Defining Awesome — Lessons from Joey
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  • Lessons from Joey

    Written by . Posted at 5:48 pm on November 21st, 2007

    I am always interested in looking behind the scenes. Why do some people kick ass and others are losers. I wonder if you can spot what makes Manowar such a great band. This is Joey De Maio, founder of the “loudest band on earth” having PA problems before a concert.

    This system has no what?

    By the way, anyone going to Magic Circle Festival next year?

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    24 comments.

    1. Sorry, but I don’t like Manowar and now I don’t even think about giving it a chance. Idiot arrogant bastard. They can say that they are loudest band, but still they are one of the most boring bands in the world. This is my opionion. Black metal ist krieg!


    2. Troskal, you don’t like Manowar, and you won’t give them a chance? Have you ever even given them a one? If you hoestly dare to call them boring, then you obviously haven’t heard them. ๐Ÿ˜›

      You are not my friend!


    3. Personally I don’t like Manowar much, regardless of this, that ‘Joey’ guy is just being stubborn for the sake of it; because he can (if he doesn’t want to play, then they don’t get paid). So even though they might be a good band, there’s no point in being stubborn for something as small as that.


    4. Is the answer dedication?


    5. If you are making a point that being a perfectionist is the difference between being a winner/loser, i’d beg to differ.

      He wants to cancel a concert that people payed for, and are most likely looking forward to, just because of some decibel rate he can’t reach? So what if it’s not loud. The fans are idiots if all they care about is how much their heads hurt after a concert.

      I’d rather listen to amazing whispers than chalk-board shouts.


    6. I think he is right. If you compress sound you gonna lose quality and depth in the music. Although if you experience any sound above 85db constantly then you can damage your ears. 120db is the threshold of pain for any amount of time even a second. So isn’t the audience damaging their own hearing?

      I agree with Stwelin on the last one but he is not justing increasing the volume he is increasing the range of volume so that he doesn’t have to compress the sound to fit into the range. It is the same as increasing the brightness on your screen while it is set at a low contrast. Looks terrible so it should sound terrible.


    7. Sorry, but I have to agree with the fact that a person as stubborn as that could be very much a winner, but could also be a loser that loses a one-man-race. I mean… he IS pushing the limit and would risk (!) to upset his fans by risking the concert which he says he wants to be perfect exactly FOR those fans. So is he for the people that support him and fans or against them?
      I think this is really just the point from which we look at this. I think, if he would have done that at the beginning of his career and would have risked so much money for the sake of the fans, it would have truly been a heroic deed and worth praising. But since he is already stinking rich, he can now afford doing that because he’s really got nothing big to lose. So he sais “yeah, i’m so cool, f*** the fans, f*** the money, my will be done”.

      I agree with you Michal, that a person who follows his wishes and dreams to the very last is a winner, but I dont think this description fits Joey in this video.


    8. Lol, 120+db that’s just crazy… regardless of music quality, it’ll be pure pain in close range…


    9. Those who come to see the ludest band on the planet eath know what to expect. Fans are not surprised that they play louder than hell.

      I think Manowar is the last band which would say “fuck the fans”. Their song “Kings of Metal” describes the band quite well, and I suggest MM to make a post about their music.


    10. See, this is why I posted this. A lot of you guys don’t get it. You’re seeing a stubborn dick, when in fact he is not thinking about himself but about the 25000 people that paid for the concert. What you have to realize is that metal music is all about power (and you need volume to achieve that). Metal music is not about contemplating each note. It doesn’t make a difference if you’re listening to Yanni at 30db or 120db. But it makes a difference for Manowar. People expect them to kickass and blow your head off. The PA people don’t realize this because they are not dedicated, they are just installing equipment. Joey has to be a dick because they wouldn’t listen to him. Look how much respect he got from them in the end, because he was right all along. When they heard the music from the new sound system, they felt it in their balls and agreed that Joey is a genius.

      If this would be about money, he would not cancel the show, but would give a poor 100db pussy concert, play for one hour, say fuck off to the fans and go home. But because this is about the fans, he would risk cancelling the show, because that is the PRICE you have to pay if you want to give true value. People like Sting do it only for money. They give such poor concerts that fans leave it midtime. Sting is old and stupid and his music reflects that (not to offend any Sting fans, I’m just giving an example cause I know what his concert was in Poland).

