Cum On Feel The Noize Pollution
When The Beatles essentially invented the stadium gig by default due to the sheer numbers desperate to see them on their US tours, amplification was so much in its infancy that the band’s instruments were channelled through the PA systems of the baseball grounds besieged by hordes of knicker-wetting nymphets. Yet, within four years of the Fab Four’s Shea Stadium concert, amplification had advanced to the point whereby Woodstock could be staged, transmitting every riff, lick and solo across several square miles of farmland.
As with every innovation in technology, what begins in the hands of the wealthy eventually filters down to the plebs. The first synthesizers, for example, were heavyweight slabs of virtual furniture that only the likes of Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman could afford; by the end of the 70s, streamlined synths were within the budget of spotty oiks from Sheffield, Salford and the Wirral, thus facilitating the electronic soundscapes of the 80s. In the space of a decade, recordable tape went from a bulky reel-to-reel machine that had to be carried in a suitcase to the cassette small enough to fit into your pocket and cheap enough to cover the average pocket-money of every kid tuned into the Sunday top 40 show.
The growth of rock music as the leading leisure industry of the 70s and 80s turned the volume up to eleven not only in its attempts to made itself heard by the punters at the back of the venue, but by those who spun the discs at home; the introduction of the ‘ghetto blaster’ then increased the sound heard at street level, whether on the shoulders of apprentice rappers or pumping from the speakers that became as intrinsic an element of a car’s framework as any part that enabled it to be driven. Urban noise pollution had arrived big time.
Naturally, as none of us were around in nineteenth century Britain, it’s easy to assume it was a golden age of sonic serenity, before the rude intrusion of the gramophone. The fact is that those we would now regard as buskers made a tidy packet striding up and down residential streets, deliberately making such a racket that the residents would toss them a coin in order to move them on. And city centre thoroughfares were just as crowded and cacophonous as today, with the main difference being that the noise emanated from the people – hawkers, harriers and tinkers working in tandem with the hooves of a hundred horses clattering the cobbles. And while there were no petrol fumes to be inadvertently inhaled, the stench of the great unwashed mingled with equine deposits in a way that would most likely strike us as far more nauseas than the contents of an exhaust pipe if we could stroll through those streets. But in terms of noise, the towns of the north and the midlands would be the worst, with the newfangled machinery of industry adding to the din whilst the discharge of that machinery coated the surrounding homes in a grimy patina that rendered such communities visual and audible blots on the green and pleasant landscape, a landscape the railways had already cut a dirty swathe through.
Industry certainly played its part in racking up the levels of noise that the ears of the masses would be damaged by on a daily basis as the twentieth century progressed – not only the gradual replacement of horsepower by the internal combustion engine, but also by the road-works the automobile necessitated, as well as the great building projects that required pneumatic drills, diggers and cement mixers to ensure they were erected at a greater speed than medieval cathedrals; and let us not forget the emergency service sirens or the sky-scraping eruption of jet aircraft – all of which could stretch to the same distances as church bells, if noticeably lacking their majestic melody. Towns and cities were therefore fairly noisy locations even before technology was devolved to the people in the shape of sound systems that could expose one’s personal musical tastes to one’s neighbours.
Every teenager experiences the thrill of their first personal record/CD-player and playing the game of seeing how loud they can push the volume before an additional drum pattern is thrown into the mix from the ceiling below or the bedroom door. The inevitable limitations of this are overcome if junior finds his way to further education a long way from home; suddenly surrounded by those his own age and an absence of old farts, junior gets a little carried away and figures he can play whatever he likes at whatever volume at whatever hour of the day, and nobody will complain – fine if he resides in a community wherein all are juvenile creatures of the night, not so if stationed in a neighbourhood that also includes those who aren’t. Not that this matters to junior, mind; nights out are spent touring clubs where shouting instead of speaking is second nature, situated in city centres soundtracked by the smashing of glasses, the screech and squeal of the hen party, the intoxicated chorus of the obscene group chant and the endless swirl of the sirens that seamlessly blend into each other to form an audio stew that junior’s ears export back to the shared student house.
