The Other Damage Done

Guitarist Robert Kidney has been the leader of 15-60-75 (a.k.a. the
Numbers Band) for nearly four decades. He hasn’t had a second of
silence in more than 25 years. By the early 1980s, 15 years of exposure
to amplified sound had left him with a condition called tinnitus, a
form of hearing damage that causes victims to hear a constant
high-pitched tone.

“It was severe enough that it was loud,” recalls Kidney. “I
had to make this adjustment to the fact that I had this permanent
ringing in my ears, and it was part of my emotional state.”

Hearing damage is just one of the occupational and lifestyle hazards
of constant exposure to music — whether you’re practicing two
hours a day, playing 250 shows a year, bartending at a club, watching a
show from next to the PA stack or just listening to your iPod for
hours. The damage can compromise everything from how you communicate to
how you move. But most music-related conditions are discussed
infrequently. Even among music professionals, hearing loss has a
stigma.

“Some musicians like Pete Townshend and Ted Nugent have spoken about
it,” says Dr. Laura Brady, an audiologist at the Cleveland Hearing
& Speech Center. “But it doesn’t seem to be a message that’s
cool.”

Whether you’re part of a defensive line or a rhythm section,
discussing damage can convey an unwanted impression of vulnerability.
When bassist Jason Newsted left Metallica, he was comfortable talking
about the band’s tabloid-caliber relationship strains. He alluded to
the lumps he’d taken in arenas over the previous 15 years, but he was
vague, citing only “the physical damage I have done to myself over the
years while playing the music that I love.”

For this story, Scene surveyed 103 Northeast Ohio music
professionals, 95 of them musicians. Fifty-three responded.

Of those responding, 42 (79 percent) reported permanent or lingering
physical damage they attributed to music. Twenty-eight (53 percent)
reported physical harm, from a chronic arm pain to a bad back.
Thirty-four (64 percent) reported hearing loss. Nine (17 percent)
reported tinnitus.

Only 23 responded to the question of whether they would have done
things differently, knowing what they know now. Four said they would
have taken stronger precautions; 17 said they wouldn’t. Only one said
he’d avoided injury by taking advice to be cautious.

HUH? WHAT?

Keelhaul drummer Will Scharf has played in some of Cleveland’s
loudest, heaviest bands since the early ’90s. He didn’t start wearing
earplugs until he was 22.

“Bad idea, waiting that long,” says Scharf. “[Now] ‘What’ and ‘huh’
are like punctuation marks in my vocabulary.”

Pondering his muffled existence, Scharf wishes someone had brought
it to his attention sooner. He thinks the worst of his hearing loss was
“absolutely avoidable. It’s just that most kids don’t give a shit about
it until it’s too late.”

Dr. Brady tries to get the word out. She presents hearing
conservation programs to people of all ages. She offers a program
called Safe Sound in grade schools. According to the National Center
for Health Statistics, noise-induced hearing loss affects more than
five million children between the age of 6 and 9. And that’s usually
before they get their first iPod or cell phone.

“Hearing loss caused by loud sound is permanent,” says Brady. “It’s
something you live with for the rest of your life and will affect all
areas of your life — your relationship with your spouse, your
friends, your children, your employer. It affects communication, and
communication is critical to daily living. We tell people that your
ears need to last a lifetime.”

As a rule of thumb, Brady says if you can’t have a conversation with
someone next to you without shouting, the sound level is loud enough
that you should wear some kind of hearing protection. The federal
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) considers 90
decibels the threshold of risk for hearing damage. Concert-level volume
and point-blank earbuds routinely exceed that.

Like an old football injury, a single loud show when you’re 17 can
leave you more susceptible when you’re 28. Unless you like the idea of
wearing a hearing aid — they do get smaller every year,
but they still won’t eliminate tinnitus — prevention beats the
best treatment options.

Hearing conservation is often as simple as turning down your iPod
and wearing earplugs, whether you’re dancing at the club or mowing the
lawn — or at an all-day, 10-band festival. If you’re not wearing
them, the guys onstage probably are. Civilians are well protected with
the type of foam earplugs you can buy at many clubs or cost around $10
for a jar of 100 at any pharmacy.

Musicians tend to resist earplugs because they limit the sounds you
can hear. But earplugs have come a long way. Specialized plugs, while
expensive, distribute volume reduction evenly across the entire hearing
spectrum. Also, says Brady, in-ear monitoring systems can be less
harmful than onstage monitors that are the size of a footlocker.
Chest-thumping bass is exciting, but you don’t always have to
feel the sound. Sometimes hearing it is enough.

For every band that recognizes the make-your-ears-bleed aesthetic as
an unnecessary indulgence, there are 999 that don’t.

“I do think that music in live music clubs tends to be way too loud,” says the House Popes’ Michael Graham. “I think the problem
is particularly bad here in Northeast Ohio, perhaps because of all the
heavy metal bands and fans around here. I honestly think more people
would go to live-music venues if they could converse a bit, without
shouting into the ear next to them, while the band was playing. My own
bands make an effort to play more quietly onstage, and audience members
have responded that it is nice not to feel like they’re getting
blasted.”

After 40 years, the Numbers Band’s Robert Kidney has some hard-won
but simple knowledge: Just turn it down.

“The tendency of musicians is if you can’t hear yourself, they turn
up,” says Kidney. “I have all these rules in the band to keep the sound
down.”

WHERE THE STRINGS COME IN

Soulless bassist Dave “Big Metal” Johnson had an eardrum literally
explode while on tour — but that was the result of a sinus and
ear infection. He can’t be sure whether playing booming, low-end heavy
metal contributed to the eruption. His real problem is in his
hands and wrists. On bad days, they swell and radiate pain. Musicians
who use their fingers most are especially prone to repetitive-stress
conditions like tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome — whether
they make music for the mosh pit or in the orchestra pit.

