Arthur C. Clarke said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If he'd stuck around urban America instead of retiring to Sri Lanka he might also have said that a sufficiently powerful subwoofer in a shitty car is indistinguishable from experimental electronic music.
This morning a guy drove past me in a Scion truck/car/box with a few thousand bucks' worth of stereo equipment in it, pumping enough bass out of what may have been a Pitbull track to make his car doors visibly shake. From the outside all I could hear was the car rattling--the bass I could mostly just feel in my inner ear, and it made me physically feel bad. I started laughing out loud when I realized that this middle-aged dude in a goatee who'd crammed that kind of stereo into a semi-compact car so he could impress the other mind-wizards he hangs out with was making more offensive and seriously fucked-up sound than all of the kids at the all of the Terry Plumming noise-bullshit shows in the world.
