Klarinet Archive - Posting 000382.txt from 2001/05

From: CassildaYhtill@-----.com
Subj: [kl] ...more about sensitivity & decibels
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 15:36:17 -0400

I complained about loud music in stores. Lana wrote,
>Oh, come on. Are you telling me you weren't the same when you were young?
>I'm 40 and I very clearly remember blasting my 8-tracks of Ted Nugent, Billy
>Joel, and ABBA when I made the 45-minute drive to my job at Carson Pirie
>Scott & Co. every day. Yeah, ABBA made me go deaf. Right. And the music
>at Carson's was more or less canned Paul McCartney; it never sounded like
>"gobble gobble gobble" to me.

Excuse me, I never said certain types or styles of music sound like gobble
gobble to me. What sounds like gobble gobble to me is how Best Buy plays
several different things all at once from different sets of speakers all
going full blast at the same time, jumbled sounds overlapping on top of each
other so a person can't make any sense out of any of it.

Music doesn't have to be rock or rap to make someone deaf anyway. What I'm
talking about is not a generation thing or a culture thing, it's loudness
pure and simple. A lot of church organists go deaf by the way, so it's
nothing to do with the type of music. Growing up I loved music too much to
risk my hearing on turning it up too much. (I just have to mention one thing
though, I am 28 and my friends from my teens would not have been caught dead
with ABBA, Ted Nugent or Billy Joel playing in the same room. The corpse
would have climbed on its feet and lurched all stiff legged like the
Frankenstein monster over to the CD to get rid of the evidence. I mean there
are some things you just don't want to give people to talk about at your
funeral. Get that Billy Joel off there and put on some Bel Biv DeVoe and then
lay down again quick before someone come in to find the body.) I don't mind
reasonably loud music but, I guess I know the difference between loud and up
over the pain threshhold.

Lana wrote,
>Point is, if you don't like louder music, then simply bypass that store.
>Obviously the majority of customers must enjoy the music or the store
>wouldn't risk alienating the majority of their customers by playing it!!!!

How do you know what they know? What is so obvious about it? (Stores
misjudge what their customers want all the time. Look at Wards. Look at
Woolworth's. Both old established stores and both gone. They thought they
knew when they didn't.) Best Buy drove me out even though they sell
merchandise I want to buy. Do they gain more than one customer for every
customer they chase away with the noise? Show me some statistics proving it
and in fact show me they even know how loud in decibels their own stores
really are, before I believe they know what they are doing.

>You have every right to walk right past that store if you don't like the
fact
>that they're playing ABBA at top volume (gee, your poodle might go deaf).

Ooooh, sarcasm! Oh waaaaah, ooh mama, I guess that means I'm suppose to go
sob into some white wine. I do bypass that store now, thanks so much for
your permission. Sorry, I didn't happen to have a poodle with me that day I
walked out, but besides having my own ears to think about, I brought along my
4 year old girl and 7 year old boy. They both love music. I don't want my
children getting so noise insensitive that they just tune it out and can't
tell the difference when it is at a damaging level. You better believe I
look out for their hearing until they get old enough to understand why and
look out for themselves. As for rights, if that store calculates to attract
kids like you say, then parents got a right to expect our children not to be
injured in there.

Cass Hill

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