loudest band you've ever seen

The volume of GZA's vocals was the most painful, I think. Also - Compulsion around, er 1992/3? Anyone remember them? Haswell & Hecker also hurt.

The obvious: Swans, MBV, Whitehouse. I've seen Mogwai countless times and they've never really seemed that loud to me. Odd.

Iggy in a smallish club in San Diego in '84(?). I have tinnitus.

MBV at Liberty Lunch in the '90s was JUST RIGHT.

Black Dice at ATP NY in '09 was stupidly loud. You could see dust from the rafters coming down. In fact just about anyone who's played at ATP NY is crazily loud. Anyone not using earplugs there is going to have serious hearing problems later in life.

Probably Pantera.

there's clearly massive variants btw bands who like it loud, and a crap sound system/ engineers who make it that way by accident. i mean i didn't find MBV loud at all really in a painful sense on the 08 tour although technically it was loud *per se* but i found Suede at their recent Manchester reformation show painfully, unbearably shrill and grating at a couple of points despite loving the gig.
can't believe people were *throwing up* at a Tribe Called Quest show! surely you could sue afterwards.

Godspeed you black emperor in 2000: efrim retrieves a roll of toilet paper backstage and proceeds to distribute portions to the front row (many of whom were covering their ears die to his high pitched loud-ass-hell screwdriver-as-guitar-bow magic)

out of curiosity, what would the effect be on one's hearing be from touring as a member of say mbv? i can't imagine the level of tinnitus that a musician in a band like that must have.

[remarks about bands trying to be "da loudest", as being macho/stupid/irresponsible]

i can remember being utterly disappointed by the low dB level at a prodigy gig.
hoped they would turn on a second set of pa's when they play poison.

xp bob mould got such severe tinnitus that he would fall asleep with tv snow on full blast to drown out the ringing in his ears. I heard one of the dudes in mission of Burma had it so bad he wore firing range earmuffs (or whatever they're called) on stage at some point during their reformation.

Oh yeah, I forgot about seeing Bob Mould's "Black Sheets of Rain" tour, my ears felt water logged four a good four days after.

Same with the Scorpions, "Love at First Sting" tour.

Old.

Yellow Swans were amazingly loud the last time i saw them in 05.

when i saw Angel Blood a couple of years ago, i was sure my hearing was gone forever. those cats knew how to WAIIIIILLLL

I heard one of the dudes in mission of Burma had it so bad he wore firing range earmuffs (or whatever they're called) on stage at some point during their reformation.

Roger Miller wore those for years, surely since the band first broke up. He was just wearing earplugs on their most recent tour, though with a plexiglass screen in front of the drum kit to protect him from the bombast, presumably.

I also saw Envy at that ATP in 2008, though I don't remember them being as loud as that - of course, I was wearing earplugs.

roger both plexiglass and earmuffs when i saw them in 2004. they initially stopped playing because of his hearing problems, right?

stage volume is very different than the volume out front (hopefully it's lower, but sometimes it's worse if the monitors are blasting). either way, gotta wear those plugs.

Lightning Bolt - you pair of absolute bastards. I thought it was just me, but there seems to be plenty of mention up thread too.

I had tinnitus for 5 days and thought it was permanent damage initially.

Honourable mention to the Dutch band, Gore - surely one of the first math- rock=== instrumental bands ever. They stick in my mind as being extremely loud as do Swans, who I saw around the same time. I was a very impressionable young idiot.

the most pain caused has been by, of all bands, Fleet Foxes at the Roundhouse

don't worry -- this applies to many of us without hearing damage as well

Black Dice at ATP NY in '09 was stupidly loud. You could see dust from the rafters coming down.

agree w/ this, it was NUTS ^^

other stuff: mogwai circa 2003 a couple times (they've gotten quieter in recent years; or else my hearing's just a bit worse?), MBV at ATP NY 08, then the following year in ATX; dinosaur jr.; a place to bury strangers

all shows where i felt like i could swim through the soundwaves in the air, they were so thick and palpable

out of curiousity, does anyone actually like it that loud?

I don't - find it very annoying. Never been prepared to give MBV a proper go for that very reason (ilx heresy I know). their show at Primavera ('09 I think?) was astonishingly loud for an outdoor event. There were a lot of extremely loud acts that weekend actually - I'm pretty sure the sound engineers couldn't resist using all that extra volume that I'm sure MBV demanded.

MGMT in the academy in Dublin was also v v loud - think there was a lot of over-compressed backing track...

Actually. Kraftwerk at the Festival Hall was staggeringly loud - we were sitting in the 2nd row, and you could hear your whole body shake. Person I was with had to go and stand at the back of the hall. But there was no ear-ring the next morning - maybe because the sound was so clean and spacious, with no wall of noise.

Feel you whole body shake, obv. Not hear.

really??? i was there too - admittedly nearer the back - and it was one of the v quiestest gigs i've ever been to. def cld've been a LOT louder.

sometimes i DO like it insanely loud - the adrenaline rush that a wall of noise generates is prob the closest i'll ever come to the thrill of an extreme sport - but obv it depends on the group and what they do - drone needs to overwhelm you, invade yr body, but don't see the point of yr standard indie rock group being face-meltingly loud

Oh yeah, upfront it was staggering. I don't think they were playing through a PA though, were they? They had these two suitcase-sized speakers - presumably of their own construction - at the sides of the stage and that seemed to be it. We were 15 feet from one of those. If it had been any louder I'd have gone home.

