I know … I shouldn’t be here – I ought to be concentrating on my book like I said I would. (I’ll post a progress report in a few days. 😉 )

However, as you’ve probably surmised if you’re a regular visitor to my blog, I have the attention span of a fruit fly, and when I saw today’s WordPress prompt, I was very easily distracted.

You see, I used to go to loads of live music gigs. I’ll write a separate post on this in the coming days (see what I mean about ‘attention span?’) but for a while, I was attending two, maybe three shows a week.

That was until almost ten years ago to the day – 13th May 2014.

I had seen London based, Japanese heavy, psyche rockers, Bo Ningen, several times before. They were still a bit of an undiscovered gem, in my opinion but had worked their way up through the smaller, less salubrious venues and secured a headline slot at the prestigious King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow.

Having previously written a three page interview / feature on the band for Artrocker Magazine, I had met the lads before, and shared a beer or two with them.

I was excited about this show and meeting the band again.

The set was everything I expected: frantic, loud and brash, but with the occasional moment of serenity and very ‘trippy’ in places.

They were a notoriously loud band – as any psyche rock band should be. That night though, in the enclosed confines of King Tut’s, they really did ‘turn it up to eleven,’ and for the first time at a show, I felt uncomfortable.

As I headed home, my ears were ringing. There was nothing unusual in this, but when I genuinely couldn’t hear my wife greeting me on my return, I became a bit concerned.

For the next three days, I could hear nothing through my right ear. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

What an idiot I’d been! There I was, in my mid-Fifties, stood front and centre of a stage in a small, intimate venue, listening to one of the loudest bands in the world.

Without earplugs!

You pay the price for not wearing protection, don’t you? 😉

Thankfully, my hearing returned several days later, though I always suspect I may have accelerated its age-related decline. But what a fright I had.

That, sadly, was the last live performance I saw, though Bo Ningen remain one of my favourite bands.