LOUDEST Concert and Tinnitus

My loudest show as an audience member was The Ramones at The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium,  a cement bunker of a room. Second was Ray Davies Telecaster when The Kinks played The Fillmore Auditorium (or was it Winterland?) in 1971. SO piercing!

But the biggest scare I had was when I did a long audition (eight hours!) with a band that was forming that same year. I was positioned directly across the room from one of the two guitarists. His Guild Starfire was plugged into a Fender Twin Reverb amp, the latter pointed directly at me from about ten or twelve feet away. We jammed from ten at night until six the next morning, and as I packed up my drums the sound of the guys' voices were drastically muffled-sounding, like a blanket was over their heads. Scared me to death! My hearing eventually returned to normal, but I'm sure there was some permanent damage.

Ted Nugent a dozen times, stereos, Black Sabbath, BTO, years-no, decades, of engines and race tracks and dyno runs...a lifetime of poor judgment regarding my hearing. Now I have a permanent noise floor that sounds like 1000 metallic crickets. A cautionary tale for anyone not there yet. Mine didn't start until about 10 years ago, after I started taking precautions. 

The Ramones. University of Rochester (NY) campus in the early 80's. Ears rang for three days. I had tinnitus but it went away on it's own.

Hot Tuna at the Palladium in November 1977.  I can still hear that concert more than 45 years later!

@macg19 

I had the pleasure of meeting Douglas Adams - related to an immersive “game” called Starship Titanic about 2 parallel universes on board a ship

We provided authoring software

he died too early

Yes, his death at only 49 back in 2001 was a great loss in so many ways.

Amongst other things Douglas may well also have been the greatest writer of these past 75 years.

Reading some of these accounts here of people losing their hearing for a few hours (or even days in some cases) is slightly concerning, particularly on an audio forum.

The loss of certain frequencies will no doubt have an effect upon the enjoyment of a Hi-Fi system.

In rare cases, the effect could be a good one according to maverick ENT doctor, Alfred A Tomatis who believed that hearing damage in his right ear helped Caruso achieve his greatness.