Here at hecklerspray, we love nothing more than a good rumour. It keeps us on our toes, and because we're just a bunch of immature morons, we?ll often add an extra layer to a story.
Sadly, some stuff is fact. So horribly correct and true that we can't run away from it.
Anyone who attends gigs or clubs for example will know all too well that loud music will have an effect on their hearing. Some say the sign of an ace night is a ringing in the ear the next day. But long term deafness? Even hipsters wouldn't go for that.
Wherever you go on a night out, alcohol in a uniting tool. Usually overpriced, the quality of booze will always differ due to it being dished out into a plastic glass or poured through a dirty line. For no reason, scientists have been conducting tests to see if music and booze can be linked and unsurprisingly, they are.
Imagine you're out somewhere and the music is blaring. A study that's been conducted by real scientists with all sorts of degrees, has found that alcohol tastes sweeter when loud music is playing. That's basically it.
The noise that you hear could make it difficult for you to judge how much you throw down your neck. To us, this doesn't quite make any sense. Soul music for example doesn't make us reach for expensive bottles of champagne whilst gabber doesn't make us pour vodka in our eye.
Remember everyone, no cures have been established for cancer, AIDS or any other diseases that kill people each year so quite why this experiment happened is beyond us. Still, we can't expect all of these clever people in white coats to be serious all of the time. It is Christmas after all, so a cheerier experiment must have been called for. Dr Lorenzo Stafford conducted this study and said:
“Since humans have an innate preference for sweetness, these findings offer a plausible explanation as to why people consume more alcohol in noisy environments.”
Really? In all honestly, we?ll slurp a combination of spilt drinks and drip tray if it means we can get drunk. People who are cleverer than us are always wanting to analyse everything in absolute minuscule detail and conduct research in stupidly complex ways. See how much you can be bothered to read of the following below:
?In Dr Stafford’s study, 80 participants (69 females and 11 males aged between 18 and 28 and regular drinkers) had to rate a selection of drinks varying in alcohol content on the basis of alcohol strength, sweetness and bitterness. They were given one of four different levels of distraction, from no distraction to loud club-type music playing at the same time as reading a news report. The tests found that drinks were rated significantly sweeter overall when participants were listening to music alone.?
Effectively then, if you stand next to the speakers in a club, you\’ll be gulping pints like they're going out of fashion whilst making yourself deaf in the process.
Brilliant. THANKS SCIENCE!
Gilbert Wham says
Years of my own research, from the 90s to today (including a rather splendid ‘experiment’ last week courtesy of Lenny Dee at Industrial Strenght Record’s 20th bash), has led me to the conclusion that if I’m listening to gabber, I forget about alcohol altogether. It certainly affects the amount of speed & MDMA I consume though. More data may be needed however….