I’ve been listening to loud guitars for about 40 years. That’s quite a long time.

I took a bit of a break from listening to music recently. It was for about two years. It wasn’t something that was planned, life circumstances arranged themselves in such a way that listening was more difficult than it had been previously, I was very busy with other things, and I just sort of stopped.

I was still listening to podcasts, but not music. At some point I listened to a podcast that reminded me about my love for music. It was a strange feeling, like oh-yeah-I-used-to-really-love-music, in that moment I realised that I had basically forgotten. It was the strangest thing, similar to remembering a dream.

I’ve since started listening to all sorts of music again, electronic and band / guitar based. Not loads, but some. I’m so glad that I remembered.

I was listening to some great punk/hardcore/indie/metal recently and was moved to try to put into words the way it makes me feel. The following are extracts of what I wrote.

That thing where you feel like you’ve just been plugged into the mains, and all you want to do is shout YES over and over and over again, really fucking loudly.

It’s like you’ve just been injected with the adrenaline of 1000 horses.

And then the bit finishes and you’re like…”God damn”.

It’s odd because the feeling doesn’t happen in your physical body, you can listen to a whole song and not have any physical change, but the feeling is like it’s in some sort of virtual body, that’s somewhere there in the background, that’s momentarily become very very alive.

It also feels like you are inside the sound, which is odd because it’s the sound that’s inside you, but when you hear that guitar none of that matters anymore, whether it’s you or the sound or whatever, because you’ve just been plugged in, that part of you is alive again.

It’s all the music you’ve ever listened to, all the music videos you’ve ever watched, all the live shows you’ve been to, all the late nights, and all the people you’ve shared those experiences with, in that moment of guitar electricity, they are all there alive again.

It’s such a strong feeling that it’s really bizarre to me that some people can listen to the very same sounds and feel nothing. It just sounds like noise or something.

Those were the bits I wrote. I also love listening to quiter music too, but in that moment, it was all about the loud guitars.

I don’t drink alcohol anymore, it’s been about 3 or 4 years now. I’ve noticed that the music is even better, the drum sounds are crisper, the guitars are more alive, for electronic music, everything is much more hightenned. I notice so much more, it’s like the sound is now in HD when before it was SD. I didn’t expect that at all. It’s awesome.

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