Monday, September 28, 2009

E is for

Earphones

Maybe this will make me sound old but some people on the tube listen to their music far too loudly. This is not new of course, people have been complaining about this for a while; in fact the Underground people now put posters up telling people to keep their music down. What would our Victorian forebears have thought of this all. Why did Victorian's keep four bears anyway?

This morning on either side of the carriage were two young dudes, probably about the same age as me actually, whose music was deafeningly loud. One was listening to the fudge of noise that comes from incessantly heavy bass (what is the obsession with 'bass' anyhow?) while the other had on some Rage Against the Machine style shouty rock. I could hear the guitar solos, hear them moving around the fret board, hear the drums when they kicked in and so on. Both of them looked utterly devoid of any enjoyment in the music, devoid of much life anyway. Why the need for it so loud? Showing off? Deafness? Purposefully annoying other people?

2 comments:

JonR said...

"what is the obsession with 'bass' anyhow?"

weeeeell, it probably has something to do with the UK's long tradition of reggae and soundsystem culture. dub reggae was the first popular music which brought the bass to the front of the sound stage, and many many different styles of today's music (mostly, but not exclusively, electronic styles) have some common ancestry there. however most pop, riff-oriented rock and some of the more dubious dance styles seem to live mostly the midrange of the frequency band, due perhaps in part to the growing popularity of mobile phones, televisions, laptop speakers etc as (some) peoples' primirary listening platform - which i find profoundly depressing, not to mention sonically irritating.

some folks like their music with Proper Lyrics And Catchy Tunes You Can Sing Along To....but many others of us like music you can *feel*!

Anonymous said...

four bears, awful

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