Crushing Girth!

Many years ago, I worked for Max Power. They held an outdoor event and used a rubbish PA system. I raised Cain and for the next event they had hired a serious pile of speakers and told me they had hired Metallica’s PA. It came complete with an engineer called Mick Hughes, who I immediately got to sit in an SPL car and he gave me the words above as new terms for serious bass.
Fifteen years later, and after he came to plenty of our world’s events I finally went to see him at work. The O2 was the venue and despite dreams of full backstage passes and hob-nobbing on the bus, we got sticky fabric work passes. So I have still never been on a guest list at a gig, I’ve only been Road Filth but was proud of that, matey!
I admit that I am so out of regular practice in big pressure fields of full range (pure bass IS different) that the striated muscles suspending my Malleus, Incus and Stapes (Hammer, Anvil & Stirrup ear-bones or ossicles) are not as developed as they used to be and I could feel my ears tiring rapidly. So I wussed out and went and begged some earplugs – it was 117dBA of full rocking metal with Mick’s characteristic brain crushingly aggressive sound.
It was HUGE.
And on the subject of brain crushingly aggressive, I have two JBL bass boxes and a Rockford woofer and two new and sexy bass amps to play with, as well as a Clarion headunit to get to grips with next – that and the other news and features – so I’d better go get on.
Adam Rayner – Online Editor