Tinnitus in Tippecanoe

It's the morning after a show, and I'm hit with a painful yet all too familiar feeling. My head pounds with a hangover. My neck stings whenever I turn it to the side. And top it all off, my ears are filled with a dull, constant ringing. 

Yet strangely, I welcome that feeling. It serves as a reminder to the cacophony of hard riffs, heavy licks, and loud-ass amplifiers experienced from the night before. Those memories don't leave me dreading the fate of potentially being deaf by the time I'm fifty; they leave me wondering if I really even care. If that's the price one pays to be rocked out until I'm knocked out for one night of the week, then it's worth the pain.

Salutations, and welcome to the official first post of Tinnitus in Tippecanoe -- named such after the chronic condition one typically experiences the morning after an event where much volume and head-banging was to be had. This blog is dedicated to the support and recognition of local hard and heavy music based here in the Hoosier State, from the humble perspective of a music fan and aspiring musician living in Lafayette, Indiana.

A quick bit about me... I've been a Star City denizen for all thirty years of my existence. Over the latter half of all that, I've been involved in the local music scene in some form or another, with my interests having mainly gone toward the angrier sounds of hard rock, heavy metal, hardcore, and punk. For whatever reason, all that loudness, rage, and rebellious "fuck you" attitudes represented by those genres have always appealed to me. As such, this experiment in writing with Tinnitus in Tippecanoe is more or less the marriage of those interests along with my own desire to get some of my own commentary and observations out there.

I don't pretend to be the foremost expert in local music, and admittedly, I don't get out to shows half as much as I'd like to. So consider this to be a digestion of my personal experiences and random bits of information combed from the web. That being said, you can expect a lot of what's written on this blog to simply be a matter of opinion. You can also expect profanity... because if it weren't here, then it wouldn't be heavy fuckin' metal. 

I'm open to discussion and debate, if you find yourself in a position of disagreement. I try to rock an open-minded policy, and I'd be lying if I said that my opinion hasn't been changed more than once over the years as new information comes to light. Also, if there's something on this blog you don't see but think should be here, then I openly invite you to shoot me an e-mail and give a brother a necessary heads up. I'm always looking for new music to listen to -- and don't assume I only limit myself to the heavier genres covered here. I'm an overall fan of music and I can put an ear to anything, whether it be classical, country, dub pop, lounge jazz, or what have you.

Time will tell how this blog takes shape in the coming weeks as I get more posts up. In the meantime, as long as the amps are hot in Indiana, keep your horns up and ears open.