As though to add insult to injury the band members chatted among themselves between salvos but didn't address the audience until about twenty minutes and nine or ten numbers had passed. I didn't hear anybody answer him. This nightmare was still on my mind when I spoke with Zorn in New York last spring. The speed and the power and the volume, those are elements that admittedly were not part of Ornette's original conception. But those are essential elements in bringing it up to date, in giving it the same impact it had then.
Volume is an important parameter.
Granted, with practically anything now permissible in music, the threat of physical damage posed by unreasonable volume might be the last remaining shock. My ears are blown already. I've been playing loud music for a long time. But he admitted that some of his sidemen wear earplugs. When I heard Naked City perform live, they were less painfully noisy than Spy vs. Spy.