Amongst the lengthy litany of items that can make modern life such a bloody headache, noise pollution is one that is often overlooked. Sure, we’ve had a surfeit of cheap TV documentaries about ‘problem neighbours’ (dis)gracing our screens in recent years, but one doesn’t even have to live next door to a family of seventeen with a caravan in the front garden and a dog-fighting tournament taking place in the back to be pushed to the brink of a breakdown.
The passing vehicle at 3 o’clock in the morning generating a bass of such bowel-churning power that it shakes the foundations of one’s home in a manner that only nature could manage previously; the ‘Starsky & Hutch’-style wail of speeding police cars that zoom around built-up areas in the twilight hours when there is little traffic to block their progress (and justify the employment of said siren); the car alarm that is triggered into life by a change in the wind; the burglar alarm that rings with such unprovoked repetition that nobody cares if a burglar has provoked it; the taxi driver who doesn’t adhere to the highway code when relishing the reverberation of his horn; and – worst of all – the fact that the noise that masquerades as music is always drawn from such a narrow, generic pool. When was the last time Frank Sinatra or Miles Davis or The Beatles or Bowie penetrated the peace before the dawn? I could sleep on were that sleep disturbed by ‘Songs for Swinging Lovers’, ‘The Birth of The Cool’, ‘Revolver’ or ‘Aladdin Sane’; but I cannot do so bereft of ear-plugs when the same old tedium of watered-down, lowest-common-denominator derivatives of the genuinely groundbreaking dance of twenty-five years ago invades my repose and drives me to the edge.
When I read the eloquent and eye-opening dissection of depression co-written by Dr Anthony Clare and Spike Milligan around ten years ago, it was the first time I realised an aspect of my own ‘condition’ (for want of a less sensationalistic word) was extreme sensitivity to loud noise. It took reading of it for an awareness of it to dawn on me. I hate it when I visit friends who have the television on too loud throughout the tenure of my visit – or music, for that; alone in my own home, the TV or the CD player are never above a specific volume; all noise becomes white to me if it exceeds that specific volume, and when it emanates from elsewhere, somewhere beyond my control, I have been made genuinely ill by it. But I don’t necessarily think a strain of mental illness is a pre-requisite for an allergic reaction to the sound of the twenty-first century, whether to annoying ringtones or to an auto-tune dirge on the in-store supermarket radio station. I’m sure I’m not alone, but the voice of opposition is drowned by competition.
Petunia Winegum
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March 26, 2015 at 10:07 am -
I’ve been very aware of ‘a different kind of noise’ these past 10/15 years or so… I think a lot of people become conditioned to pseudo-real sound by using computer games, and in that case I suppose it was a blessing in disguise when my dad bought me a second-hand Acorn Electron when my peers were engaged in the delights of ZX Spectrums & Commodore 64’s – it was put back in it’s box after a year and I gave up trying to amuse myself with games that never ‘loaded’ properly and went back to trusty pop music and slogging several paper rounds.
I love loud music, even now. In my car, in my home, wherever I may roam… but music and television have a ‘new noise’ that I find very intrusive and desensitizing – from the generic ‘EDM’ (‘EuroDanceMusic’) that mutated from the dance music of 20/25 years ago with what I loosely describe as a generic false ‘rush’ to the childrens television with computer-generated childrens voices and in-your-face CGI animation – both of which leave nothing to the imagination and effectively hit the listeners/viewers over the head relentlessly with proverbial hammers.-
March 26, 2015 at 11:19 am -
Quibble: EDM = Electronic Dance Music.
