Rock ‘n’ roll ain’t noise pollution, but it won’t help your hearing.
By John Murphy
Health. I can’t complain about mine. I’m 64 and I’m still alive. Ambulatory even. I walk four miles a day. I have arthritis in my lower back that relegates me to the press box for football games, but it’s no big deal.
If there were two things I could magically improve they’d be eyesight and hearing. Both are sub-par and that’s partially my fault.
The poor hearing I attribute to rock ‘n’ roll. Classic rock, heavy metal, outlaw country – I’ve listened to it all at ear-splitting volume over the years. And if you figure I owned three eight-track players before I even switched to cassettes, that’s a lot of years.
One month alone in the late 1980s is responsible for 15 percent of my hearing loss. I lived in Watsonville and my late friend Mark Ruso and I attended a pair of concerts in Mountain View two weeks apart — AC-DC and Def Leppard. They are not folk groups.
We took Cathy McCabe who worked at the Martinelli’s factory and her sister whose name I can’t recall. Ruso just called them “The McCabres.” Maybe you had to be there.
Cathy was a little heavy rock gal and her car was littered with cassette tapes. She blasted this obnoxious group, The Cult, all the way from Watsonville to Mountain View and back. It’s one of the reasons I say, “Pardon me?” 15 times a day now.
Eyesight. It’s an over-40 problem for many and not helped by reading in poor lighting or staring at computer screens for way too long. Unfortunately, I’ve done both.
Covering games is no sweat but watching them on TV is tough. When the Giants won all those World Series titles last decade, I had to squint and lean forward in my chair to see the pitch count and the inning. It sucked. Had no trouble making out the trophy presentations, though.
Main Street Dog 