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What was the L O U D E S T concert you ever attended?


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Ted Nugent at the Chicago Stadium in maybe 1968. I had to cover it, had not heard many rock acts, and didn't know from earplugs. Didn't regain normal hearing for several days.

Saw Nugent (who opened for Iron Maiden) in 1987 and his stage show was just a stack of amps nearly 20 feet tall and it turned out that his show was louder than Maiden's. I had a ringing noise inside my ears for months after that!

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White Gland/SVT a post Tuna Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady punk band at convention hall in Asbury Park. My ears are still ringing 20 something years later!

Jorma wasn't a member of SVT.

Obviously the concert was so loud it effected my memory too....

I went to a Hot Tuna concert in the early 70s that was crazy loud, as well. The loudest I had ever been to (until I went to see Dick Dale years later). Dale wins hands down.

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I saw Dick Dale in Atlanta about 1995, so maybe it was the same tour you saw him on in Cleveland.

I came prepared with ear plugs for both me and my date, so I don't recall it being loud.

I have a vague recollection of seeing a rock band in college that I thought was too loud to enjoy, but I don't remember who it was.

I do recall that Soft Machine played at the Newport Jazz Festival in I think 1970, and the Downbeat reviewer just dismissed them as being too loud.

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In the early 90s a friend dragged me to a benefit concert for WFMU that featured Sonic Youth and John Zorn. I hated every minute of it. My friend, who was a volunteer at the station, gave a ride to the concert to a DJ at the station. I remember he treated us like we were incredibly lucky to be seen in public with such a cool guy. A perfect companion for a painful evening.

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  • 2 months later...

Miles Davis - Artpark, Lewiston, N,Y, 1973 or so.

I was at that concert, too - it was the opening night at Artpark. There was an older couple in front of us that were apparently expecting Miles to come out in a suit and play "My Funny Valentine" - when Miles started up with the wahwah trumpet in the first number, the man turned to his wife and said "This is worse than Weather Report" and they left.

I also saw Return to Forever at Aertpark - it was supposed to be a double bill with Weather Report, but they ddin't make it, so Chick and the boys played 2 sets.

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  • 7 years later...
1 hour ago, Homefromtheforest said:

Just found this thread.  Hands down loudest concert I've seen was My Bloody Valentine on the "loveless" tour in 1992.  Ears rang for a day or two after!

That is the f-ing answer, seriously.. People don't get it: that shit was really loud. 

Possible exception was Keiji Haino in 2007. 

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As I never go to rock concerts, my idea of loudness is probably at variance with most answers here, but the loudest for me was a highly electrified Wayne Shorter concert at Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester in the 80s. Had to walk out and the doorkeeper said it was probably in breach of local noise abatement laws. :o

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Weather Report, the edition with Alphonso Johnson, Chester Theompson, and Alex Acuna.

Herbie Hancock, Dis Is Da Drum concert tour.

But both were noting compared to the levels Turkish engineers turned up on the festivals I played with a Kurdish band between 2000 and 2008. I always walked in there with earplugs. You could barely distinguish what was happening on stage. 

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I saw Ben Frost at a small club in St. Paul a couple of years ago. He had four Ampeg SVT 8x10 bass cabinets with their 300w amps set up as his guitar rig. Between the Ampegs they parked some sort of subwoofer roughly the size of a Volkswagen to augment the PA. Chunks of something were falling from the ceiling. Frost's whiskey in a glass onstage vibrated almost as though it was boiling. I had earplugs, as always, so it was enjoyable.

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