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March 26, 2015 at 2:58 pm -
Yeah, my bad there. Where the real impact of this hit home is when I experienced as a constant background music at work in 2012 – up to then I figured I just wasn’t paying enough attention to the pop charts or mainstream television, but when I surrounded by people demanding wall-to-wall Rihanna, David Guetta, Calvin Harris etc and dismissing uptempo ‘old school’ pop music with key changes as ‘depressing’, that’s when I realised something here was happening – that people were being desensitized by television and my beloved music…
http://retardedkingdom.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-idiot-factory.html-
March 26, 2015 at 3:04 pm -
Being exposed to a song you hate in a supermarket must be one of the worst situations to be in – you have certain items to buy, the check-out queue is a mile long and there’s no escaping it. When I was a kid, it was either testcard-style music you heard or those budget ‘TOTP’ LP-type cover versions of current hits, which were at least moderately entertaining to overhear.
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March 26, 2015 at 6:42 pm -
I hate Christmas music. I loathe it. Every stupid jingle bell of it. Why?
It dates back to my time in retail in the late 70s/early 80s. I worked for Superdrug and they insisted that music be played in-store whenever the store was open.
Every year we’d be sent a music cassette of Christmas tunes. However, these were cheap instrumentals churned out by the thousand and more often than not had banjos and trombones as lead instrument! They were worse than dire- and we had to play the bleddy thing all day, every day. We were told to play the Christmas tape during the autumn half term. That’s right- in mid October. And to play it all the way through to Christmas Eve.
That’s a one hour tape on continuous play six days a week from 8 in the morning until six at night. By the time we closed for Christmas we were sick of the sound of the ghastly thing and just wanted to put an axe through the machine.
And now you know why I hate music in shops, why I hate banjos and trombones and why I hate Christmas music
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March 26, 2015 at 10:27 am -
Rather than excessive decibels, my own black-beast is any droning background noise, usually a secondary noise rather than noise for its own purpose. Into that heading go the extractor fans in kitchens and bathrooms, the compressor in the garage, the ticking-over diesel engine merely running to support ancillary devices – all dull, persistent, featureless noises.
True, I do prefer the kitchen and bathroom air to be pure and dry, the tyre-inflator and spray-gun to work when needed and the tractor to make the hay-lift lift hay, but I’d much rather they could achieve their primary purposes without that ever-present, background, droning racket. (Of course, any speeches by Ed Miliband also fit into this category, devoid as these always are of any practical purpose or benefit).
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March 26, 2015 at 3:00 pm -
That last line reminds me of ‘The Singing Detective’ when the Michael Gambon character is about to be greased-up by nurse Joanne Whalley and is desperately trying to focus on something boring to avoid you-know-what – ‘Think of a speech by Ted Heath’…
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March 26, 2015 at 3:29 pm -
Can’t imagine any speech by either Traitor Heath or Miliband Minor could overwhelm the slippery impact of the delectable Ms Whalley in that role – she had lovely eyes too.
She’s one of my eight ‘Desert Island Women’ – now that could be the subject for a blog one day ……-
March 26, 2015 at 4:04 pm -
Could be, though in the interests of fairness, we’d have to have the option of ‘Desert Island Men’ as well – and in the case of certain Norfolk residents, ‘Desert Island Siblings & Livestock’, I think!
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March 26, 2015 at 9:33 pm -
You’re probably right, although you’ll also need to include ‘Root Vegetables’ to accommodate some of the more earthy countryfolk – there’s nothing like a well-ribbed parsnip, as they say in some bucolic parts.
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March 26, 2015 at 10:34 am -
For me, one of the worst noises of today is when you pick up the phone and it’s a recorded message inviting you to become “greener” with the likes of the “windows scrappage scheme” – no such government ‘initiative’ exists: it’s essentially an industry con where they add on thousands to take off your environmentally-friendly scrappage dosh. With me, it’s calls for new windows, solar panels and kitchens, mainly.
“Press 2 for a ring-back or 5 to be removed from our database.”
Being TPS-registered doesn’t matter with the serial offenders, so pressing to be removed from their database is pointless. I was so sick of the “windows scrappage scheme” that I started to make appointments so I could find out who kept calling (and get a number to cancel it if I wanted after getting the company name, but they are reluctant even to do that), as they give you some made-up generic name when you ask, like “Greener Futures”.
