Wow! What a great thread. While I have seen all these points argued in different forums, I could never have imagined them existing in a single forum let alone all sharing a single, subject heading. I also must say that I've never seen these points discussed in such a civil manner. Therefore, I have to agree with Jim when he says:
The people contributing here at the 'Nation are choir boys and well-behaved young gentlemen by comparison.
True. Quite true.
Loudness wars huh!? Yes, perhaps that's appropriate. It is in many ways the "loudness" of our current society that has wrought much of this "noise" upon us. So many people live and die by the "in your face-ness" that they think marks them as ambitous and has replaced the "unum" that we really need and crave. I suppose it's the chimp in our DNA that urges us to throw feces and hurt others for short-sighted, selfish and ultimately self-defeating ends. (No offense intended Monkey. Besides, from your intellect, I must assume that you are one of the noble simians.)
I also think James is onto something. I too remember the first time I heard a song from my band on the radio. The difference is I remember thinking how much better our song sounded on the radio! The difference was night and day. The track sounded punchy and big. It was only much, much later that I learned about compression and other radio tricks used to make one station louder than the next station. However, for those who knew the system, it must have seemed like an obvious "cheat".
Of course, fast-foward almost thirty years and this technique has gone from subtle to over the top. It's hard enough to write music without taking away all dynamics. It's no wonder that so many kids seem to be growing up learning to ignore music. It seems made to ignore these days. There are no surprises. Therefore, kids still want music. But not so much that they are willing to pay for it. So what remains is omni-present and, yet, homoginized so as not to call too much attention to itself.
Ah, amplifiers and gain. Yes, Mesa-Boogie deserves a lot of the blame for pushing the gain thing to the ridiculous extremes. The first time I heard a Dual-Recto I just laughed. This kid was flailing around in a music store at a level just above a whisper and the amp sounded like any number of really, really bad fuzz tones from around 1972. Lord, I remember my HiWatt head. You had to crank it and then hit it pretty hard, but when you got it there . . . what a glorius tone. It sounded big and bold and full of life and danger and big, sharp teeth.
Pete Townshend was once quoted as (and I'm paraphrasing like mad here) saying that the excitement of an over-driven guitar amp was the fight of pushing them into distortion. An amp that has been pushed completely over into total saturation is no longer fighting. It's lost. It's just lying down and there is no excitement in that.
Quality and music . . . erm . . . I'm not sure I want to go there. There are, however, some places where all music (not just secular music) is illegal. Which in and of itself demonstrates the power of music vividly. Anything that is feared to that extent must have serious power. Zappa's "Joe's Garage" is a nice take on this idea.
Wow, I've got to get back to work.
Wayne