Week Thirty-Four Boom Cabs Anyone?

I have all my best ideas in the bath there is one that has rankled for ages though.. Car Dancing. And of course perfect lip synch and even singing like it didn’t matter that it wasn’t good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing, sing a song. La la-la, lala ahem sorry young people Google ‘˜Carol Carpenter’ at that point old people hopefully got a chuckle and in this era of more and more video, I want passengers to film drivers singing at the wheel.
BIG thing is ‘˜any behaviour you wouldn’t use on your driving test’ is kinda outside that. SO pay attention, drive FIRST, sing second. USE your mirrors, if you do offer a clip and you ain’t, it’s a FAIL. But I do want to see some damn emotion to do with the kit, finally being discussed, expressed and given some editorial.
For the really big reason that car audio is so much better than any other field of audio as say cats are versus any other pet, is how it makes you feel. All that driving can offer as pleasure like the motorway to Scotland, past the Lake District and Kentish country lanes reeking of ripe apples in September, with thirty foot hedges and all the pleasure that music can bring, combine to be MORE than the sum of the parts.
And demo cars are vital to explain this, as the tearful neophyte gets out, weeping, saying, ‘I had no idea..’ for it is like trying to explain garlic to the anosmic, colour to the congenitally blind.
As we know in car audio we go deep into the level that creates an emotional response, be it sound quality to hear a mad Icelandic poppet growl and warble, or else to take your whole being and try to destroy you at a true one hundred and sixty decibels. I recall a Chris Heiden, famous for making one fifties in his white Escort, being congratulated by me on the tarmac before the once legendary towers of Wembley Stadium at a sound off in the Nineties, saying, ‘Yeah, one-sixty dee-bee next!’ and me thinking it would never happen because of the small matter of a thousand times the energy being needed.
Well, it has happened now, some twenty years later and I for one utterly love it but will always defend my ears against the Evil Of The Bullet Tweeter.
Never think it is ‘˜uncool’ to plug your ears with fingers in these cars as they can and will cause you real and permanent harm. The guys who do it all the time are ‘˜used’ to it, in that the smooth muscle controlling their hammer-anvil-stirrup, or Malleus-Incus-Stapes bones in their middle ears, have become strengthened and their ears do develop some resistance to sending nasties into your Cochlea. (That’s the snaily bit we hear with.) This is well known although not ‘˜recognised’. My chum Big Mick that mixes live for Metallica and is known for his wicked punchy heavy metal live sound… to the point where he is also (to his sardonic amusement) called The Metal Overlord, has an audiologist who is incredulous at how damn GOOD his hearing is.
But what about the one-forties ‘˜Boot Boomers’? Wouldn’t they make a taxi cab you WANT to ride into the West End in? With a charismatic driver, I reckon we have a serious thing. NOT a limo company.. but a limo with a 150dB wall in the rear end? Might be a bit tail-happy!!
OK, sheds of stuff to catch up
Adam Rayner On Line Editor