The scrappage scheme always turned out to be Weatherseal, although Anglian and others have done it. Weatherseal was one of half a dozen companies given a “last chance” a couple of years ago and I have been on at the ICO about it until I am blue in the face. Turns out they can’t do anything unless the calls (even though illegal anyway) cause some sort of trauma. Apparently, the rules are changing, so that just the calls to TPS numbers are breaking the law.
Not that I expect the ICO to do much about it. It is mainly the same few companies (and directors), who for years have plagued the country. If it was a private citizen doing this, I’d soon be arrested, but they are yet another distraction which keeps the proles preoccupied and this ‘ICO’ has, probably, been set up as another useless ‘watchdog’ with no teeth – so much pretence that we proles matter.
Now, I just try not to let it bother me and don’t even report them. I did it for years. The system is set up to favour these criminals. You should see Weatherseal’s reviews on such sites – they are mainly awful – hardly a satisfied customer. They rely on these calls to reel in the gullible and offer them a finance ‘package’ that could be described as dangerous.
I knew a simple couple who would fall for these things and ended up losing their house.
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March 26, 2015 at 5:16 pm -
I get pissed off with the phone calls. I got a BT8500 phone system brilliant at getting rid of unwanted calls.
I hate the bastard who sits in the office next to me chewing gum with his mouth open, hopefully one day he will choke on it.
The next door neighbour loves his leaf blower, 8 on a Sunday morning out there with it, I could shove the thing where the sun doesn’t shine easily.
Don’t mind the planes going over the house or the air ambulance coming in low over the house ready for landing at hospital nearby-
March 29, 2015 at 7:01 pm -
Leaf blowers, chewing gum – kill them all! Also car alarms and burglar alarms – all cry wolf.
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March 26, 2015 at 10:48 am -
Most urban noise bothers me, but in some respects I’m as guilty as my neighbours. Things like lawnmowers, strimmers and electric power tools. I try to act reasonbly by not using such devices before 10 am or after 7 pm. Of course that doesn’t protect the growing number of shift workers, but it’s the best I can come up with. The one noise that really boils my urine is sreaming screeching kids, it really does my head in. Why don’t their sires or dams tell them to shut the fuck up. That and the mental volume some, usually teenage or early twenties, drivers have their car stereos set to. When I’m sat in traffic I think it’s totally unreasonable for me to hear “music” coming from a car five or six vehicles ahead. One last gripe is loud motor cycles. Especially the local assholes who go up and down the road seversl times within minutes. Why don’t they piss off on a long ride, or are they scared of going out of sight of home?
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March 26, 2015 at 11:25 am -
Re kids: the noise I hate from them is skateboarding. I live in what is, for central London, a very residential area (lots of housing associations and council blocks between and behind the offices). At the top of my street is a slightly sloped wall where skateboarders congregate at weekends to try their moves. Usually they are dreadful and you get the spinning wheels then the clatter of a fall. I tried discussing the disturbance they caused with one of their young (at least early 20s, so I’m pushing the definition of kids) about it. He just shrugged and told me it was my problem. Was it mean of me to wish he fell under a lorry?
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March 26, 2015 at 1:44 pm -
You’d probably find that the noisy ‘motorcycles’ are in fact scooters with expansion pipes, scarcely able to pull themselves along but whiny and annoying (much like their riders) as most real bikes are past and gone before you register them, loud pipes or not. My Harley, the big twin, sets off car alarms in the street as it passes, low frequency rumbles will do that, but you probably wouldn’t complain much about noise as such.
I can recall a Rockers Reunion run from Chelsea Bridge to Bournmouth, there were over 5000 of us, took a half hour to pass a given point. Three old dears at the side of the road:
“Oh, aren’t they noisy Ethel? Oh, yes Mavis, look at all the leather and hairy blokes! Oh, noisy”
Twenty minutes later, they were still there looking at the noisy bikes and hairy blokes and revelling in it.
