Judas

They've just finished the second song, and the crowd seem restless. There's a lot of slow clapping going on. They carry on, anyway. The sound's raw, loud, kind of sloppy. But it's exciting and immediate too. At least that's how it sounds to me. I'm not hearing it like those unhappy people in the audience, a sinking in that we're not in Kansas anymore. I know I'm not in Kansas anymore, I wasn't even born when we left.

There's some enthusiastic cheering as they reach the end of song 3. So it's not a given that what they're doing is alienating. Some people like it.

It really is loud, though. I want to turn the volume down on my earphones (an option not available to the people in the hall), but I'm going to stick it out, because there's a thrill in it, a sense that I'm transgressing something, even though it's only in my own mind (and whatever tinny hiss is escaping my headphones and reaching those at the desks next to me).

The slow hand-clapping starts off, and he tails off his introduction to the next song... the audience falls silent, and he continues. The cat-calls resume, and are starting to grow. There's a definite air of menace. I can only hear, of course, but it sounds fair to say the audience is divided.

Well, that one seemed to push them a bit far. The guitarist's tuning, and the jeering is growing. The singer is mumbling into his mike, speaking nonsense as far as I can tell. Eventually the claps subside as people realise he's talking and they can't hear what he's saying: "...mblmblmblmblmblif you only wouldn't clap so hard." There's a smatter of applause at this, so I guess he still has his supporters, they haven't all turned against him.

The thing is, you can't really tell what the audience is doing during the songs, because it really is fucken loud.

The guitarist is tuning again now, and the atmosphere really does sound like it's getting ugly. The piano starts off, and this song' different to the rest; where there's been a lot of exuberance before, now there's palpable menace, the hostility in the audience reflected back at them. "Something is happening, and you don't know what it is..."

They finish, there's more heckling, the audience laughs. One man shouts out. He's just saying what he thinks, he doesn't know he's just become part of a myth.

The singer's exasperated. "I don't believe you!". Then he realises the literal meaning of what he's just said. "You're a liar!"

Then, to the band:

"Play it fucking loud!"

How does it feel?

Thrilling.

(There's some clapping at the end. A few stuck it out, then. Animated discussion. The national anthem comes across the tannoy. Then the tape cuts out.)

(Seems someone's always upset about something, aren't they?)

(Now go here.)

Sound vs. Noise 6: I do not whistle a happy tune

We all have our pet hates - some of us, bad-tempered fellows such as me, have several. But one thing particularly sets my teeth on edge, and that's whistling.

Whistling is to me very nearly as annoying as the tinny scratching of someone else's personal stereo gouging at my eardrum. That comes simply from a person being a thoughtless twat - I suspect most of the i-Podded different drummers crowded onto the morning tube have somehow managed to convince themselves that they're not playing their music that loud and no-one else can hear it - but to whistle requires a conscious decision to foist your sound on others.

Many years ago, in another job, in another city, there was someone at work (isn't there always?) who was in the habit of whistling. he whistled in that especially irritating old man's style, which was inevitable, I suppose, given that he was an old man. Now I am in a different job in a different city, but still there is someone at work. Although he is younger than my previous irritant.

Apart from the inherent high-pitched annoyance of the tone of it, the whistler is nearly always notable for the paucity of his repertoire, sometimes not even getting to the end of a single tune, but repeating the same four or five-note phrase over and over, like a concussed budgie. The addition of monotony only furthers the pain.

Of course, being English, I'm far too repressed to jump up, make a grab for the offender's throat and throttle him wildly, while shouting "SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!" I'm so inhibited I probably wouldn't even do it if he weren't my boss.

So I do what I must - I retreat into my headphones and hope whatever I put in the CD drive of the PC can be turned up loud enough to drown the tweeting awfulness of it all. Of course, I can d this, because it's not that loud, and no-one can hear any leakage from my headphones, can they? And so the cycle goes; man hands on misery to man.

Sound vs. Noise (7)

Article on today's Grauniad blogs debating noise pollution. For myself, what the neighbours are playing is largely irrelevant, I want to get some fucking sleep, thank you. And no, plugging into an iPod isn't a solution. I don't want to listen to music while I'm asleep. I'm quite lucky, in that while the kids next door do occasionally pump up the volume, they generally bring it down again before I reach the point of banging on their door. I'm a very tolerant neighbour, y'know.

Sound Vs. Noise (5)

Something I find myself returning to in various guises is the horrible all-pervading noise that surrounds us. I would like to draw your attention to this article, which discusses an increasingly common manifestation of this.

Sound vs. Noise (4)

Regular readers will be aware of the constant stream of verbal diarrhea that plagues my working hours. Just because I haven't mentioned it recently, don't imagine that it's gone. Oh no. A long weekend is of course a very pleasant and welcome thing, but it leads to a heavier heart when you have to haul yourself out of bed on Tuesday morning to go to work, and even the prospect of a 4 day week can't quite lift the spirits. The mood is as grey and dark as the sky, and the babbling that assaults the ear seems to ricochet around the skull. Meanwhile, the seconds, minutes, hours slip away, and stifle the ideas and thoughts that are, or might be. The clouds stretch across the whole sky, imposing and oppressing, and the light feebly scratches through.

Sound vs. Noise (3)

Please. Just shut. The fuck. Up.

Joey Ramone is the only thing keeping me sane at the moment.

Sound vs. Noise (2)

Today's experiment: Is it possible to filter out the inane twittering surrounding one, or at least abstract it so it becomes an ignorable background noise? It's got to be worth a try, anyway. I suspect this will require either an heroic effort or an heroic passivity.

In other news, I see that new science minister Malcolm Wicks has been busy demonstrating what an ignorant fucking cock he is. I hope all you teachers are brushing up on the real-life science of sonic screwdrivers.

Sound vs. Noise

So, one day of the new scene completed and I'm still sane, just about. I feel bad moaning about these people - it's not that I don't like them or anything. I just wish they'd shut up for 5 minutes. Maybe in time I'll settle down, feel less disorientated and get used to it. Or maybe this is a hint that it's time to find another job. Come lunchtime, I rushed out of the office and tried to find somewhere quiet to eat my lunch, not an easy task. I find myself longing increasingly for quiet, and increasingly aware of how difficult it is to find it. There's something uniquely irritating about unwanted noise, I think it's because you can avert your eyes from something you don't want to look at, but you can't avert your ears. I was looking at one of those mp3 players with noise cancelling headphones on some website or other the other day. Trouble with that is that it's still using music just as a blanket to smother the rest of the world, something I heartily disapprove of on the whole, and also it just cancels out everything. When I'm on the tube, I don't mind the noise of the train and the like, I rather enjoy listening to ambient noise like that (yeah, I know, weirdo). What really grates with me is the tinny hiss leaking from earphones. I suppose it's because it's something imposed upon the situation rather than arising from it. What I need is something that can selectively cancel out the noise I don't want to hear, and leave the sounds I want to listen to.

Id like to be tremendously Buddha-like and decide to choose to accept and listen to whatever sounds happen to reach my ears as simply part of the world. it's not easy to achieve that level of enlightenment on the Central Line at 8.30 in the morning, though.