“String instrumentalists are the most likely to get hurt,” testifies
Nina Paris, the founder and president of the International Foundation
for Performing Arts Medicine, an organization that maintains a growing
database of literature and research on music-related psychological and
physical issues. “Guitar, violin, cello. In general, musicians suffer
from overuse.”

Practice is important, but Paris says it doesn’t have to tax your
tendons. Recent research has applied a sports-medicine technique called
Mental Practice to music rehearsal. Once a player knows how to go
through the motions, she can warm up her brain by reading music,
humming or merely listening to music, thus reducing hours of stress on
the fingers, arm and back. And, as with any intense physical activity,
you can’t go wrong with warm-up and cool-down stretches, especially if
you’re a metal musician who head-bangs for an hour straight.

Too many musicians don’t take advantage of how adjustable their gear
is. Tight strings, cramped drum kits and short mic stands can rack your
muscles, bones and nerves, creating leg pain from sciatica or chronic
body aches like arthritis. For Johnson’s arm issues, part of the
solution was a simple, over-the-counter brace that keeps his wrist
straight while he sleeps. And whether it’s your day job or night gig,
sometimes you can fix nagging physical issues by adjusting your
workplace ergonomics.

“Shorten the strap and raise your guitar up,” advises Johnson. “When
you play really low, it makes your fretting hand bend at the wrist
really bad. You can reduce some of that pain and play better at the
same time.”

Paris notes that, for punk drummers and classical pianists alike,
keeping healthy will make you even healthier.

“[Musicians] don’t exercise enough in terms of cardiovascular
health,” she says. “They’re sitting and they’re practicing, and they’re
sitting when they’re performing, and they’re sitting in the car going
home and sitting and sitting. They need good cardiovascular health just
like any athlete — because they are athletes — to
endure the demands of their gig. And a good cardiovascular system is
going to help get inflammation out of the muscles and tendons.”

DRINKING AND DIVING

Sometimes music damage creeps up on you. Sometimes it hits you all
at once. Larry Gargus’s final show with Don Austin was nearly his final
night on Earth. During the last minute of their last song, he broke one
of his rules, and he’s still paying for it.

“What you have to understand, even though we were in a hardcore
band, the whole slam-dancing thing was not fun [to us],”says Gargus,
who — three years later — has recovered as much as he ever
will. “We got tired of the kickboxers and ninjas. You turn 20, it gets
old. I’ll kill a motherfucker that stage-dives. One, you’re in my
space. Two, you’re going to kill someone. I proved my point.”

Don Austin was known as a drinking band. It wasn’t uncommon
for singer Gargus to throw up in an empty beer pitcher while his band
continued plowing through a song. The Akron group’s final show took
place in April 2006, at the Lime Spider. The players were sloppy,
Gargus fondly remembers: “Piss drunk — our usual, belligerent
selves.” After the last song, he headed for the restroom to hurl.

As Gargus emptied his stomach, drummer Sean Spindler popped his head
in and asked Gargus if he could handle an encore. “I said ‘What song
are we playing?'” says Gargus. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

Gargus stepped onstage for a run through Devo’s “Slap Your Mammy.”
Sixty seconds later, his brain was bleeding. The singer has since
pieced together an account of his near-fatal incident through friends’
recollections and videotape of the incident. With a belly full of cheap
beer, Gargus decided to stage-dive. He climbed a monitor, jumped,
executed half a somersault and landed on his head on the hard floor.
When the ambulance arrived and carted him out, he still had the
presence of mind to flip off the club owner. But he was slipping.

Fifteen hours later, he woke up in Akron General with a stabilizing
collar around his neck, his forehead so swollen he looked like a
Klingon. Doctors told his family he had massive cerebral hemorrhaging,
with four centimeters of standing blood in his brainpan.

“It felt like my head was being crushed in a vice — not my
outer head, inside,” he says. “It felt like my eyes were being pulled
from behind. The drugs they were giving me were pretty great, but I
couldn’t enjoy it.”

Fortunately, Gargus had health insurance, so the four-day stay in
the hospital wasn’t financially crippling. But his head was a mess,
inside and out. He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t stay awake long
and could barely stand, much less balance well enough to walk. His
neurologist has told him that regular crippling headaches are likely a
permanent after-effect.

Don Austin used to play about once a month. After the injury, Gargus
didn’t return to the stage for a year. He’s played only seven shows
since. He says retiring from the stage has more to do with his home
life than the bashed brain. But when he does perform, it’s not the
Crazy Larry show anymore. “To this day, I’m not the same guy I was
[onstage],” says Gargus. “I’m not as aggressive.”

Gargus says he wouldn’t do it again. But he’s not certain it
was the wrong move.

“The doctor said, ‘You should have died,'” says Gargus. “Part of me
[thinks], ‘It’s the stupidest thing you could have done.’ But there’s
another part, the chest-beating 19-year-old [who says], ‘Dude, that was
your band’s last show, and you almost died!’ The upside is, it’s
a pretty good story.”

A little lost functionality — or a lot — usually isn’t
enough to make a dedicated player (or fan) walk away from live music.
Most music damage manifests incrementally. Music people can live with
the injury but not without the music. And live music is generally more
fun the closer you are to the Marshall stacks. And — bassist or
baseball player — once you’re in the spotlight, it’s hard to walk
away, even when it’s getting hard to walk.

“It’s competitive,” says Paris, who has worked with entertainers
from ballerinas to jazz musicians to maintain their health. “There’s a
high propensity to push through pain, and I don’t know where they’re
getting it, other than they’re working in a competitive area. If you
lose your gig, someone else will get it. So they tend to not say
anything.”

dferris@clevescene.com

This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2009.