Much is down to the beholder!-
March 26, 2015 at 5:22 pm -
I had a Buell with a scorpion carbon can on it, that used to do it
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March 27, 2015 at 8:40 am -
I had a Buell too, a Firebolt but with the Jardine system and the race ecm and opened up airbox, birds used to fall out of the trees as I passed
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March 26, 2015 at 5:24 pm -
I also have a Harley Fat Boy. It’s only noisy for a few seconds as I pass by. As I type this my neighbour is sitting in his decrepit van with the engine running. There’s also another neighbour who drives a white van and plays 1970’s music very, very loudly. Then there’s the Polis with their helicopter swooping about late at night at times. He’s still in the van by the way… Sigh.
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March 28, 2015 at 5:11 pm -
No, I know the difference between scooters and moterbikes. I myself own a 50cc scooter. It’s completely legal, and does not make much noise. I start it up, and go on my journey. I agree we do get a lot of teenagers on their illegal de-regulated 50cc scooters, and yes they do have a tendency to go up and down the road with a high pitched screaming whine. The one I was alluding to is a motorbike. I don’t know the engine capacity (I’d guess 250) but it does make a hell of a noise as it goes by. The twat riding it goes past at over 60mph in a 30mph area on a small estate. I can still hear him when he gets to the main road and really opens it up, a good mile away. The other pillock is a guy in his 50’s who owns a “racey” looking machine with largish (over 600cc) engine. He meets his biker mates on Sunday mornings before they go out on a ride. He starts the motor up and leaves it idling for a good 20+ minutes, well before 6.30 am. The bloody thing makes my room vibrate, and I’m 200 yards down the road from him. I’m told that with “performence” bikes it’s necessary to warm up the engine before moving off. Who, in their right mind, would by a car that needed to “warm up” before it could be driven?
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March 26, 2015 at 2:58 pm
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March 26, 2015 at 10:52 am -
I went to school next to an airport and the sound from a Douglas DC-3 was deafening and went on for ages, now the aircraft doing the mail runs slip in and out almost silently.
The compressors that powered the road drills of my youth that changed tone loudly to produce a bass line to the drills percussive treble can now scarely be heard. Motorbikes now purr where once they roared. The same with cars, except for some unknown reason, Subarus.
I agree with Mudplugger. My neighbour has a fan or fish tank pump that produces standing waves within my house. Inaudible in the general noise of the day but sleep depriving at night.
Why is the ‘only’ sound effect in the cinema a deep bass thump? Even a dinosaur ripping apart a light-weight Cessna sounds like two battleships colliding! TV is irritating with its use of compressed sounds, most apparent when the audience claps and produces a ‘wuff-wuff’ effect. There also seems to be a modern form of ‘music’ that bangs into the end stops on every beat, it must be surely be made up totally of ‘square-waves’. Radio is no better, the traffic report that ‘requires’ a mindless loop of ‘music’ behind it for no good reason. Think about it media guys, your audience is in a car trying to extract vital words, without context to help, fighting against road and traffic noise and you add in a mix of mush!
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March 26, 2015 at 11:01 am -
“Why is the ‘only’ sound effect in the cinema a deep bass thump? Even a dinosaur ripping apart a light-weight Cessna sounds like two battleships colliding!”
I wish I could find it again, but when the first Transformers film, someone did a mock image of two giant toasters (or was it irons) hitting each other and towering over a city landscape.
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March 26, 2015 at 10:56 am -
“the ‘Starsky & Hutch’-style wail of speeding police cars that zoom around built-up areas in the twilight hours when there is little traffic to block their progress (and justify the employment of said siren)”
I have found that it is a truism that if, out and about late at night, or early in the morning, if one sees the reflection of approaching blue lights, but no siren, it will be an ambulance or a fire engine; if one hears a siren, it is always a police car. Which is odd, really, because a lot of the time you’d think they wouldn’t want to warn whoever they’re rushing to apprehend.
