On my commute home last night, I ended up sitting next to a guy with his iPod cranked up so loud I was forced to listen to his music, distorted and scratchy, blasting out of his ears. I couldn't identify the music, but it had the general parameters of a funky groove. In other circumstances this is something I would probably enjoy, but I was trying to read, and my brain could not block out this intruding stimulus, so I kept losing the thread of the article and ended up rereading the same section several times before giving up. I shot the guy a couple of annoyed looks, but he was blissed out in Funkland and never noticed.
It reminded me of the old days (which is to say, the 80s), when people would get on the subway carrying gigantic boomboxes blasting Run-DMC or whatever the hot hit was at the time. But in fact the blaring-headphone phenomenon is closer in spirit to when you're stopped at a red light and the car adjacent to you is bleating and vibrating with the driver's music choice. Invariably the sound is buzzy and distorted, because the music has been on so loud for so long that the vibrations have loosened the screws that attach the speakers to the back window shelf. Yeah, it was like that.
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