Keep The Noise Down!

I see that the ‘Elf & Safety Brigade are at it again, this time having yet another attempt at getting us to turn the volume down on our ipods. This has been going on for years now in a constant war to save our ears. The usual scientist has been wheeled out to tell us that some of us are subjecting our ears to noise levels greater than those produced by a pneumatic drill. And do you know why we have to turn the volume up so high?  It is so that we can hear the damn thing over the NOISE OF A PNEUMATIC DRILL. Has this scientist walked around London recently? If so, he would realise that the Capital is a vast and un-ending building site where reconstruction and road works are a constant activity involving kango hammers and power tools of all descriptions and the noise is deafening.


Perhaps this scientist is not a commuter? Try listening to an ipod on the Tube and you will soon realise how incredibly noisy the London Underground is. Listening to music with a decent dynamic range is almost impossibility as you rattle and roar your way along dark tunnels between stops. No wonder we are subjecting our ears to in excess of 120Db – it’s because we can’t hear the bloody thing over the noise of the 21st Century!

Clearly, I am being flippant as there is a serious point to be taken on board to do with tinnitus and deafness generally so do be careful, but it would help us all if the world wasn’t so damn noisy in the first place.

In fact, all this makes you realise just how noisy our world has become. If we were to construct a telephone line that could reach back into history, say, 1,000 years and engage in a conversation with someone from that time, one thing would be immediately apparent: the world 1,000 years ago would be virtually silent. There would be virtually no music as this was largely confined to ecclesiastical establishments like churches and monasteries. There would be no radio, television, industrial machines, cars, aircraft, mobile phones, pneumatic drills, lawnmowers, chainsaws or anything that we today take for granted and which makes an almighty racket. All that would be heard would be the sounds of nature and the odd person killing another person with a huge sword.

Compare that with what the person at the other end of the line would hear of our world. What he would be utterly amazed to hear is an absolute cacophony of sound from a multitude of sources. So remember to speak up when addressing the fellow as he won’t hear you over the din.

Lost Cat

One of the more endearing qualities of the MP3 player, be it Ipod or other, is the random shuffle facility where the machine picks tracks randomly from the entire content like a demented DJ. Assuming you are able to transfer a sizeable chunk of your CD collection to these devices, this particular mode becomes a wake up call to the owner and a voice to all those albums that were bought, listened to once and filed in short order.

Pre-Ipod, music collection owners could bask in the ignorance of their own possessions forever without a second thought and I freely admit that there are many albums that I have not touched for decades since purchase. But now, assuming we all have the willingness to give it a try, we can rediscover many lost gems without having to trail through countless substandard LP/CDs.

I very rarely delve into unknown territory these days for the simple reason that with a young family, the time available for me to sit in front of a stereo in a quiet room is virtually nil. When I do get the opportunity, I like to hear something that I know I’m going to like, rather than speculate on stuff that may be the worst album I ever bought. It’s a fact of life that we listen to that which will bring us pleasure. So for the rest of the time it’s the MP3 player – naff quality and all.

So to spice things up there is the decision to select shuffle mode and there is almost a sense of adventure in doing so as it reveals long ago forgotten songs, many of which I could’ve sworn I never owned, and offers them up for reappraisal. How many times have I had to look at the display to ascertain, “What the bloody hell’s this?” It’s a bit humbling really.

One such song that came up by random chance the other day was ‘Lost Cat’ from the 1996 album ‘Way Beyond Blue’ by those welsh rockers, Catatonia (ok, not that old but I’m making a general point here). I was sufficiently enthused by this to go back and listen to the whole album, which in retrospect, is not half as bad as I remember. In fact it rather puts ‘International Velvet’ with its knowing ‘Mulder and Scully’ in its place. And it certainly outshines the lacklustre ‘Equally Cursed and Blessed’.

Another welcome listen was ‘Nightshift’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees, a track that I played regularly in the mid 1980s but have since banished to the life of a catalogue item in my ever-growing collection. Listening to shuffle mode is a bit like buying a new album but without spending the money and with a growing family draining my precious CD budget annually, this is a welcome respite.

Now that’s what I call music!