On night-time noise in general, I sleep with the bedroom window at least partially open, even in winter. When we lived within a hundred metres of the North Circular Road, the steady hum of traffic became a a lullaby. Now, having moved to South London 80 metres from a reasonable busy railway station, it is that which does not much disturb my sleep. Occasionally I might become aware of a low rumble in the early hours, sleepily think, “that’s a big bit of freight,” and then drift off again.
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March 26, 2015 at 12:07 pm -
I think you’ll find that Plod generally prefer to warn those they’re apparently rushing to apprehend – there’s lots of tedious paperwork if you catch them, none if you don’t, yet the early pension still remains the same.
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March 26, 2015 at 2:42 pm -
Oh, how cynical….
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March 26, 2015 at 2:56 pm -
I used to live next to a railway bridge and found the rattling of the tracks as a train approached in the middle of the night inexplicably soothing. I suppose it’s like having a clock in the room; some are kept awake by them, but the rhythm helps send me to sleep.
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March 26, 2015 at 3:40 pm -
I grew up next to a railway line back in the days of steam-trains, only about 20 yards away in fact. Visitors would remark on the noise of passing trains and struggled to sleep through it, but we were so conditioned to it that we hardly ever noticed the noise – however, the vibrations could rattle the crockery and sometimes buggered up the horizontal hold on the old 14″ Bush TV set.
Sparks would frequently set the grassy banking alight, bringing childhood excitement, but that was not entirely a bad thing – it meant that any saplings never got chance to grow into leafy trees, hence they never got ‘the wrong sort of leaves on the line’ in those days. Progress eh ?
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March 26, 2015 at 5:59 pm -
I actually can’t sleep with a ticking clock within earshot. Intermitent noises generally don’t bother me the way persistent repetitive sounds do.
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March 26, 2015 at 11:28 am -
What gets little thought is the deafness that some of this noise might produce at a much earlier age than myself, which was mid seventies. Every one is mumbling. You cannot hear key words against a noisy background, it irritates people to have to repeat themselves. Do they really want this hidden disability at a much younger age? To be tapped on the shoulder in a supermarket and told. ‘Ive asked you 3 times to move over’ is not funny. This was before I realised I was going deaf. I can find sirens just as irritating, bumpy cars music blasting out, planes flying over out the City airport. Helicopters seaching for scallywags at 1am. Youths bellowing like stags in the street at schools out time. Screeching girls in groups in town. Clanking rubbish trucks. Human speech is the problem deaf old diddlers like myself . I still hear all the other noises. Somehow I want to rip those dammed ear phones out of their ears and tell them to connect with the real world and avoid deafness.
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March 26, 2015 at 2:31 pm -
From apprenticeship onwards I was exposed to workplace noise so loud that it caused ringing in the ears.
Mandatory hearing protection was introduced at my place of work around ’71, with regular hearing tests.
Somehow, my hearing seems to have survived relatively functional, though obviously bat squeaks are long gone.
I reckon I’ve been lucky.
As a result I hate the intrusive noise of people shouting because they’re partly deaf but aren’t aware; overloud tv; the excessive sound levels in the cinema; slamming doors; noise breakout from the classes at the 100yds away leisure centre when the fire doors are opened for ventilation. I didn’t join the class, I don’t want the music or the leader’s amplified shouting in my kitchen.
The f***wits with the massive bass output from their cars or donut tyre squeals at night are annoying, but the very worst are all night illegal raves on the Downs in the summer. From evening until about 6.ooam there’s the low level throb penetrating every room of the house even with windows closed. It’s impossible to sleep & after a while I feel nauseous.
And the the squealing of small children in supermarkets. Is it the building making it so penetrating?
Oh and then there’s that annoying squeak or rattle in the car on a long journey.
Still don’t want to go deaf.
More grumbling….-
March 26, 2015 at 2:48 pm -
I remember once hearing the Nazis employed low level bass frequencies to unsettle an audience before Hitler appeared. The minute he strode on stage, the bass ceased, everyone felt better, and everyone present attributed it to Adolph’s healing charisma.
