I sat 5th row left stage at Riverport for a Rage Against the Machine concert and I had ringing in my left ear for 3 days! In a couple of months I have 15th row left stage tickets for the Mayhem Festival with Slipknot & Disturbed. This time I will bring ear plugs!

WHAT? What’s that you said sonny boy? Have lewd consorts damaged my bearings? Kind of personal question, isn’t it?
I’m from the Missisippi River Festival stand by the house-sized speaker dayz. The Chuck Berry Farm blare amongst the trees dayz. The vibrate down the road cranked up with rolled up window Vee Dub dayz. But my hearing is still good.
Now it’s a Harley and a John Deere lawn tractor blast I have to worry about. Such is aging! Developing selective hearing is an art useful at any age.
The more discordant ones play LOUDEST, don’t they? LMAO Wonder why? Rock ON!

I’m a firm believer in wearing earplugs. I don’t go to the huge arena shows, but I’ve been in enough small to mediums sized clubs where the noise was so loud I could feel it vibrating in my chest. After too many days of waking up the day after a show with ringing still in my ears, I swallowed whatever coolness I might have had and bought a pair of earplugs.

I’ll have to admit that when I was young, I used to crank up the transistor radio. Played my stereo pretty loud too. But the equipment we had back then just didn’t have the power of a professional show set-up or of today’s shake-the-house car stereos. In fact, as our sound equipment improved, I found that the loudness wasn’t just annoying but downright painful. No kidding. We’re talking about the effect of an icepick being continuously jammed into my head.

Question: if you have to wear earplugs, what’s the point?

As an aside, I remember one time when we got really topnotch front row seats at the Muny. Wow, you could really see the stage! Unfortunately you couldn’t hear the singing because the orchestra pit was right in front of you and the instruments pretty well drowned out the actor/singers. I reached a point where I was like “If that clown hits those cymbals one more time….” Now I’m much happier to sit a ways back from the stage.

I can’t hear anyway. I’ve been wearing hearing aids since I was in the 5th grade. I have been getting worse for many years. I now have amplifiers on my phones. I have to read the TV screen. As you might have guessed, I listen to everything as loud as I can. I have been told by my doctor that I have only hurt myself more by doing that. By being hearing impaired, I only got closer to the music. That only made things worse. At the old age that I am, I still go down the road with the radio as loud as it will go. Some people never learn.

How come the comment feature doesn’t work in the Letters to the Editor blog?

I’ve been to a few concerts that have left ringing in my ears for a few days. Most notably, the last time Tool was in town. I think I average one concert a year. If there’s any permanent damage, it’s not noticeable to me. I don’t find myself having a hard time hearing the TV or needing to turn it up any louder than anyone else.

#6 Go Fish and TPTB at stltoday.com

I also noticed that the “ranking” feature (where one votes how many stars) is not working on the LTE blog.

How come the comment I posted earlier is gone now? Not funny enuff?

No doubt loud rock concerts damaged my hearing. I attended many, many shows. Like another poster, I’m old enough to have attended many Mississippi river festival concerts.

When Grand Funk Railroad came to MRF the first thing Mark Farmer did when they came on stage was to tell everyone that they brought way to much equipment and sound for the tent as they thought it was a much larger venue.

Mark warned everyone in the first twenty rows that ” you way want to move back” several rows and/or protect your hearing. We thought it was cool to be able to sit up close so for about half the show we were in the 15th row. That was all I could take before moving back about 30 rows.( your pretty stupid when your 18!).
My ears hurt and rang the rest of the night. that was one of many. I can tell my hearing has suffered as a result of my earlier rock concert days.