Cheap Trick, Pearl Jam and Black Crowes, all at different times in the Fox Theater in Atlanta, of all places. Strange that it would be so loud in that place but all three, you saw the drummers hammering away but you couldn't hear any of them, no sense of tempo at all. Unpleasant.

Was going to see Husker Du at Liberty Lunch back in the mid-'80s and a friend told me since they were so painfully loud he'd get us up on stage to stand behind the guy who was mixing monitors; maybe we'd get a little less volume. Didn't help--it was just ridiculous.

out of curiousity, does anyone actually like it that loud?

I think the enjoyment of extreme volume diminishes with age. When I was young I loved it, but now I just end up worried about what permanent damage I'm doing to my hearing, even with ear plugs in. Especially as hearing problems run in my family.

No, don't enjoy it loud. The only benefit of extreme volume is that you can't hear wankers talking all the way through the show.

Yeah if you're getting hearing damage with earplugs something is definitely wrong. I wear them because it's often physically painful to go without them and usually it does sound a bit better. I think my hearing is extra sensitive though since there are always plenty of people ahead of me that seem to have no problem with the loudness. Sometimes I feel if I were up front with no earplugs I'd just be deaf ten minutes in. The downside is that you really do feel like a whiny bitch if you wear the plugs. People give you dirty looks. I don't really care but it's just uncomfortable when people scowl at you because you want to protect your hearing.

I think the enjoyment of extreme volume diminishes with age.

yes, but from time to time i experience certain situations of total bliss & euphoria where i would generously trade some of my hearing abilities for...say,
standing in front of DynamixII playing Machine Planet with >140db.
besides, nowadays hi-tec hearing aids can look great.
http://s5.directupload.net/images/101209/x2n8dngk.jpg

i am not talking about drug induced effects

Motorhead by quite a large margin. On 2 seperate occasions I saw them be so loud that it had an alnmost hallucinogenic effect one me, once especially because they were really on it, and the rush from the music + the rush from the volume took me to some other mental space altogether. Probably told the story before, but the next day I was sat next to a telephone and I could not hear it ringing, that part of the frequency spectrum of my hearing was just completely missing. Back to "normal" in a couple of days.

Lousest shit band I've seen would be a joint prize between Loop and Sonic Youth, buth irredeemably lame and slack. If a good band cranked up loud is a great rush, then a shit band loud is the ultimate musical bum-out.

Soul Asylum (I know, weird, but trust me . . . ) during highschool in a tiny club
Pleasurehorse at Fort Thunder (ultra-high frequency power electronics through a BIG Marshall stack)
Sunnno)))/Boris Halloween show
recent shows that were loud as fuck:
Bloody Panda / Monarch
Swans

Mark Stewart and the Mafia in Bristol a few years back were insanely loud (bordering on painful), made all the more so with Adrian Sherwood doing his ear blistering tweaks/overdubs.

Prior to that : Swans - Leeds Poly on the Children of God tour.

Nomeansno were the loudest band I've ever seen in a club. I experienced pretty dramatic hearing loss for a couple of days after that. I was a little bummed, because I was standing around outside after the gig and Rob Wright was out there too, just chillin', but I was in no state to carry on a conversation. But the show fucking rocked.

Lousest shit band I've seen would be a joint prize between Loop and Sonic Youth, buth irredeemably lame and slack. If a good band cranked up loud is a great rush, then a shit band loud is the ultimate musical bum-out.

― Pashmina, Thursday, December 9, 2010 2:03 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

whoa, you saw loop?

Yeah. They played at least twice at Newcastle Riverside, I missed them the previous time, supposedly they were rocking, the time I saw them was the tour supporting their third album and the entire set was like waiting for the intro to end and the band to kick into gear, the drummer played this everlasting fill on his toms, like IDDLEiddleIDDLEiddleIDDLEiddle and on and on and on. I dig Loop's albums loads, even after all these years, but that show was awful, a real bummer.

And, they were filthy loud! If they'd rocked it would have been fantastic.

Soul Asylum (I know, weird, but trust me . . . ) during highschool in a tiny club
Pleasurehorse at Fort Thunder (ultra-high frequency power electronics through a BIG Marshall stack)
Sunnno)))/Boris Halloween show
recent shows that were loud as fuck:
Bloody Panda / Monarch
Swans

― the tune is space, Thursday, December 9, 2010 5:07 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

I saw shawn from pleasurehorse last year doing a set through 10 tiny speakers set on individual stands, it was a pretty tortuous high end washout without earplugs. a guy I was with got so freaked out he had to leave!

(do I know you?)

never mind you are dr3w and I collect my $5

I think it might have been the Butthole Surfers circa 1989 in a small, narrow club. Anyway I remember that as a particularly severe beating. The visual elements were also a big part of the effect.

Big Black.

@pashmina

that's awesome. would like to hear their cover of 'pink moon'

I can confirm loop were a bunch of terrible fucking dullards live

anybody know what the members of loop are up to now?

-Sunn 0))) (even with ear protection four days on, the tinnitus is killing me. Magnificent gig mind).
-MBV
-Swans

those are literally the three artists everyone says

acts, even

Predictable maybe, but true.

Now I think about it Isolée was absolutely deafening at a club in The Hague a few years back