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March 26, 2015 at 5:11 pm -
That’s very interesting. It would certainly make sense. It always seems to be the base that is most irritating when someone is playing music at top volume. I seem to remember years ago hearing about some kind of invention (I think by people in Holland, but not sure) that would allow electronic equipment to be adapted so that the base frequencies that disturb the neighbours with the thumping beat were eliminated but mimicked in such a way that anyone using the equipment could still hear them.
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March 26, 2015 at 9:23 pm -
Ear-plugs can block out everything bar the bass; it’s the only level of sound I can actually feel rather than simply hear. Even with my ear-plugged head on a pillow, the vibrations of the bass continue to disturb my sleep. Necessary for a night-club, not for a bedroom.
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March 26, 2015 at 11:07 pm -
re the young car driving gentlemen with suppressed bass sensitivity, I suppose in my own early motoring days that sort of kit, even if available would have been a bit difficult to power up in the old 6volt Populars & Prefects we bought for a tenner. (£7.10. for one of them) The lights would have gone very dim.
Even trading up to a rust riddled spruce green Wallace & Grommet A35 van didn’t offer in-car audio, apart from a transistor on the dash, but most people I knew were more interested in strapping on torsion bars to resist rolling over on bends. Or making a windscreen washer from an old SU fuel pump.
Such times we had.
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March 26, 2015 at 3:17 pm -
This article struck a chord. One of my first rented flats on arriving in London in the seventies was situated on Ladbroke Grove, literally cheek by jowl with the Westway elevated motorway. The landlord had seen no need to soundproof the place, there being, as now, a surplus of housing demand over supply.
On a normal urban road the traffic moves at a fairly steady 30 mph or so, producing a constant and sleep-inducing background rumble. However on an elevated motorway the noise consists of periods of relative silence punctuated by the rapidly rising and falling VROOM sound as a vehicle goes past. On Westway this happened at all hours of the day and night. Restful it isn’t. I ended up chronically sleep-deprived despite wearing earplugs, and had to move out of the flat a.s.a.p.
Since then I’ve been unable to tolerate any type of traffic noise, and have moved to the sticks where the loudest noise around my house these days is the dawn chorus. I still enjoy listening to the hi-fi at reasonably high volume though…
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March 26, 2015 at 4:10 pm -
March 26, 2015 at 4:53 pm -
March 26, 2015 at 6:05 pm -
All buskers seem to be amplified nowadays. Get three in one shopping street and it sounds awful.
There are still some that dont though
This one from Manchester for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqJ9MPbOx5I&list=PLN2yCnHTG_6qopB2TXlq9eWSi3Gco8Ro_
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March 26, 2015 at 7:32 pm -
My pet hate is the neighbour who switches on his van engine at 5.30am and lets it tick over while the vehicle warms up.
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March 26, 2015 at 8:08 pm -
Assuming he goes back indoors, that’s your chance to slip into the driving seat, park it somewhere inconvenient, then ‘lose’ the keys. Usually cures it – tip, wear a pair of marigolds just to be on the safe side.
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March 26, 2015 at 9:13 pm
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March 27, 2015 at 7:56 am -
I’m one of a little ‘band’ of enthusiasts, who are trying to preserve a sound that was fairly common on the streets of our towns years ago.
The old organ grinder with his little monkey. Of course, little monkeys are not allowed these days. Most of us have built our own organs and I even go as far as arranging my own tunes and punching the paper rolls. When we play in public our collecting tins are not for us but always for our chosen charity. I’m sure Street organ sounds are not everyone’s ‘cup of tea’, but judging from the response we get and the money we collect, means that quite a few people enjoy the sound. Here’s a peek at me having a good ‘grind’ at Cookham regatta collecting for Macmillan Nurses – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03X-9tFCi28-
March 27, 2015 at 8:21 am -
A very impressive organ you’ve got there – I’m sure that’s what all the girls say. More footage of the classic cars next time.
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