Best excuse for playing loud music?

Excitement, plain and simple. I disagree that mediocre equipment sound better loud -- all my experience informs that QUITE the opposite is true.
I wanted the capability to play loud and have spent a fortune achieving it, now that I have it I can't use it because my ears will be destroyed -- reason being that it SOUNDS GREAT LOUD! Highs airy and crisply deliniated, mids pure and revealing, mid bass FORCEFUL and dense and bass face-hammering! Never the sense that it is really starting to irritate your ears until you walk away and your head feels unbalanced and misaligned -- with crappy stuff, like a boombox or TV, I start to get the sense of it being too loud before it is anywhere near the output of my system (about 8000 watts).

Jmcgrogan2, Ya, but does it work!!

Xiekitchen, I agree with with you, some music you just have to play loud. Pink Floyd,"Dark Side Of The Moon",and just about any Led Zeppelin. And many many more.
But when I listen to "Sinatra", "Tony Bennett","James Taylor", or "diana Krall" and many more, I listen at a more moderate level.But never softly!..
And then there are some artists when both loud and moterate levels, one that comes to mind is "Bob Seger."

Because I'm real drunk....

Jea48, no, not really, but sometimes is good enough.

My best friend's mother claimed that listening on headphones would lead to marijuana use. So he bought her the LP "Who's Next" for Christmas, and we listened to it as loud as possible in order to quell her worries that we might be slipping into dubious (pun intended) activity.

When she asked, "What is teenage wasteland?" we just shrugged, and said, "We have no idea," and turned the music louder.