Humor: The loudest kid on the block

The loudest kid on the block

Car stereos have come a long way from the days I used to do blockies around Launceston with Graeme "Shirley" Strachan screeching out of a tiny transistor.

Strachan was the lead singer of a Australian group called Skyhooks in the 1970s.

I read in my newspaper that a bloke from Queensland with a $52,000 car stereo reached 149.6 decibels to win a loudest car stereo competition at Summernats at Exhibition Park in Canberra.
That's right: $52,000 worth and pumping out 149.6 decibels!
The noise came from 10 amplifiers and 16 sub-woofer speakers worth more than three times that of his car.

I have just two questions for the winner, Queenslander Michael Donnan:

1. Why? and;

2. Are you the same motorist who drives past my house every morning at 2 o'clock with your music pumping KER-THUMP, KER-THUMP, KER-THUMP?

Summernats is a national car show. A really big car show.
Every year, many thousands of people flock to Exhibition Park to see cars, cars and more cars. New ones, lovingly restored old ones, colourful ones, loud ones and mostly expensive ones. There are burn-out competitions and duco-drooling for the boys and wet T-shirt competitions for the girls - er, and the boys.

I have never actually been to Summernats but I do feel sentimentally attached to it, having been caught in traffic jams along Northbourne Avenue, though still many miles away from the venue.

I never dreamed that there would be such a thing as a loudest car stereo completion.
But then I am quite ignorant of these things.
Around the same day I read about the loudest car stereo competition, I also read in my newspaper that 20 Taiwanese men planned to fly to the United States to set a world record for pulling a Boeing 747 passenger jet with their penises. I never dreamed of something like that either.

Loudest car stereo competitions are not restricted to Summernats, it seems.

The Canberra Times reported that Donnan won a sound-off in Queensland in 1998 by recording 159.5 decibels.

The reporter, Peter Brewer, wrote: "That's louder than standing next to a runway as a jumbo jet takes off."
Louder probably, too, than the screams of 20 Taiwanese men who, after pulling a Boeing 747 along the tarmac with their penises, are unexpectedly flung into the air, hanging on by the skin of their, er, teeth, as it takes off.

Donnan's sound system is so loud that its main effect upon the body is intense pressure.
"It doesn't hurt your ears, it hurts your body," he was quoted as saying.
'Every muscle in your body tenses up.
"It's like being squeezed all over but especially in your diaphragm.
"People get in the car and after a few minutes with some volume cranked up, they are gasping for air."

In competitions, Donnan's system does not actually play music.

Brewer said it emitted a barrage of hertz with an uncanny similarity to the noise made by a burst of cannon fire from a jet fighter.

I guess that puts Donnan in the clear.

The noise that goes past my hour each morning at 2 o'clock is definitely more like KER-THUMP, KER-THUMP, KER-THUMP.

This takes my back to Launceston in the '70s.

"Shirley" Strachan, a carpenter, went on to work as a kindly old presenter on one of those television infotainment shows.

Sadly, he was killed in a helicopter crash in August, 2001.

I will remember him singing cutting-edge stuff in the '70s like You Only Like Me Cos I'm Good In Bed, Ego Is Not A Dirty Word and All My Friends Are Getting Married. Australian lyrics about Australian concepts.

They were songs that I felt, as a young man with testosterone all dressed up but with no where to go, needed to be played at full volume around Brisbane Street, Paterson St, Charles St and St John St.

As I said though, I only had a tiny tranny.

And it cost waaaaaaaaay less than $52,000.

Sheesh, if I had had $52,000 I might have been able to buy a car instead of doing my blockies by foot.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it