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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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It used to be woof, woof; now, it’s doof-doof. Barking dogs have given way to car stereos and home theatres. This was drawn to my attention by a friend, Henrietta Dubb, who wrote of his experience of trying to listen to classical music in his home but found he couldn’t sufficiently insulate himself from the doof, doof emanating from a nearby home. Unhappily, like most over 50, he’s resigned himself to this annoying feature of contemporary urban life.
Our streets now shake to the doof-doof factor—sound systems so biased to their subwoofer frequencies that we feel them before we hear them. Indeed, a neighbourhood party more often than not consists of cars parked in Western-wagon formation, as if under attack (which isn’t an unlikely proposition), their doors wide open to share their doof around. Who dares to complain?
In the US, there are associations devoted to doof-doof. The world’s loudest car stereo is being worked on as you read, and it will probably be American and equal in power to something NASA would use to place a satellite in space. New Zealand’s world-famous Rugby player Jonah Lomu claims to be that nation’s loudest doof-doofer. He can hear his favourite pop and hip-hop at somewhere near 160 decibels. So is he happy? No, he laments that his doof-doof isn’t as loud as he’d like. He’s quoted as saying he’s aiming for the world record.
Which is currently claimed by a group of German scientists who in 2002 measured their doof-doof at 177.6 decibels (140-180 dB is the loudness one would experience if one’s head were pressed against the engine of a 747 jumbo-jet or the space shuttle during take-off). According to a recent Popular Science magazine, the car of American Troy Irving is nearing that. It is installed with 72 amplifiers capable of 130,000 watts of sound power producing doof-doof through nine 15-inch subwoofers. My sympathies and yours, I’m sure, are with his neighbours. Why? Because Troy’s car, which weighs almost 10 tonnes, is mostly permanently parked in his driveway. With all the doof-doof, there’s no room for passengers!
All of which pales into relative quiet when compared with a Ford Bronco dubbed “The Beast.” This vehicle is almost as undriveable as Mr Irving’s. According to reports, it has a 75 mm-thick windscreen (to prevent it being blown out by the doof-doof). Its doors require pneumatic pistons to hold them shut, its petrol tank has been minimised to take only 20 litres of fuel, and its entire chassis has been reinforced. All for more doof-doof. The Beast is a feature at decibelic equivalents of drag-racing, where doof-doof cars are lined up in competition to see who can get the loudest the quickest. Since the early 1990s, customised “dB dragsters” have turned up to some 2000 contests across North America. Magazines and web sites dedicated to the doof-doof abound (and form the basis for much of this article). As a CNN site recently—and, possibly, truthfully—put it: “A car stereo that can kill you? Cool.”
No, not cool, really. Just more decadent, self-centred materialism in the name of freedom, individualism and pop culture. Amen, you may say, but as I think about it, I ask myself, Did I just write that? Me? A refugee from the 1960s and once a fan of Grand Funk Railroad (an awful pop group, not a train or home theatre system) who held the record for being the loudest band in the world? How can that be? Should an unreconstructed hippie from the days of thumpus uninterruptus (as 1970s disco was once called) really be critical of today’s doof-doof?
Well, yes. And, sadly it’s called ageing and tinnitus. It was something I never thought about in my audio-centric, volume-hungry youth. So now, when my neighbours have their doof-doof party, all I can think of is to put my hoof-hoof through their roof-roof. But that won’t happen. Rather, like my friend, I suffer in Christian silence waiting and hoping for that day when “the Lord will descend with a shout” and at the sound of his angels’ trumpets, will literally raise the dead. And I expect to be among them. I imagine that the noise or music on that day will turn today’s doof-doof into mere poof-poof (as it were). In the meantimme, will somebody please pass me an anti-doof-doof, sound-proof-proof pillow?
Extract from Signs of the Times, June 2004.
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