It's a quiet Sunday afternoon, and out my window you can see the urban grid of Siena dissolving in to the rural hills. The sun hits each brick structure individually, giving the landscape an orange glow; the horizon punctuated every so often by cypress trees and church steeples. Birds are silently catching thermals from a nearby hill, then swooping around one another for another go. Suddenly, from the flat above me: "MOTHERFUCKER SHOT TO HELLLLLLLL OH YEAAAHHHHHHHH" - 30 second guitar solo - "RARIINN TO GOOOO!" It goes without saying that my dreamy recollections of Siena - the orange evening sunlight painted across rustic churches, the open piazzas with romantically charged couples devouring buckets of gelatto - do not quite mesh with the reality of my upstairs neighbor. Mr Speakers - as he shall be known henceforth on this blog - is a man who has a deep love affair with two types of music: Death Metal and Butt Rock. He is also a man who knows his audio equipment. If you put that much electricity though a normal pair of bookshelf speakers, and they'll start to crap out pretty quickly. Mr. Speakers however, spins the knob up to 10 on a regular basis; converting his apartment in to a kind of home-grown sonic weapon. Focused properly, you could topple buildings from 300ft with this sort of volume. Over the past half hour, Mr. Speakers has explored the full gamut of 'speedy-guitar-solo' music, with selections ranging from Slayer to IronMaiden; occasionally slowing down for butt rock breaks featuring tearjerkers from Def Leppard, Quiet Riot and Whitesnake (I haven't actually heard any Whitesnake yet...but I know it's coming.) As I imagine him - I haven't actually seen the guy - he's hairy, in his 40s, wearing a bandana and strutting around the apartment playing air guitar on a broomstick. Wait...wait....I found the song he's listening to RIGHT NOW... (the fact that I can pick out lyrics to identify a song should be some indication just how LOUD this is...). Tell me...what do YOU think? What a way to spend a Sunday. I'm going for a walk.

Comments

Alejandro
so i finally can write again in here LOL. anyways, i love slayer and i was a HUGE headbanger in my HS years LOL, BUT.... for some reason i've never gotten into the whole loud ass fucking music, so i feel for you Nate, and you should call the caravignieri to complain.

Nate
I'm not sure if this will work...

marissa
I just want to point out that "butt rock" does not exist as a wikipedia entry. Therefore, this is a term you have made up, and I think you should show Def Leppard more respect. :-D