.. brand-new in-balance ears on that very same night – and not just
any mix, but a headphone mix.
Now, every recording engineer will tell you that headphone mixes can be very
dangerous, especially over a prolonged period. As you and your ears get more
tired the volume tends to edge up to compensate and if you don’t take
a rest you’ll eventually end up with the volume at a potentially damaging
level. But, as in this case, if a satisfactory mix proves elusive you might
stay glued to the headphones desperately trying to nail it, instead of sensibly
giving it away for the night and leaving it till the following day.
Which is exactly what happened.
The next evening Spectrum was playing at the Echuca Winter Blues Festival
and it was when I took a phone call while we were waiting to play our opening
gig at Nik’s Tavern that I realised something was seriously amiss with
my right ear.
At first I thought it was my phone. The sound of the voice on the other end
was thin and reedy, a bit like what you might expect from a phone really but
much thinner and much reedier. I switched ears. It sounded normal. I was horrified,
but it only got worse because the gig seemed to provoke my right ear even
further and everything sounded foreign and distorted.
And that’s the way it’s been ever since. I’ve become used
to it but it’s extremely tiresome – and it’s only getting
worse. Even my solo gigs now provoke a tinnitus response that goes on for
the best part of a week and the tinnitus is so severe it’s occasionally
overriding normal conversational speech.
Some of you might be wondering what this ‘tinnitus’ business is
exactly. I suspect that every tinnitus sufferer would give you a different
and personalised description, but in my case it manifests mostly, but not
exclusively, in my right ear – or appears to, because the ear is incapable
of manufacturing sound, so it’s really a product of the brain.
There are several strands of very high pitched discordant ‘ringing’
sounds that play incessantly in my head like several Moog synthesisers on
a feedback loop. They’re there all the time and the volume fluctuates
according to provocation by a sudden loud sounds or persistent low-level noise
(like driving my van for instance) or simply tiredness. As a matter of fact,
I’ve got it now.
As an after-effect of a gig I also suffer from a mid and low-mid frequency
‘roaring’ sound, much like the throb of the engines on the Tassie
ferry and the uncomfortable feeling that I’ve got a sock in my ear.
This is actually more disconcerting than the ringing but over the course of
a week it gradually dissipates – well, it has up till now.
Well surely, I (just) hear you say, you could do something about that, even
if it’s wearing ear plugs at gigs?
I have experimented with ear plugs, but even employing just the one ear plug
for my right ear I find the normal commercially-available ear plugs far too
crude, reducing the stage sound to a dull rumble. It’s so indistinct
that I actually have difficulty pitching my vocals rendering the whole experience
quite joyless and unsatisfactory.
So then, what’s the point? My raison d'être is that I
do this music thing simply because I enjoy it, (I’ve never really cared
much about the fame or the money), but if the experience is actually painful
with debilitating consequences lasting for a week or more then I should seriously
question whether it’s worth it.
As part of a two-pronged response I’m currently waiting for some specialised
ear plugs to arrive from Queensland. Designed especially for musicians they’re
meant to reduce the amplified sound evenly by up to 15db, which should mean
I can play a standard gig with little or no repercussions from tinnitus. It’ll
be interesting to see if I can adapt to the different perception of the band’s
sound, but I am hopeful they will help extend my career playing live electric
music in the public arena.
The second prong is the hearing aid, which will, I hope, keep my ears and
brain in touch with normal social discourse. And maybe hear the telly without
upsetting the neighbours.
The other day my partner and I listlessly cruised into Camberwell and decided
to break with routine and have lunch there. We’d sampled some dumplings
at the Casino on the night of the Myeloma Masters of Rock concert and thought
we should try and find some in Camberwell. Adam had mentioned a Chinese restaurant
up Burke Rd at the northern end of the Junction so we wandered up the hill
until we saw a likely looking Chinese restaurant called Tea House on Burke.
I thought I remembered a place in Chapel St called the Tea House*
where I’d sampled a plethora of interesting dumplings, so we ventured
in.
We were whisked to a table and had napkins placed on our laps by an unctuous
waiter before we realised this must’ve been the wrong place, because
there were only two variants of dumplings on the rather uninspired menu, but
by this time we judged it too late to make an inconspicuous exit and felt
we had to make the best of an indifferent situation.
Fortunately it wasn’t an overly expensive exercise but it was nevertheless
a waste of our time not to mention our taste buds. As we were leaving Maria
looked up Burke Rd to our left – and saw a sign on the restaurant NEXT
DOOR proclaiming itself the dumpling capital of the fucking Universe. As Maxwell
Smart himself might’ve said, ‘Missed by that much!’
*Actually Oriental
Tea House