play The Clash at 100 decibels while I clearing a path for my dog, I should be allowed to. Let me go to work in Cuppertino, that place would never be the same.
Thats not what I wanted to write about however but it gives me a nice intro. We can all agree on one thing and that is Rock and Roll was meant to be played loud. Dangerously loud (I can attest to that) and there are certain songs that are just made to be played loud.
No Cat Stevens here and surprisingly no Metallica, Motorhead, Mumford and Son. These are songs from the archive that you have to turn up loud. The guitars are loud and the vocals are loud. Lyrics, go see Joni Mitchell.
I am going to start with something a little deeper. Dig out that old Bachman Turner OverdriveII album and give a listen to “Welcome Home” on it. If not, pay Tim Cook the $1.65 and buy it. It’s about a band (possibly The Guess Who?) leaving the Prairie and becoming stars. Combination of acoustic and kiss ass lead guitar and Randy Bachman is still my secret pleasure lead singer.
While the politics of this song are somewhat forgotten, Steppenwolf’s “Monster-Suicide-America” is as well crafted protest song as you will ever hear. The guitar work is great and the whole ebb and flow of the song needs to be played loud. I think “For Ladies Only” is similar in structure. Great chorus and like every Steppenwolf song, very loud guitars.
I have a toss up here with two songs by Robin Trower, “Bridge of Sighs’ and “Gonna be More Suspicious”. Trower was just one of the best guitarists of the 70’s and 80’. I never thought he got the credit he deserved and again, I saw him and his band in concert back in 1977 and I still remember how the Knoxville Coliseum shook.
There are a couple of guys from Texas that could make a deaf guy hear and they are ZZTop. Stevie Ray Vaughn and Johnny Winter. With Stevie Ray, there are multiple songs that you can just crank up and you never lose his guitar playing so for this little exercise I will just put out there his version of “Little Wing”. It’s been done by every guitar God but I don’t think any of them has done it as cleanly. With Johnny Winter I will go with that old standby Rick Derringers' “Still Alive and Well”. Ouch, another clean Texas guitar player.
Sue me but I have to put a Rush song in here. “Working Man” covers every base you would want for a loud classic. Superb drumming, guitar and vocals. Argue amongst yourselves, I don’t want to hear it on this one.
This will be another unpopular one but just sit through the 7 minutes and tell me it wouldn’t work great with a pair of great headphones on, turned up loud. Ten Year’s After’s “50,000 Miles Beneath my Brain”. Yeah, I know a lot of people don’t think much of Alvin Lee but I just thought he was a amazing guitarist, but what do I know.
While I think he is scary crazy I am going to drop Ted Nugent in here. “Stranglehold” is another classic that gets little airplay or credit but it’s over 8 minutes of pump up the volume music.
I have to throw some love to Long Island’s own Blue Oyster Cult. “Cities on Flame With Rock and Roll” is pure rock and roll. Another group that got torched by critics but had a huge following, BOC could make anything loud and rock and roll. This song was played to death on FM radio but whenever it comes up in my rotation I turn it up, wait a second! I can’t!
And this brings us full circle to AC/DC. How does one select one song to dislocate your inner ear drum from your cochlea? I will give it a shot since I have been a fan since Bon Scott was in the band. I could write a 1,000 word Substact just on the band so it is going to be hard but I think if I was going to go out and finish my hearing off, I would crank up “Hells Bells”. It’s just ominous and very few songs can actually say they can scare you. Everything about it puts fear in your ear.
There are a couple of personal notes here regarding AC/DC. I have seen a lot of groups live and strangely, once I have seen them live, my interest wanes. Not AC/DC. I could listen to almost anything they have done, anytime, anywhere still, even though they are responsible for my 15% hearing loss and that blasted ringing in my ears. The best opening song in history (Sorry Goodfellas) was “Who Made Who” from Maximum Overdrive. Everything went downhill from there. The last note is regarding to that infamous show we saw. The ended the third encore with “For Those About To Rock”. When they fired those canons, that was it for my lifetime of listening to birds sing without that ringing.