I CAN'T HEAR YOOOUUUU!!!!

[jim_p]

So Saturday night Tam and I attend the company "Holiday Party" (Hey, they get a discount if the hold it after Christmas). It's a dinner cruise on the Spirit of Boston. The dinner was nice enough, but then came the ahem entertainment. See, they've got a band and a dance floor... the band wasn't too bad, but the singers & emcees had their mikes cranked up to what Tam and I considered to be an ear-splitting volume. It was pretty much impossible to hold a conversation in that environment. Here's the kicker: the only way to get away from the noise was to go out on deck... and last night was about 18F (-8C) and quite breezy. Since we were trapped on this fool boat for 3 hours, we were reduced to scuttling outside for as long as we could stand, then diving back in to face The Wall Of Sound and try to shout conversations with other party guests.

The whole affair reminded me of why I never felt I could have a normal social life when I was younger... the dance floor was packed!. Clearly, there was some portion of the guests on board for whom this kind of entertainment was the cat's meow, and they were eating it up. When I was younger and checked out parties in high school and college it seemed as though they were all like this too. Which got me to believing that I was just an old fogey before my time -- that cranking the music up to 12 and then drinking so much you didn't notice was the definition of a good time, and anything else was just dull and boring. In college I felt like an old fogey before my time. Now that I'm 40, I guess I have official permission to be an old fogey... but the thing is I'm NOT!. I'm not dull-and-boring and incapable of having a good time, it's just that this is Not My Kink. Heck, I would've gotten right out there and started dancing if (a) I could bring myself close enough to the dance floor without being blown back by the sound and (b) the emcee didn't start trying some "choreograpy"...

So can someone offer me a Reality Check out there? What portion of the population really does enjoy being deafened and muted every time they go clubbing? Clearly a lot of folks do... am I forever sentenced to a grey life of gruel and grimness because I don't like it? That's what it felt like when I was a college kid, and such feelings are creeping back at me after last night...

Comments

I guess a lot of people do

[apel.livejournal.com]

But I'm not one of them. Unfortunately in the UK the standard way of socialising is to meet up in pubs, clubs and bars. Those places seem to turn up the music progressively through the evening. I used to go out to the pub with my coworkers after work and leave at nine or so when the music got so loud I couldn't hear what people were saying anymore. My coworkers stayed on, so I guess they enjoyed it. They were having conversations too. Don't ask me how they did that.

I hear that Etymotic make good ear plugs.

[eleccham.livejournal.com]

Well... cerval and I enjoy going clubbing... but (as I've discovered) we're very picky about where we're willing to go.

See, a lot of the problem with the "wall of sound" is due to incompetent DJ's. The key there is to watch the frequency ranges. At the club we go to when we get the chance, there are two DJ's: one who we followed there from a previous club (long live Millenium!) and another one. The first DJ is very, very good... the music is indeed loud (it's goth/industrial, after all!) but it's not at all painful, and it's still quite possible to hold a conversation. The other DJ has gotten much much better... but we quit going for a while, because he'd have the treble up too high, thus driving us from the club with bleeding eardrums.

I hang out in the goth scene partially because the tendency isn't generally towards what you're describing. I like the music, and I prefer to be around people who aren't just drinking themselves stupid. We've had to stop and reflect humorously a few times on the conversations we've had ("Ooh, this is deep... how goth. *giggle*") Oh, yeah... and it's an environment where if, while dancing, you accidentally whack someone 'cause they've lost their conception of personal space, it's probably okay (at least if it's a good industrial song.)

The downside is, there are a lot of incompetent DJ's, and there aren't many clubs that are willing to give over enough room to dance floor (hence the crowding.) Oh, yeah - and it helps a lot with the crowding to go on a night other than Friday or Saturday... which of course means the resultant hating life the next morning.

And this is in Denver, considered to be one of the best places for the goth scene...