      PHeMoX: 160db not 120.


    11. Sorry to say but there music is slow but is noisy, i would rather go to a concert that has good music than alot of noise because i would like it better and i wouldn’t risk my hearing plus what does that guy mean by “The system has no asshole”.


    12. I wouldn’t count Manowar to the bands that play extremely fast music, but 200Bpm is enough I guess.

      What Joey meant was probably Backbone :d


    13. But the fans are stupid either way, so why should you try to please them?

      True music is never about contemplating each note, nor is it about power.


    14. I’d like to see reasons how can one call fans stupid. Wise people don’t like music? ๐Ÿ˜›


    15. ClawBug: it’s just that big music stars sometimes become so assured of their own greatness that they think fans are somthing lesser, that fans are only supposed to admire the star’s awesomness. In that case they can call them stupid.
      I’m not talking about Manowar here, i don’t really know much about them, there’s simply to many good metal bands to listen to them all ๐Ÿ˜€


    16. This is why I posted this. Manowar are not big music stars. If they thought fans are there just to admire them they would give a fuck about the sound system, but Joey knows that the fans are not there to admire them, they want to have an experience. A top notch musical experience at the day of the concert.


    17. @Clawbug

      Wise people don’t listen to manowar.

      Manowar are pretty big.


    18. I think the first 10 row of fans from the concert will thank later, the band, that they will lose their hearing faster than the rest from the show.

      Yes, I’m a big fan of loud music as well, whatever it might be (usually what should be played loud, that includes rock) but after the concerts I attended (and there were a few) I usually like to stay close to the speakers, and beleive me, it ain’t all good in the long run. yes, you’ll regret it later. I’ve been told too, yet I couldn’t resist to my habit, and I am clearly aware that my hearing degraded in the last 10 years…

      at any time I have left from my life, I would prefer the “the clearest sounding band ever” over the loudest. think about it.


    19. It’s all about vibration that you feel in the body.
      Take some good rock/metal music and play it on your headphones.
      Now take that same music and play it on a hi-fi with a subwoofer really loudly.
      The result is that in the first example you will say: hmmm very nice music and in the second you’ll tend to jump, bang your head, scream and generally have a kicking ass feeling.


    20. The only thing the Manowar prick was right about was when he was complaining about the sound to be compressed. Compressing is increasing average loudness on cost of the dynamics of sound. And this is what basically is going on in the music industry all over the world, read

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

      if you care. Because listeners are usually a bunch of stupid dickwads, they say “wtf, this is too low man” when they hear music with awesome dynamics. The key there is increasing the volume yourself, so you have LOUD music with great DYNAMICS.
      What the guys in the studios do is compressing the shit out of sound so you get one giant square wave and the idiots are satisfied “wow dis is loud maan”. And this is because music at radio stations is played with some sound level x and if tune a is mastered to be louder at sound level x than tune b, people tend to like tune a more because as I said listeners are fucktards.
      Apart from that the guy here is an absolute idiot. He’s got 120dB and complains about not being able to get spikes. Imagine a snare drum at 120dB (percussion => spikes). Your ears would feel like getting cut with a katana.
      And MM, if you are about the bass experience. Subwoofers can be run at way higher levels because bass tones don’t hurt the eardrum. This would give the same feeling experience with more gentle sound. But everyone in the specific positions to decide such things are idiots.


    21. Wow that sucks. I didn’t know about the loudness war. Add to that music produced only to sound good on iPods and you got yourself musical hell. Concerts will be the only place in the future where you can listen to real music.


    22. “Subwoofers can be run at way higher levels because bass tones donโ€™t hurt the eardrum. ”

      I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about this, because even a standard subwoofer 4Ohm speaker will damage your ears when you listen to it for a longer time at high volume. It’s because of the high levels of output involved, it doesn’t matter if you can’t hear or feel the actual sound as loud as high gain sound for example, but it definitely hurts/damages your ears just as bad. It has to do with which parts of the sound-spectrum our ears can hear.

      As for your post as a whole though, some very good points made…


    23. […] example, from my post about Joey De Maio and the comments. What if you believe assholes are bad people and accomplishing your goal could be […]


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