July 9, 2007

Torpedo Speakers: Purple Haze on the High Seas

Yesterday we were on a friend’s boat, one of those cool “wakeboard boats” with a big chrome tower on it, the latest in tow boat technology. This tower was designed to provide the perfect up-force on the tow rope, so that a wakeboard rider can more easily perform tricks like the “Dum Dum”, which, as we all know, is an inverted toeside front roll with a backside 360.

OK, we should get a few things straight here. First off, I’m not sure that my friend even owns a wakeboard. But if he does, I’d bet a lot that he is way too smart to ever attempt a “Dum Dum.” Or, for that matter, any other trick, the description of which might include a word like “inverted.”

Just a guess.

I think a more realistic purpose for the chrome tower on his boat may be that it holds a pair of the neatest loudspeakers I’ve ever seen. These are “torpedo” speakers, meaning that if you set the radio at about three-quarters volume, a guitar riff will sink a freighter.

When I discovered a Jimi Hendrix CD in my friend’s on-board collection, I convinced him that a few cuts from “Are You Experienced” would be an interesting way to demonstrate these speakers to those of us who were relatively new to the concept of the tower-mounted audio marine ordinance.

As the first strains of “Purple Haze” began to re-liquefy the Jell-O shots in the cooler, I noticed an interesting thing: While the women on board smiled bravely and nodded their heads to the rhythm of the initial blast wave, every one of the guys stood up, treated each other to brief demonstrations of air guitar, and then began to closely scan the lake to see who might be noticing our show.

And when the occupants of a pontoon boat anchored about a half mile away signaled their enjoyment with a festive shaking of fists, we all exchanged high fives and some more air guitar.

So the obvious question is, why do guys act like this? I would hazard a guess that we may be looking at the same dim backwater of male psychology that makes a young guy put an $8,500 sound system in a 1989 Ford Escort he bought for $350, then thump his way through the mall parking lot, shedding his rear-view mirrors and other semi-critical auto body parts as he goes.

It’s hard to believe that it could be any sort of male drive to attract attention to ourselves. If we had that kind of compulsion, we men would probably dress a lot better than we do.  At the very least, there would be no such thing as aloha shirts, novelty neckties or Speedos.

And I would also rule out the idea that this might be some sort of demonstration of power or virility. Yes, I realize that gorillas will pound their chests and make a lot of noise to scare away rivals, but would a gorilla be able to appreciate the musical nuance of a guy picking a guitar with his teeth, then slamming it into the speaker stack to create feedback?

No, I think the most likely explanation is that we guys just feel a deep philanthropic need to provide much-needed entertainment for all the other, less acoustically fortunate people around us. You see, guys understand that the highest essence of humanity is sharing.

That, and the joy of setting off car alarms with your subwoofer.

   © 2007, Michael Ball